Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

At first sight it certainly would seem that it has. For, as we have seen, the Absolute contains all finite existence, and contains it as a perfectly harmonious system. And therefore all finite aspiration must somehow be realised in the structure of the Absolute whole, though not necessarily in the way in which we, as beings of limited knowledge and goodness, actually wish it to be realised. The Absolute whole is thus, as nothing else can be, the concrete individual reality in which our ideals have actual existence. As all our ideals themselves are but so many expressions of our place in the system and our relation to the rest of it, so the system itself is their concrete harmonious embodiment.

It is true, as we have already seen, that our ideals may not be realised in the whole just in the form in which we conceive them, but it must be remembered that in so far as we set up our private judgment and wishes as standards to which the whole is bound to conform on pain of condemnation, we are adopting an attitude which is at once illogical and irreligious. It is illogical, because it implies the assumption that with fuller knowledge of the system of Reality as a whole we should still desire the fulfilment of our aspirations in the special way which at present recommends itself to our imperfect insight. It is irreligious, because the demand that human desires shall be fulfilled in our way and not in “God’s way” involves the setting up of human wisdom against God’s, and is thus irreconcilable with genuine union of heart and will with the divine order.[^[220]]

What then becomes, from this point of view, of the problem of evil? How can the presence of moral evil in the temporal order be reconciled with the thought of the Absolute whole as the complete and harmonious realisation of human ideals? I need not say that the detailed solution of the problem is out of the question. As beings whose insight is necessarily limited by our own finitude, we cannot hope to see how in detail everything that appears to us as evil might, with larger knowledge, be known as an integral constituent of a whole which, as a whole, is the realisation of human aspiration, and therefore free from evil. But it is at least possible to make suggestions which may show that the problem is a mere consequence of the inevitable defects of our insight, and that it would disappear with fuller knowledge. It is not hard to see that there are two main reasons why the structure of the universe seems to finite insight partly evil. Our insight into the nature and connection of our purposes themselves is never complete; we are all, in part, ignorant of exactly what it is to which we aspire. Hence our purposes in part appear to be met by existence with a negative just because we are only imperfectly aware of what they mean and whither they tend. There is no more familiar fact than this, that even within the limits of our human life growing experience is constantly teaching us how confused and defective our judgment at any moment as to what we really want, can be. Largely, then, our ideals seem to be at variance with actual existence, because we never fully know what they are.

Again, our knowledge of the effects of our acts is always imperfect in the extreme. We seem to fail because we cannot see far enough to understand fully what it is we have effected. And both these causes of the apparent discrepancy between the real and the ideal may be traced to a single root. Existence appears to be in part evil, because we cannot take it in at once and as a whole in its individual structure. We have to make acquaintance with it by piecemeal, and as a succession of fragmentary events in the time-series. And imperfection, we have seen, belongs to the time-series. Hence we can see that evil is at once a mere appearance, and an appearance which is inevitable to the finite experience conditioned by the temporal form. The so-called “problem” is thus in principle insoluble only so long as we falsely think of the time-order itself as a characteristic of the Absolute whole in its real individuality.[^[221]]

May we say, then, that the Absolute or whole is known in Metaphysics to be “good”? The answer depends upon the precise meaning we attach to the statement. In the sense that it is the really existing embodiment of the ideals we are trying amid our ignorance and confusion to realise, we clearly must say “yes.” But if we use the word “good” in a narrower sense, to mean “ethically good,” we can hardly say without qualification that the whole is good. For “ethical goodness” belongs essentially to the time-order, and means the process of the gradual assertion of the ideal against apparent evil. To be morally good is to have an ideal that is not realised in the events of the time-order as they come to us in our finite experience, and to mould those events into conformity with the ideal. The moral life is from first to last a struggle, and where the struggle is absent it is misleading to speak of morality. Hence it is better not to call the Absolute “moral.”

But we must remember that the Absolute is only not moral, because it is something very much more than moral, only not ethical because there is in it no divorce of ideal from actuality, as there is in the imperfect experience of its finite members. Or, as we might say, it is something more than “good” precisely because it is already good. In morality, let it be remembered, we have, as in all the experience of finite beings, a process which is throughout directed upon a result that, once attained, would transcend the process itself. Morality would not be content with anything less than the total abolition of the evil in the world; and with the disappearance of evil, the struggle against it would itself disappear in some higher form of experience. Similarly, knowledge is constantly striving to exhaust the object of knowledge. So long as the object is in any respect unknown, the task of knowing is incomplete; yet if once we could so know any object that nothing further remained to be known about it, there would be no aspect of not-self in the object which could distinguish it from the subject by which it is known, and knowledge itself would thus be done away. Thus we may see from the side alike of cognition and of will how the whole life of the finite being forms a constant endeavour to widen experience into the complete apprehension of a content which, because infinite, could not be apprehended without the disappearance of finitude itself. Thus does experience witness to the truth of our fundamental doctrine, that the finite individual repeats in itself, in an imperfect and inadequate form, the structure of the infinite individual of which it is an appearance.

I do not know whether it is necessary to say more than a word with reference to the thoughtless objection so often urged against all philosophical and religious doctrines which deny the ultimate reality of evil, or, what is the same thing, the existence of an independent devil. If existence is already perfect, it is said, why should we seek to make it better at great trouble and inconvenience to ourselves by moral and political endeavour? Ought we not rather to sit with folded hands acquiescing lazily in “things as they are”? The doubt might even be carried further than this. For to “take things as they are” is just as much a course of self-chosen action as any other line of conduct, and it might hence be argued that abstention and moral effort are alike out of place and absurd in a world where everything is “perfect.”

The objection, of course, turns upon a mere confusion of existence as it is in its individual reality, and existence as it appears to us in the time-series. The argument for Quietism is based purely upon attributing to the essentially imperfect and incomplete series of temporal events the perfection which only belongs to the timeless whole. In that perfect whole our moral ideals and moral effort, as finite beings belonging to the temporal order, are of course included along with everything else, and its perfection is therefore no ground for treating them as nugatory. Our own moral struggle with the apparent evil of the time-series is itself an integral part of the Reality which, in its complete individual character, is already perfect, if we could but win to a point of view from which to behold it as it is. As Plotinus expresses it, “our striving is after good and our turning away is from evil, and thought with a purpose is of good and evil, and this is a good.”[^[222]]

If we may not say without qualification that the Absolute is good, and certainly must not say that it is in the proper sense “ethical,” still less may we say that the Absolute is “morally indifferent.” For the Absolute is only not ethical because it is already all that ethical life consists in striving to become. Hence the higher a finite being stands in the ethical scale, as judged by the double criterion of the wealth of its interests in the world and the degree of harmony between them, the more adequately does its structure repeat that of the whole, and the higher is its degree of reality. And this means that the good man’s ideals are realised in the world-order with less of modification and reconstruction than the bad man’s. In a sense, as Professor Royce maintains, even the bad man’s confused and warring ideals get their fulfilment, since he too is aiming, however blindly, at a complete individuality as the goal of all his striving. But he is seeking it where it is not to be found, in the gratification of desires which cannot be allowed the supreme place in the direction of life without leading to the distraction and mutilation of the self. As Plato puts it, the bad man “does as he pleases,” and for that very reason never “does what he wills.” Hence the place of the good man in the economy of the universe is very different from that of the bad, and the world-order itself is the very reverse of “indifferent” to the distinction between them.[^[223]]

My own conclusion, then, which I offer to the reader simply as my own, is that anything less than the Absolute is an inadequate object of religious devotion, and that the Absolute itself has the structure which such an object requires. If it should be further suggested that at any rate, when we come to actual experience, we find that we cannot represent the object of our worship to ourselves in an individual form of sufficient concreteness to stir effectual emotion and prompt to genuine action without clothing it in imagination with anthropomorphic qualities which metaphysical criticism proves inapplicable to the infinite individual, I should be inclined to reply that I admit the fact. And I do not think we need shrink from the conclusion that practical religion involves a certain element of intellectual contradiction. Thus, though God is not truly God until we deny the existence of any independent “evil” by which His nature is limited, it seems probable that the thought of ourselves as “fellow-workers with God” would hardly lead to practical good works unless we also inconsistently allowed ourselves to imagine God as struggling against a hostile power and standing in need of our assistance. But this only shows that the practical value of religion in guiding action is not necessarily dependent upon its scientific truth.