Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

At this point we may observe our metaphysical criterion of reality coincides with our ethical criterion of moral worth. For in morality too we esteem one life worthier than another, either for the superior comprehensiveness of its ideals or for the thoroughness with which they are wrought into a harmonious whole of coherent purpose. The better man is either the man of the wider ideal, or again the man of completer and purer self-devotion to his ideal. And thus for Morality the measure of our worth, as for Metaphysics the measure of our reality, lies in our individuality. And for Morality no less than for Metaphysics individuality is pre-eminently a thing of degrees. In both cases, again, the same difficulty besets us as soon as we attempt to use our criterion for application to particular cases. Its two aspects fall apart; it is not always the more comprehensive ideal which is served with the higher fidelity of purpose. And so our actual moral judgments on the worth of particular men, like our metaphysical judgments on the order of reality to which particular things belong, are often necessarily uncertain and fluctuating. We rate one man morally high for the comprehensive rationality of his ideals, though he suffers from a lack of concentrated energy, another for the steady and earnest purpose with which he follows what we perhaps deplore as a contracted ideal.

§ 6. One more point of supreme importance concerning the relation of the lesser individuals to the perfect individual which is the absolute whole of Reality. Now that we have learned what is meant by degrees of individuality, we can see that there can, in the last resort, be only one perfect and complete individual, the whole of Reality itself, and that the subordinate individuals can never be wholly and entirely individual in themselves. For to be a complete individual would be, as we have seen, to be a whole system absolutely self-contained and explicable solely by reference to internal structure. Whatever requires, for the full understanding of its systematic character, reference to existence outside itself, we have seen, must also, so long as it is considered apart from the rest of existence, be internally wanting in complete systematic harmony, and thus must fall doubly short of the ideal of individuality.

And precisely because the whole of experience is a single system, no lesser system within the whole is entirely explicable in terms of its own internal structure. For a full understanding of the nature of the lesser system, and of the way in which it manifests a common character through the variety of its elements, you have always, in the last resort, to go outside the system itself, and take into account its relation to the rest of the whole system of existence. And for that very reason no subordinate individual, considered in itself, is a completely coherent self-determined whole. For a limited knowledge like our own, which has in the main to deal with subordinate systems as we find them, and without that complete understanding of the whole structure of Reality which would enable us to see their precise place in the whole, the subordinate systems themselves, when closely scanned by a resolute philosophical analysis, will inevitably exhibit some degree of discrepancy and want of systematic unity.

Consider, for instance, such a system as is formed by the life-work of a man of marked “individuality.” On the whole, the life of such a man may fairly be said to be the systematic working out of a consistent scheme of purposes. But this is, after all, only approximately the truth. It is not the case that the nature of the central or dominant purpose of the scheme is of itself enough to determine the nature and order of the successive stages by which it finds expression. We have to take into account factors in the man’s “heredity,” and again in his social and physical environment which form no part of the nature of his central dominant ideal and yet influence the manner of its fulfilment. We are thus thrown back for our full understanding of the “individual” system in question upon circumstances which are, so far as that system is concerned, “accidental,” i.e. which are equally with itself part of the whole system of experienced fact, without our being able to see how it and they form a wider coherent whole. The subordinate individual, because incapable of explication solely from within, is in the end only approximately “individual,” and we therefore fall into contradictions whenever we isolate it from the rest of Reality and treat it as absolutely individual and self-contained.

In dealing with subordinate wholes, we always, if we go far enough, come to a point where we have to recognise their dependence upon a realm of external fact which our knowledge fails to see in its systematic relation with them, and has therefore to treat as accidental or as an ultimate “collocation.” This is why, as has already been said, full knowledge of our own aims and interests as a genuine systematic whole would coincide with complete insight into the structure of the whole universe. We may invert the sentiment of a hackneyed verse, and say with equal truth that until you know what God and man is, you cannot really know what the “flower in the crannied wall” is. This is as much as to say that every appearance must involve some element of contradiction for our philosophical analysis precisely because we cannot in the end see fully how any appearance is related to the whole of Reality. But we must carefully remember that if appearances, taken by themselves, are contradictory, this is not because they are appearances, but because, as so taken, they are all to some extent mere appearance. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that the individuality of anything less than the ultimate whole of being is a matter of degree and approximation. We shall be equally in error if we assume that because no subordinate system is fully individual, some are not more individual and therefore more real than others or if we declare that, because whatever is real at all must be in its degree individual, therefore every element of Reality is completely real in its isolation. The first error is that of a one-sided Monism, the second that of an equally one-sided Pluralism.

Once more we may note a point of coincidence between our general metaphysical theory of individuality and our personal experience as moral agents. In so far as each of us is truly an individual, his aims and ends form a system with an internal unity pervading its structure, and therefore capable of progressive realisation as a system. Yet again, because each of us is less than the whole of Reality, or, what is the same thing, because the systematic unity of our inner life is never complete, and our totality of interests relations, and aspirations never a completely self-contained ordered whole, our ideals will always be found to contain aspects which will not fully harmonise, elements which fall outside such a unity of structure as it is possible to effect within the limit of our single personality. And thus all our victories contain an inseparable element of defeat. The defeated aspects of the self may no doubt, and in general do, in proportion to the degree of our individuality, belong to the “lower” and relatively more “untrue” self, yet they are elements in the whole self, and their suppression is a genuine if necessary self-suppression. There is a sense in which an aspect of failure is an inevitable feature in the life of every subordinate and therefore imperfect individual. Human life, even in the millennium, as we rightly feel, would not be human life if the note of sadness were altogether absent from it. Only in the single experience of the absolute whole can the discordant notes be finally resolved into a faultless harmony.

§ 7. Technically, we may mark the distinction between complete and approximate individuality by saying that the absolute whole is an infinite individual, whereas all lesser wholes are but finite individuals. And here it is important to note carefully the true meaning of these often much-abused terms. The infinite must not be confounded with the indefinite or unfinished. Its fundamental property is not the merely negative one of having no end or “last term,” but the positive one of having an internal structure which is the harmonious and complete expression of a single self-consistent principle. The finite, again, is finite not primarily merely because it has a “last term,” i.e. because there is something else outside it, but because its “last term” is arbitrarily determined, i.e. determined by something other than the principles of its internal structure. In other words, the essential defect of the finite is that it is not solely determined by its own structural principle.

We can see this even in the simple case of the familiar “infinite series” of arithmetic and algebra. Such a series as 1, 1/2, 1/4 ... is “infinite” not merely because you never come to the last term, but because its character is determined from within, solely by the principle according to which each term is derived from the one before it; that the series has no end is a simple consequence of this positive property of self-determination. But suppose I take n terms of this series and no more, where n is a specified number, the resulting series is now finite, not primarily because there are more terms of the same kind outside it, but because the number of terms to be taken is not prescribed by the law of formation of the series, but fixed with reference to some object independent of the principle of the series itself. In other words, only the infinite is in the full sense of the words a completely self-determined whole. The finite is the imperfect, not primarily because there is something outside it, but because its contents are not solely prescribed by the principle of structure which they embody. I, for instance, am a finite being, not principally or merely because there are other men in the world, but because my ideas and purposes are not a fully coherent systematic whole in themselves.[^[70]]

The view we have taken of individuality and the distinction between finite and infinite individuality is closely akin to some of the most fundamental ideas in the philosophy of Leibnitz. It was the doctrine of Leibnitz that each of his monads “represented” the nature of the whole system of existence, i.e. repeated the structure of the whole in its own special structure, from a particular “point of view.” According to the fulness and clearness of the “representation,” i.e. the adequacy with which the structure of the monad repeated the structure of the whole system, the monads were classed as higher or lower in the scale of existence. The clearer a monad’s representation of the whole within itself, the greater the monad’s “activity”; the more confused the representation, the greater its “passivity.” It followed that, inasmuch as no created monad fully exhibits the systematic structure of the whole of Reality within itself, every one contains some element of “passivity,” and that to be “passive” primarily means not to be affected by extraneous influences, but to contain internal “confusion.”

Thus the “activity” of Leibnitz exactly corresponds to what we have called individuality, and his “passivity” to that want of complete internal systematisation which we have found inseparable from finite existence. The immense significance of this definition of activity and passivity in terms of internal systematisation will be more apparent when we come, in our concluding book, to discuss the meaning of human freedom, and its connection with determination and “causality.” For the present it is enough to note that our own doctrine is substantially that of Leibnitz freed from the inconsistency which is introduced into it by the monadistic assumption of the complete independence of the various finite individuals. It is, of course, impossible to unite, as Leibnitz tried to do, the two thoughts. Either there is ultimately only one independent individual, the infinite individual whole, or there is no meaning in speaking of higher and lower degrees of individuality. Leibnitz’s inconsistency on this point seems due entirely to his desire to maintain the absolute individuality of the particular human “soul,” a desire which is explained, partly at least, by his anxiety not to come into collision, as Spinoza and others had done, with the official theology of the period.