Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/242

to other finite facts; and, secondly, that, in consequence of the presence of such mediation and relationship amongst the finite facts, the reality, as the Absolute sees it, simply has a definable but immediately actual constitution. In other words, the must of our mediate reasoning holds primarily of the finite in its relation to other finites, and not, except indirectly, of the Absolute itself. “Since the finite must be related thus or thus to other finites in order to be a part of the real, therefore, as we must conceive, the Absolute has a given constitution”: such is our reasoning. Now our must, in such reasoning, expresses precisely the finite point of view, not the absolute point of view, as such. Our must defines primarily the relation of our finite experience to other finite facts, as for instance to that “experience other than ours” to which we appealed in our former discussion. We apply, indeed, formally, our must to the Absolute, in so far as the Absolute is viewed as the object of our conception; that is, precisely, not yet as the Absolute for itself, but as the Absolute defined from our finite point of view. But the Absolute finds fact in its wholeness, where we find only mediation, or where we appeal from our experience to “experience other than ours,” and so see necessity and not immediacy. Therefore, it is indeed true that every conception of the Absolute is, when you take it barely as thought, inadequate to its object. What we say is: “The whole of experience has precisely the sort of unity that any moment of our own conscious life inadequately presents to us.” But such unity is the unity of fact, not of our must, not of any