and which, as I conceived the matter, was essentially solved, as I stated in passing, at the conclusion of the fifth section of the Fourth Part. This antinomy, when separated from the rest of the argument, runs substantially as follows:
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THESIS The entire world of truth, natural and ethical, must be present in the unity of a single Absolute Consciousness. The world of truth, for the reasons developed in Part First of this paper, must constitute an Organic Whole of Fact, realising ideas. Otherwise, there would be relations of ideas and facts which were real relations, and which yet transcended all consciousness. Such real relations, as transcendent “things in themselves,” prove to be meaningless. Hence the Thesis is established. |
ANTITHESIS The constitution of the moral world demands a real Variety of Individuals, — such a variety as cannot be present in the unity of any single consciousness. Moral relations are relations of individuals, who are free as to their will, and independent both of one another and of any whole of reality to which they belong. Such independence implies mutual separateness, and forbids the free individuals to be the mere fulfilment, in a world of facts, of ideas of any one being. Hence the individuals cannot be contained in any single unity of consciousness; and the Antithesis is proved. |
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The Thesis, as will be remembered, I maintain absolutely, and without alteration. The only new element in the present discussion is a development of the theory of the Organic Whole, that is, of the unity of the Absolute Consciousness; or, to use the language of the first paper, is a proof that the attribute of Omniscience implies other divine attributes. This development, distinctly predicted in the opening paper, is nothing but what so abstract a concept as that of
