and illusions too, are refuted only through the realisation of all that was rationally positive about their meaning.
We cannot say to the finite being, then: “You are infallible; you are subject to no illusions.” On the contrary, we must say: “All finite ideas involve more or less illusion.” But we must add: “No illusion is a total illusion;” and, “You are wrong only in so far as the truth is richer, is more concrete and significant, than is your error.” Therefore, when one asks whether his ideas of his fellows, of the social order, of his wife, of his children, and of his spiritual destiny, are warranted in the light of an idealistic analysis, we reply: “Yes, and No.” They are all sure to be coloured by finite illusions, and that fact you yourself already recognise whenever you reflect. But the truth confirms all that is significant about your meaning, all the essential ideas involved in these illusions, just in so far as they are ideas that have a positive conscious intent and sense. For instance, if your meaning involves essentially moral ideas, then you are, in absolute truth, a member of a real and concrete social and moral order, which contains your life along with the lives of other moral individuals. You are this; for all these ideas, upon analysis, prove to possess an essential positive meaning, such as the Absolute Life inevitably fulfils. Moreover, whatever you do and intend as your act in a moral world really accomplishes what it morally ought to accomplish. So far, then, your life is real, and not illusory. And the Absolute, which includes life of such types, is as genuinely “spiritual” as any definable idea can ask
