one. Can the history of the world be nothing more than the meaningless churning, over and over again, of the same material, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. What is world doing? The explanation is that there is—
No change without Want, and Good present in Idea.—The only possible explanation lies in this, that there is some Want, need or incompleteness at the heart of things, making it impossible for being to remain what it is, and making its existence to be perpetual activity to complete and fully realise itself. And as its potentiality is unlimited and can never be exhausted, its actual reality consists in an eternal process of becoming. (Why incomplete and why inexhaustible? Because it is potentially infinite, and infinity cannot be exhausted in a world of finite things.) But Want is meaningless apart from a correlative Good. The Good is something which is not, but should be, and therefore Idea. Therefore the ultimate moving principle of the world is Idea.
What, then, is the relation between the Self and Idea? We may obtain some help to understand the meaning of change and energy from the analogy of the finite Self. In the Self the above elements are consciously present in Desire. In it we have the feeling of Want, the Idea of future good, and the self-preserving and realising energy which is the Self—the Self being essentially activity for the attainment of the good.
Here then, the subject requiring consideration is the relation of the Idea to the Self. Does the self make the Idea, or does the Idea make the Self? The Self is essentially activity; but activity is doing something, and what the Self does, is to preserve and realise further its own highest Good. It is in this that its life consists. The Idea of Good is not a fiction of the Self’s own making; it sees it to be potential in its own existence, and feels its own life to consist in the activity of realising it.
