Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/243

IN THE MATTER OF PERSONAL IDEALISM. 229 contrast to the infinite of quantity, is entirely definite ; more de- finite, indeed, than any finite can be. (3) Mr. McTaggart misconstrues my various statements about the imperfection in all spirits other than God. He supposes me to hold this imperfection to be incompatible with their being perfect in any sense whatever, and he mildly blames me for overlooking the classic distinction between the view sub specie cBterni and the view sub specie temporis, whereby the seeming contradiction in- volved in an imperfect-perfect might be reconciled. But my actual doctrine about the spirits other than God is exactly his own. " Sub specie ceternitatis, every self is perfect ; sub specie temporis, it is progressing towards a perfection as yet unattained," he says. And the very quotation from me on which he bases his criticism (see my p. 363) expresses this, almost in open words : " The person- ality of every soul lies precisely in the relation . . . between that genuine infinity (self-activity) which marks its organising essence, and the finitude ... to which the infinity [only another name for perfection] subjects itself in defining itself from God." So, too, though more explicitly, when I say (p. 374) : " The perfection of the ' creature ' lies just in this never-ending process of victory. . . . Thus its life shows its peculiar perfection by the mode in which ... it surely, though slowly and with heavy toil, heals its own inherent wound." And yet again: "The infinity of the ' creature,' the infinity that embosoms finitude and evermore raises this toward likeness with the eternal ". There are sundry other passages in my concluding essay that affirm the distinction drawn by Mr. McTaggart between the com- plete self-adequacy of the spirit as a whole in eternity and the inadequacy of it as broken up in a time-process and engaged in a perpetual struggle to attain conformity with that eternal wholeness. In fact this distinction furnishes the whole basis for my reply in that essay to Prof. James's Dilemma of Determinism. I am really quite at one with Mr. McTaggart in what he says about the per- fection of all eternal beings, in so far as they are eternal. I have usually avoided the explicit use of the word, because it is in many contexts misleading, and also because the too free use of it would engender prejudice in most readers, thus preventing the proper appreciation of the arguments offered for the world of real freedom. That world as I intend it, and habitually think it, answers to the principles of unity and harmony quite as Mr. McTaggart suggests. Accordingly, my argument for the existence of God is not reached by those of his suggested objections which are founded on his assumption that I hold all minds but God to be utterly and totally imperfect, without any aspect of perfection at all. On the contrary, I hold, with him, that all eternal beings are perfect, each in its own way. But the way of God, I maintain, is the way of absolute perfection, which eternally excludes defect; whereas the way of every other mind is the way that includes defect, comes (or may come) to include sin, and only exhibits its perfection in its power to return to wholeness through the process of time.