Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/401

This difference of standpoint gives rise to an entire difference in the presentation of the problem of reality. In Mr. Hodgson's theory no difficulty about reality ever arises except from confusion. The word he tells us is used in four different senses: 1. Something simply in consciousness. 2. Something which has a definite place in perception or objective thought. 3. Something which has existence independently of whether it is perceived or unperceived, thought of or not thought of at any given time. 4. Something which has efficiency as a real condition. These four senses exhaust the meaning of reality and are ultimately reducible to two senses which correspond to the two aspects of experience. For the subjective aspect esse is percipi is universal and ultimate, for the objective aspect reality means efficiency as a real condition. Now do these two senses or these four senses exhaust the meaning of the term reality? If we accept this classification must we not add a further and ultimate sense of reality in which we mean that which is self-consistent and harmonious, that which has its ground of being within itself? Mr. Hodgson does not recognise this sense of reality and consequently the problem of reality as it presents itself to Mr. Bradley, for instance, in Appearance and Reality does not exist for him. The real universe for Mr. Hodgson is incomplete and he sees no difficulty in making incompleteness an ultimate characteristic of reality. Incompleteness is with him the distinctive attribute of infinity. The infinity of time means that the time continuum is necessarily incomplete at either end. The infinity of space means the absence of limit to its divisibility and extensibility. The infinity of the universe means the necessary incompleteness of the series of conditions and conditionates. And this incompleteness is not a defect either of knowledge or of being but a positive qualification inherent in the very nature as well as in our knowledge of these realities. It is this view of reality which appears to me to mark off Mr. Hodgson's position from that of the Hegelians. If incompleteness can be an attribute of reality the whole distinction between appearance and reality disappears with the criterion that reality cannot contradict itself. Such a view is to me unthinkable,—carried to a logical conclusion it must be destructive of the ideal of knowledge. The view that reality means self-consistency and harmony and conversely that the inconsistent and incomplete cannot be thought of as reality seems to me to lie as evidently at the basis of Mr. Hodgson's argument as it does at that of any transcendentalist. He may not believe in its attainability but it represents the