Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/190

178 HENEY SIDGWICK: true it may be that the human spirit is in a sense identical with the Divine Being, it is undeniably different from it as ^ a self-conscious individual ; and the question whether its participation in the nature of the eternal involves immor- tality of its distinct individual self is one which Green does not seem to me to have definitely faced. In the passage (pp. 193-5) in which he comes nearest to discussing it, the question that primarily seems to interest him is not whether the individual John or Thomas has reason to expect con- tinued existence as an individual after death, but whether we have reason to expect that the life of the spirit will always be realised in some individual persons. What he is concerned to maintain is, that " the human spirit cannot develop itself according to its idea except in self-conscious subjects . . . the spiritual progress of mankind is an unmeaning phrase, unless it means a progress of which feeling, thinking, and willing subjects are the agents and sustainers ". Considering the " promise which the spirit gives of itself, both in its actual occasional achievement and in the aspirations of which we are individually conscious " ; we may, he thinks, " justify the suppositions that the per- sonal life, which historically or on earth is held under condi- tions which thwart its development, is continued in a society, with which we have no means of communication through the senses, but which shares in and carries further every measure of perfection attained by men under the conditions of life that we know. Or we may content ourselves with saying that the personal self-conscious being, which comes from God, is for ever continued in God. Or we may pro- nounce the problem suggested by the constant spectacle of unfulfilled human promise to be simply insoluble." Now doubtless the consideration of these alternatives, the weighing of the pros and cons for each of them, is an in- teresting and elevating speculation ; but I fail to perceive that any one of them meets the difficulty with which I am now dealing. If " The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself 'in the sky " present us only with an insoluble problem, I do not see how the philosopher is to fulfil the task he has undertaken of showing the effort after an " abiding self-satisfaction " to be rational. Nor, again, do I see how this is achieved by adopting the second alternative, and supposing that the personal self-conscious being, now designated as John or Thomas, is to be " for ever continued in God ". For God, or the eternal consciousness according to the definition