the unchangeable Ground presupposed by the changing temporal; the necessary as against the contingent; the independent as against the dependent; the primary as against the derivative; the self-existent as against that which exists in and through it; the genuine cause, the causa sui, as against that which is after all nothing but effect, however it may be tied, by the causa sui, in an unrupturable chain of antecedent and consequent. Or we may say it means the noumenon as against the phenomenon; or, in fine, the thing in itself as against the thing in other. That is, the relation between the eternal and the temporal is not, and cannot be, only another case of the temporal relation. The relation is just one of pure reason, and is, in fact, sui generis: the eternal does not precede the temporal by date, but only in logic; it is the sine qua non without which the temporal cannot exist, nor is even conceivable. In brief, throughout my book I mean by the “eternal” simply the Real as contrasted with the apparent; the world of self-active causes as contrasted with the world of derivative effects, in so far passive.
I have surely taken every pains to make this plain, even to the inexpert reader; one would hardly have supposed my accomplished critic could fail to take it in. Yet he has failed: he expressly construes the “eternal reality of the individual” as meaning an everlasting preëxistence of each soul. He considers the organising relation which I show the soul has toward Nature to be good ground, to be sure, for a hope of its everlasting continuance beyond the grave, but he says, “One finds it hard to take the jump from the inference of an existence that may be endless to that of an eternal preëxistence [italics mine] of such persons as distinct individuals; or, . . . ‘the coexistence of all souls in eternity with God.’” Again, in expressing his acceptance of “such a coexistence of some souls,” on the ground that “the conception of a lonely God may well be discarded for
