{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Appearance_and_Reality_Chapter_XIX/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Appearance_and_Reality_Chapter_XIX","id":"wikisource_Appearance_and_Reality_Chapter_XIX","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appearance_and_Reality/Chapter_XIX","summary":null,"tags":["Subpages"],"text":"CHAPTER XIX.\n\nTHE THIS AND THE MINE.\n\nWe have seen that the forms of space and time supply no good objection to the individuality of the Absolute. But we have not yet faced a difficulty which perhaps may prove more serious. There is the fact which is denoted by the title of the present chapter. The particularity of feeling, it may be contended, is an obstacle which declines to be engulfed. The \u201cthis\u201d and the \u201cmine\u201d are undeniable; and upon our theory, it may be said, they are both inexplicable.\n\nThe \u201cthis\u201d and the \u201cmine\u201d are names which stand for the immediacy of feeling, and each serves to call attention to one side of that fact. There is no \u201cmine\u201d which is not \u201cthis,\u201d nor any \u201cthis\u201d which fails, in a sense, to be \u201cmine.\u201d The immediate fact must always come as something felt in an experience, and an experience always must be particular, and, in a sense, must be \u201cunique.\u201d But I shall not enter on all the problems implied in the last word. I am not going to inquire here how we are able to transcend the \u201cthis-mine,\u201d for that question will engage us hereafter (Chapter xxi.), and the problem now before us is confined to a single point. We are to assume that there does exist an indefinite number of \u201cthis-mines,\u201d of immediate experiences of the felt. And, assuming this fact, we are to ask if it is compatible with our general view.\n\nThe difficulty of this inquiry arises in great part from vagueness. The \u201cthis\u201d and \u201cmine\u201d are taken as both positive and negative. They are to possess a singular reality, and they are to own in some sense an exclusive character. And from this shifting basis a rash conclusion is hastily drawn. But the singular reality, after all, may not be single and self-existent. And the exclusive character, perhaps, may be included and taken up in the Whole. And it is these questions which we must endeavour to clear up and discuss. I will begin with what we have called the positive aspect.\n\nThe \u201cthis\u201d and the \u201cmine\u201d express the immediate character of feeling, and the appearance of this character in a finite centre. Feeling may stand for a psychical stage before relations have been developed, or it may be used generally for an experience which is not indirect (Chapters ix., xxvi., and xxvii.). At any time all that we suffer, do, and are, forms one psychical totality. It is experienced all together as a co-existing mass, not perceived as parted and joined by relations even of co-existence. It contains all relations, and distinctions, and every ideal object that at the moment exists in the soul. It contains them, not specially as such and with exclusive stress on their content as predicated, but directly as they are and as they qualify the psychical \u201cthat.\u201d And again any part of this co-existence, to which we attend, can be viewed integrally as one feeling.\n\nNow whatever is thus directly experienced\u2014so far as it is not taken otherwise\u2014is \u201cthis\u201d and \u201cmine.\u201d And all such presentation without doubt has peculiar reality. One might even contend that logically to transcend it is impossible, and that there is no rational way to a plurality of \u201cthis-mines.\u201d But such a plurality we have agreed for the present to assume. The \u201cthis,\u201d it is however clear, brings a sense of superior reality, a sense which is far from being wholly deceptive and untrue. For all our knowledge, in the first place, arises from the \u201cthis.\u201d It is the one source of our experience, and every element of the world must submit to pass through it. And the \u201cthis,\u201d secondly, has a genuine feature of ultimate reality. With however great imperfection and inconsistency it owns an individual character. The \u201cthis\u201d is real for us in a sense in which nothing else is real.\n\nReality is being in which there is no division of content from existence, no loosening of \u201cwhat\u201d from \u201cthat.\u201d Reality, in short, means what it stands for, and stands for what it means. And the \u201cthis\u201d possesses to some extent the same wholeness of character. Both the \u201cthis\u201d and reality, we may say, are immediate. But reality is immediate because it includes and is superior to mediation. It developes, and it brings to unity, the distinctions it contains. The \u201cthis\u201d is immediate, on the other side, because it is at a level below distinctions. Its elements are but conjoined, and are not connected. And its content, hence, is unstable, and essentially tends to disruption, and by its own nature must pass beyond the being of the \u201cthis.\u201d But every \u201cthis\u201d still shows a passing aspect of undivided singleness. In the mental background specially such a fused unity remains a constant factor, and can never be dissipated (Chapters ix., x., xxvii.). And it is such an unbroken wholeness which gives the sense of individual reality. When we turn from mere ideas to sensation, we experience in the \u201cthis\u201d a revelation of freshness and life. And that revelation, if misleading, is never quite untrue.\n\nWe may, for the present, take \u201cthis\u201d as the positive feeling of direct experience. In that sense it will be either general or special. It will be the character which we feel always, or again in union with some particular content. And we have to ask if, so understood, the \u201cthis\u201d is incompatible with our Absolute.\n\nThe question, thus asked, seems to call for but little discussion. Since for us the Absolute is a whole, the sense of immediate reality, we must suppose, may certainly qualify it. And, again, I find no difficulty when we pass to the special meaning of \u201cthis.\u201d With every presentation, with each chance mixture of psychical elements, we have the feeling of one particular datum. We have the felt existence of a peculiar sensible whole. And here we find beyond question a positive content, and a fresh element which has to be included within our Absolute. But in such a content there is, so far, nothing which could repel or exclude. There is no feature there which could resist embracement and absorption by the whole.\n\nThe fact of actual fragmentariness, I admit, we cannot explain. That experience should take place in finite centres, and should wear the form of finite \u201cthisness,\u201d is in the end inexplicable (Chapter xxvi.). But to be inexplicable, and to be incompatible, are not the same thing. And in such fragmentariness, viewed as positive, I see no objection to our view. The plurality of presentations is a fact, and it, therefore, makes a difference to our Absolute. It exists in, and it, therefore, must qualify the whole. And the universe is richer, we may be sure, for all dividedness and variety. Certainly in detail we do not know how the separation is overcome, and we cannot point to the product which is gained, in each case, by that resolution. But our ignorance here is no ground for rational opposition. Our principle assures us that the Absolute is superior to partition, and in some way is perfected by it. And we have found, as yet, no reason even to doubt if this result is possible. We have discovered, as yet, nothing which seems able from any side to stand out. There is no element such as could hesitate to blend with the rest and to be dissolved in a higher unity.\n\nIf the whole could be an arrangement of mere ideas, if it were a system barely intellectual, the case would be altered. We might combine such ideas, it would not matter how ingeniously; but we could not frame, and we should not possess, a product containing what we feel to be imparted directly by the \u201cthis.\u201d I admit that inability, and I urge it, as yet another confirmation and support of our doctrine. For our Absolute was not a mere intellectual system. It was an experience overriding every species of one-sidedness, and throughout it was at once intuition and feeling and will. But, if so, the opposition of the \u201cthis\u201d becomes at once unmeaning. For feelings, each possessing a nature of its own, may surely come together, and be fused in the Absolute. And, so far is such a resolution from appearing impossible, that I confess to me it seems most natural and easy. That partial experiences should run together, and should unite their deliverances to produce one richer whole\u2014is there anything here incredible? It would indeed be strange if bare positive feelings proved recalcitrant and solid, and stood out against absorption. For their nature clearly is otherwise, and they must be blended in the one experience of the Absolute. This consummation evidently is real, because on our principle it is necessary, and because again we have no reason to doubt that it is possible. And with so much, we may pass from the positive aspect of the \u201cthis.\u201d\n\nFor the \u201cthis\u201d and \u201cmine,\u201d it is clear, are taken also as negative. They are set up as in some way opposed to the Absolute, and they are considered, in some sense, to own an exclusive character. And that their character, in part, is exclusive cannot be denied; but the question is in what sense, and how far, they possess it. For, if the repulsion is relative and holds merely within the one whole, it is compatible at once with our view of the universe.\n\nAn immediate experience, viewed as positive, is so far not exclusive. It is, so far, what it is, and it does not repel anything. But the \u201cthis\u201d certainly is used also with a negative bearing. It may mean \u201cthis one,\u201d in distinction from that one and the other one. And here it shows obviously an exclusive aspect, and it implies an external and negative relation. But every such relation, we have found, is inconsistent with itself (Chapter iii.). For it exists within, and by virtue of an embracing unity, and apart from that totality both itself and its terms would be nothing. And the relation also must penetrate the inner being of its terms. \u201cThis,\u201d in other words, would not exclude \u201cthat,\u201d unless in the exclusion \u201cthis,\u201d so far, passed out of itself. Its repulsion of others is thus incompatible with self-contained singleness, and involves subordination to an including whole. But to the ultimate whole nothing can be opposed, or even related.\n\nAnd the self-transcendent character of the \u201cthis\u201d is, on all sides, open and plain. Appearing as immediate, it, on the other side, has contents which are not consistent with themselves, and which refer themselves beyond. Hence the inner nature of the \u201cthis\u201d leads it to pass outside itself towards a higher totality. And its negative aspect is but one appearance of this general tendency. Its very exclusiveness involves the reference of itself beyond itself, and is but a proof of its necessary absorption in the Absolute. And if the \u201cthis\u201d is asserted to be all-exclusive because it is \u201cunique,\u201d the discussion of that point need not long detain us. The term may imply that nothing else but the \u201cthis-mine\u201d is real, and, in that case, the question has been deferred to Chapter xxi. And, if \u201cunique\u201d means that what is felt once can never be felt again, such an assertion, taken broadly, seems even untrue. For if feelings, the same in character, do in fact not recur, we at least hardly can deny that their recurrence is possible. The \u201cthis\u201d is unique really so far as it is a member in a series, and so far as that series is taken as distinct from all others. And only in this sense can we call its recurrence impossible. But here with uniqueness once more we have negative relations, and these relations involve an inclusive unity. Uniqueness, in this sense, does not resist assimilation by the Absolute. It is, on the other hand, itself incompatible with exclusive singleness.\n\nInto the nature of self-will I shall at present not enter. This is opposition attempted by a finite subject against its proper whole. And we may see at once that such discord and negation can subserve unity, and can contribute towards the perfection of the universe. It is connection with the central fire which produces in the element this burning sense of selfness. And the collision is resolved within that harmony where centre and circumference are one. But I shall return in another place to the discussion of this matter (Chapter xxv.).\n\nWe have found that the \u201cthis,\u201d taken as exclusive, proclaims itself relative, and in that relation forfeits its independence. And we have seen that, as positive, the \u201cthis\u201d is not exclusive at all. The \u201cthis\u201d is inconsistent always, but, so far as it excludes, so far already has it begun internally to suffer dissipation. We may now, with advantage perhaps, view the matter in a somewhat different way. There is, I think, a vague notion that some content sticks irremovably within the \u201cthis,\u201d or that in the \u201cthis,\u201d again, there is something which is not content at all. In either case an element is offered, which, it is alleged, cannot be absorbed by the Whole. And an examination of these prejudices may throw some light on our general view.\n\nIn the \u201cthis,\u201d it may appear first, there is something more than content. For by combining qualities indefinitely we seem unable to arrive at the \u201cthis.\u201d The same difficulty may be stated perhaps in a way which points to its solution. The \u201cthis\u201d on one hand, we may say, is nothing at all beside content, and, on the other hand, the \u201cthis\u201d is not content at all. For in the term \u201ccontent\u201d there lies an ambiguity. It may mean a \u201cwhat\u201d that is, or again, is not, distinct from its \u201cthat.\u201d And the \u201cthis,\u201d we have already seen, has inconsistent aspects. It offers, from one aspect, an immediate undivided experience, a whole in which \u201cthat\u201d and \u201cwhat\u201d are felt as one. And here content, as implying distinction, will be absent from the \u201cthis.\u201d But such an undivided feeling, we have also seen, is a positive experience. It does not even attempt to resist assimilation by our Absolute.\n\nIf, on the other hand, we use content generally, and if we employ it in the sense of \u201cwhat\u201d without distinction from \u201cthat\u201d\u2014if we take it to mean something which is experienced, and which is nothing but experience\u2014then, most emphatically, the \u201cthis\u201d is not anything but content. For there is nothing in it or about it which can be more than experience. And in it there is further no feature which cannot be made a quality. Its various aspects can all be separated by distinction and analysis, and, one after another, can thus be brought forward as ideal predicates. This assertion holds of that immediate sense of a special reality, which we found above in the character of each felt complex. There is, in brief, no fragment of the \u201cthis\u201d such that it cannot form the object of a distinction. And hence the \u201cthis,\u201d in the first place, is mere experience throughout; and, in the second place, throughout it may be called intelligible. It owns no aspect which refuses to become a quality, and in its turn to play the part of an ideal predicate.\n\nBut it is easy here to deceive ourselves and to fall into error. For taking a given whole, or more probably selecting one portion, we begin to distinguish and to break up its confused co-existence. And, having thus possessed ourselves of definite contents and of qualities in relation, we call on our \u201cthis\u201d to identify itself with our discrete product. And, on the refusal of the \u201cthis,\u201d we charge it with stubborn exclusiveness. It is held to possess either in its nature a repellent content, or something else, at all events, which is intractable. But the whole conclusion is fallacious. For, if we have not mutilated our subject, we have at least added a feature which originally was not there\u2014a feature, which, if introduced, must of necessity burst the \u201cthis,\u201d and destroy it from within. The \u201cthis,\u201d we have seen, is a unity below relations and ideas; and a unity, able to develope and to harmonize all distinctions, is not found till we arrive at ultimate Reality. Hence the \u201cthis\u201d repels our offered predicates, not because its nature goes beyond, but rather because that nature comes short. It is not more, we may say, but less than our distinctions.\n\nAnd to our mistake in principle we add probably an error in practice. For we have failed probably to exhaust the full deliverance of our \u201cthis,\u201d and the residue, left there by our mere failure, is then assumed blindly to stand out as an irreducible aspect. For, if we have confined our \u201cthis\u201d to but one portion of the felt totality, we have omitted from our analysis, perhaps, the positive aspect of its special unity. But our analysis, if so, is evidently incomplete and misleading. And then, perhaps again, qualifying our limited \u201cthis\u201d by exclusive relations, we do not see that in these we have added a factor to its original content. And what we have added, and have also overlooked, is then charged to the native repellence of the \u201cthis.\u201d But if again, on the other hand, our \u201cthis\u201d is not taken as limited, if it is to be the entire complex of one present, viewed without relation even to its own future and past\u2014other errors await us. For the detail here is so great that complete exhaustion is hardly possible. And so, setting down as performed that which is in fact impracticable, we once more stumble against a residue which is due wholly to our weakness. And we are helped, perhaps, further into mistake by another source of fallacy. We may confuse the feeling which we study with the feeling which we are. Attempting, so far as we can, to make an object of some (past) psychical whole, we may unawares seek there every feature which we now are and feel. And we may attribute our ill success to the positive obstinacy of the resisting object.\n\nThe total subject of all predicates, which we feel in the background, can be exhausted, we may say in general, by no predicate or predicates. For the subject holds all in one, while predication involves severance, and so inflicts on its subject a partial loss of unity. And hence neither ultimate Reality, nor any \u201cthis,\u201d can consist of qualities. That is one side of the truth, but the truth also has another side. Reality owns no feature or aspect which cannot in its turn be distinguished, none which cannot in this way become a mere adjective and predicate. The same conclusion holds of the \u201cthis,\u201d in whatever sense you take it. There is nothing there which could form an intractable crudity, nothing which can refuse to qualify and to be merged in the ultimate Reality.\n\nWe have found that, in a sense, the \u201cthis\u201d is not, and does not own, content. But, in another sense, we have seen that it contains, and is, nothing else. We may now pass to the examination of a second prejudice. Is there any content which is owned by and sticks in the \u201cthis,\u201d and which thus remains outstanding, and declines union with a higher system? We have perceived, on the contrary, that by its essence the \u201cthis\u201d is self-transcendent. But it may repay us once more to dwell and to enlarge on this topic. And I shall not hesitate in part to repeat results which we have gained already.\n\nIf we are asked what content is appropriated by the \u201cthis,\u201d we may reply that there is none. There is no inalienable content which belongs to the \u201cthis\u201d or the \u201cmine.\u201d My immediate feeling, when I say \u201cthis,\u201d has a complex character, and it presents a confused detail which, we have seen, is content. But it has no \u201cwhat\u201d which belongs to it as a separate possession. It has no feature identified with its own private exclusivity. That is first a negative relation which, in principle, must qualify the internal from outside. And in practice we find that each element contained can refer itself elsewhere. Each tends naturally towards a wider whole outside of the \u201cthis.\u201d Its content, we may say, has no rest till it has wandered to a home elsewhere. The mere \u201cthis\u201d can appropriate nothing.\n\nThe \u201cthis\u201d appears to retain content solely through our failure. I may express this otherwise by calling it the region of chance; for chance is something given and for us not yet comprehended. So far as any element falls outside of some ideal whole, then, in relation with that whole, this element is chance. Contingent matter is matter regarded as that which, as yet, we cannot connect and include. It has not been taken up, as we know that it must be, within some ideal whole or system. Thus one and the same matter both is, and is not, contingent. It is chance for one system or end, while in relation with another it is necessary. All chance is relative; and the content which falls in the mere \u201cthis\u201d is relative chance. So far as it remains there, that is through our failure to refer it elsewhere. It is merely \u201cthis\u201d so far as it is not yet comprehended; and, so far as it is taken as a feature in any whole beyond itself, it has to change its character. It is, in that respect at least, forthwith not of the \u201cthis,\u201d but only in it, and appearing there. And such appearance, of course, is not always presentation to outer sense. All that in any way we experience, we must experience within one moment of presentation. However ideal anything may be, it still must appear in a \u201cnow.\u201d And everything present there, so far as in any respect it is not subordinated to an ideal whole\u2014no matter what that whole is\u2014in relation to that defect is but part of the given. It may be as ideal otherwise as you please, but to that extent it fails to pass beyond immediate fact. Such an element so far is still immersed in the \u201cnow,\u201d \u201cmine,\u201d and \u201cthis.\u201d It remains there, but, as we have seen, it is not owned and appropriated. It lingers, we may say, precariously and provisionally.\n\nBut at this point we may seem to have encountered an obstacle. For in the given fact there is always a co-existence of elements; and with this co-existence we may seem to ascribe positive content to the \u201cthis.\u201d Property, we asserted, was lacking to it, and that assertion now seems questionable. For co-existence supplies us with actual knowledge, and none the less it seems given in the content of the \u201cthis.\u201d The objection, however, would rest on misunderstanding. It is positive knowledge when I judge that in a certain space or time certain features co-exist. But such knowledge, on the other hand, is never the content of the mere \u201cthis.\u201d It is already a synthesis, imperfect no doubt, but still plainly ideal. And, at the cost of repetition, I will point this out briefly.\n\n(a) The place or time, first, may be characterised by inclusion within a series. We may mean that, in some sense, the place or time is \u201cthis one,\u201d and not another. But, if so, we have forthwith transcended the given. We are using a character which implies inclusion of an element within a whole, with a reference beyond itself to other like elements. And this of course goes far beyond immediate experience. To suppose that position in a series can belong to the mere \u201cthis,\u201d is a misunderstanding.\n\n(b) And more probably the objection had something else in view. It was not conjunction in one moment, as distinct from another moment, which it urged was positive and yet belonged to the \u201cthis.\u201d It meant mere coincidence within some \u201chere\u201d or some \u201cnow,\u201d a co-presentation immediately given without regard to any \u201cthere\u201d or \u201cthen.\u201d Such a bare conjunction seems to be something possessed by the \u201cthis,\u201d and yet offering on the other side a positive character. But again, and in this form, the objection would rest on a mistake.\n\nThe bare coincidence of the content, if you take it as merely given within a presentation, and if you consider it entirely without any further reference beyond, is not a co-existence of elements. I do not mean, of course, that a whole of feeling is not positive at all. I mean that, as soon as you have made assertions about what it contains, as soon as you have begun to treat its content as content, you have transcended its felt unity. For consider a \u201chere\u201d or \u201cnow,\u201d and observe anything of what is in it, and you have instantly acquired an ideal synthesis (Chapter xv.). You have a relation which, however impure, is at once set free from time. You have gained an universal which, so far as it goes, is true always, and not merely at the present moment; and this universal is forthwith used to qualify reality beyond that moment. And thus the co-existence of a and b, we may say, does not belong to the mere \u201cthis,\u201d but it is ideal, and appears there. Within mere feeling it has doubtless a positive character, but, excluding distinctions, it is not, in one sense, coincidence at all. In observing, we are compelled to observe in the form of relations. But these internal relations properly do not belong to the \u201cthis\u201d itself. For its character does not admit of separation and distinction. Hence to distinguish elements within this whole, and to predicate a relation of coexistence, is self-contradictory. Our operation, in its result, has destroyed what it acted on; and the product which has come out, was, as such, never there. Thus, in claiming to own a relation of coexistence and a distinction of content, the mere \u201cthis\u201d commits suicide.\n\nFrom another point of view, doubtless, the observed is a mere coincidence, when compared, that is, with a purer way of understanding. The relation is true, subject to the condition of a confused context, which is not comprehended. And hence the connection observed is, to this extent, bare conjunction and mere co-existence. Or it is chance, when you measure it by a higher necessity. It is a truth conditioned by our ignorance, and so contingent and belonging to the \u201cthis.\u201d But, upon the other side, we have seen that the \u201cthis\u201d can hold nothing. As soon as a relation is made out, that is universal knowledge, and has at once transcended presentation. For within the merely \u201cthis\u201d no relation, taken as such, is possible. The content, if you distinguish it, is to that extent set free from felt unity. And there is no \u201cwhat\u201d which essentially adheres to the bare moment. So far as any element remains involved in the confusion of feeling, that is but due to our defect and ignorance. Hence, to repeat, the \u201cthis,\u201d considered as mere feeling, is certainly positive. As the absence of universal relations, the \u201cthis\u201d again is negative. But, as an attempt to make and to retain distinctions of content, the \u201cthis\u201d is suicidal.\n\nIt is so too with the \u201cmere mine.\u201d We hear in discussions on morality, or logic, or \u00e6sthetics, that a certain detail is \u201csubjective,\u201d and hence irrelevant. Such a detail, in other words, belongs to the \u201cmere mine.\u201d And a mistake may be made, and we may imagine that there is matter which, in itself, is contingent. It may be supposed that an element, such perhaps as pleasure, is a fixed part of something called the \u201cthis-me.\u201d But there is no content which, as such, can belong to the \u201cmine.\u201d The \u201cmine\u201d is my existence taken as immediate fact, as an integral whole of psychical elements which simply are. It is my content, so far as not freed from the feeling moment. And it is merely my content, because it is not subordinate to this or that ideal whole. If I regard a mental fact, say, from the side of its morality, then whatever is, here and now, not relevant to this purpose, becomes bare existence. It is something which is not the appearance of the ideal matter in hand. And yet, because it exists somehow, it exists as a fact in the mere \u201cmine.\u201d The same thing happens also, of course, with aesthetics, or science, or religion. The same detail which, in one respect, was essential and necessary, may, from another point of view, become immaterial. And then at once, so far, it falls back into the merely felt or given. It exists, but, for the end we are regarding, it is nothing.\n\nThis is still more evident, perhaps, from the side of psychology. No particle of my existence, on the one hand, falls outside that science; and yet, on the other hand, for psychology the mere \u201cmine\u201d remains. When I study my events so as to trace a particular connection, no matter of what kind, then at any moment the psychical \u201cgiven\u201d contains features which are irrelevant. They have no bearing on the point which I am endeavouring to make good. Hence the fact of their co-existence is contingent, and it is by chance that they accompany what is essential. They exist, in other words, for my present aim, in that self which is merely given, and which is not transcended. On the other hand, obviously, these same particulars are essential and necessary, since (at the least) somehow they are links in the causal sequence of my history. Every particular in the same way has some end beyond the moment. Each can be referred to an ideal whole whose appearance it is; and nothing whatever is left to belong merely to the \u201cthis-mine.\u201d The simplest observation of what co-exists removes it from that region, and chance has no positive content, except in relation to our failure and ignorance.\n\nAnd any psychology, which is not blind or else biassed by false doctrine, forces on our notice this alienation of content. Our whole mental life moves by a transcendence of the \u201cthis,\u201d by sheer disregard of its claim to possess any property. The looseness of some feature of the \u201cwhat\u201d from its fusion with the \u201cthat\u201d\u2014its self-reference to, and its operation on, something beyond\u2014if you leave out this, you have lost the mainspring of psychical movement. But this is the ideality of the given, its non-possession of that character with which it appears, but which only appears in it. And Association\u2014who could use it as mere co-existence within the \u201cthis\u201d? But, if anything more, it is at once the union of the ideal, the synthesis of the eternal. Thus the \u201cmine\u201d has no detail which is not the property of connections beyond. The merest coincidence, when you observe it, is a distinction which couples universal ideas. And, in brief, the \u201cmine\u201d has no content except that which is left there by our impotence. Its character in this respect is, in other words, merely negative.\n\nHence to urge such a character against our Absolute would be unmeaning. It would be to turn our ignorance of system into a positive objection, to make our failure a ground for the denial of possibility. We have no basis on which to doubt that all content comes together harmoniously in the Absolute. We have no reason to think that any feature adheres to the \u201cthis,\u201d and is unable to transcend it. What is true is that, for us, the incomplete diversity of various systems, the perplexing references of each same feature to many ideal wholes, and again that positive special feeling, which we have dealt with above\u2014all this detail is not made one in any way which we can verify. That it all is reconciled we know, but how, in particular, is hid from us. But because this result must be, and because there is nothing against it, we believe that it is.\n\nWe have seen that in the \u201cthis,\u201d on one side, there is no element but content, and we have found that no content, on the other side, is the possession of the \u201cthis.\u201d There is none that sticks within its precincts, but all tends to refer itself beyond. What remains there is chance, if chance is used in the sense of our sheer ignorance. It is not opposition, but blank failure in regard to the claim of an idea. And opposition and exclusiveness, in any sense, must transcend the bare \u201cthis.\u201d For their essence always implies relation to a something beyond self; and that relation makes an end of all attempt at solid singleness. Thus, if chance is taken as involving an actual relation to an idea, the \u201cthis\u201d already has, so far, transcended itself. The refusal of something given to connect itself with an idea is a positive fact. But that refusal, as a relation, is evidently not included and contained in the \u201cthis.\u201d On the other hand, entering into that relation, the internal content has, so far, set itself free. It has already transcended the \u201cthis\u201d and become universal. And the exclusiveness of the \u201cthis\u201d everywhere in the same way proves self-contradictory.\n\nAnd we had agreed before that the mere \u201cthis\u201d in a sense is positive. It has a felt self-affirmation peculiar and especial, and into the nature of that positive being we entered at length. But we found no reason why such feelings, considered in any feature or aspect, should persist self-centred and aloof. It seemed possible, to say the least, that they all might blend with one another, and be merged in the experience of the one Reality. And with that possibility, given on all sides, we arrive at our conclusion. The \u201cthis\u201d and \u201cmine\u201d are now absorbed as elements within our Absolute. For their resolution must be, and it may be, and so certainly it is.\n\nFootnote","title":"Appearance and Reality/Chapter XIX","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":5675}