Influence the mass which it confronts, so as to lead

that to act on it and alter it, and if such a relation

qualified its nature, the attitude would be

practical. But the perceptional relation is supposed to

fall wholly outside the essence of the object. It is in

short disregarded, or else is dismissed as a something

accidental and irrelevant. For the reality, as thought

of or as perceived, in itself simply is. It may be

given, or again sought for, discovered or reflected on,

but all this--however much there may be of it--is

nothing to it. For the object only stands in relation,

and emphatically in no sense is the relation in which it

stands.

This is the vital inconsistency of the real as

perception or thought. Its essence depends on

qualification by a relation which it attempts to ignore.

And this one inconsistency soon exhibits itself from two

points of view. The felt background, from which the

theoretic object stands out, is supposed in no way to

contribute to its being. But, even at the stage of

perception or sensation, this hypothesis breaks down.

And, when we advance to reflective thinking, such a

position clearly is untenable. The world can hardly

stand there to be found, when its essence appears to be

inseparable from the process of finding, and when

assuredly it would not be the whole world unless it

included within itself both the finding and the finder.

But, this last perfection once reached, the object no

longer could stand in any relation at all; and, with

this, its proper being would be at once both completed

and destroyed. The perceptional attitude would entirely

have passed beyond itself.

We may bring out again the same contradiction if we

begin from the other side. As perceived or thought of

the reality is, and it is also itself. But its self

obviously, on the other hand, includes relation to

others, and it is determined inwardly by those others

from which it is distinguished. Its content therefore

slides beyond its existence, its "what" spreads out

beyond its "that." It thus no longer is, but has become

something ideal in which the Reality appears.

And, since this appearance is not identical with

reality, it cannot wholly be true. Hence it must be

corrected, until finally in its content it has ceased to

be false. But, in the first place, this correction is

merely ideal. It consists in a process throughout which

content is separated from existence. Hence, if truth

were complete, it would not be truth, because that is

only appearance; and in the second place, while truth

remains appearance, it cannot possibly be complete. The

theoretic object moves towards a consummation in which

all distinction and all ideality must be suppressed.

But, when that is reached, the theoretic attitude has

been, as such, swallowed up. It throughout on one hand

presupposes a relation, and on the other hand it asserts

an independence; and, if these jarring aspects are

removed or are harmonized, its proper character is gone.

Hence perception and thought must either attempt to fall

back into the immediacy of feeling, or else, confessing

themselves to be one-sided and false, they must seek

completion beyond themselves in a supplement and

counterpart.

(4) With this we are naturally led to consider the

practical aspect of things. Here, as before, we must

have an object, a something distinct from, and over

against, the central mass of feeling. But in this case

the relation shows itself as essential, and is felt as

opposition. An ideal alteration of the object is

suggested, and the suggestion is not rejected by the

feeling centre; and the process is completed by this

ideal qualification, in me, itself altering, and so

itself becoming, the object. Such is, taken roughly, the

main essence of the practical attitude, and its one-

sidedness and insufficiency are evident at once. For it

consists in the healing up of a division which it has no

power to create, and which, once healed up, is the

entire removal of the practical attitude. Will certainly

produces, not mere ideas, but actual existence. But it

depends on ideality and mere appearance for its

starting-point and essence; and the harmony which it

makes is for ever finite, and hence incomplete and

unstable. And if this were not so, and if the ideal and

the existing were made one, the relation between them

would have disappeared, and will, as such, must have