Intelligence and will. Before we see anything of this in

detail we may state beforehand its necessary and main

defect. Suppose that every feature of the universe has

been fairly brought under, and included in these two

aspects, the universe still remains unexplained. For the

two aspects, however much one implies and indeed is the

other, must in some sense still be two. And unless we

comprehend how their plurality, where they are diverse,

stands to their unity, where they are at one, we have

ended in failure. Our principles after all will not be

ultimate, but will themselves be the twofold appearance

of a unity left unexplained. It may however

repay us to examine further the proposed reduction.

The plausibility of this consists very largely in

Vagueness, and its strength lies in the uncertain sense

given to will and intelligence. We seem to know these

terms so well that we run no risk in applying them, and

then imperceptibly we pass into an application where

their meaning is changed. We have to explain the world,

and what we find there is a process with two aspects.

There is a constant loosening of idea from fact, and a

making-good once more in a new existence of this

recurring discrepancy. We find nowhere substances fixed

and rigid. They are relative wholes of ideal content,

standing on a ceaselessly renewed basis of two-sided

change. Identity, permanence, and continuity, are

everywhere ideal; they are unities for ever created and

destroyed by the constant flux of existence, a flux

which they provoke, and which supports them and is

essential to their life. Now, looking at the universe

so, we may choose to speak of thought wherever the idea

becomes loose from its existence in fact; and we may

speak of will wherever this unity is once more made

good. And, with this introduction of what seems self-

evident, the two main aspects of the world appear to

have found an explanation. Or we possibly might help

ourselves to this result by a further vagueness. For

everything, at all events, either is, or else happens in

time. We might say then that, so far as it happens, it

Is produced by will, and that, so far as it is, it is an

object for perception or thought. But, passing this by

without consideration, let us regard the process of the

world as presenting two aspects. Thought must then be

taken as the idealizing side of this process, and will,

on the other hand, must be viewed as the side which

makes ideas to be real. And let us, for the present

also, suppose that will and thought are in themselves

more or less self-evident.

Now it is plain, first, that such a view

compels us to postulate very much more than we observe.

For ideality certainly does not appear to be all

produced by thought, and actual existence, as certainly,

does not all appear as the effect of will. The latter is

obvious whether in our own selves, or in the course of

Nature, or again in any other of the selves that we

know. And, with regard to ideality or the loosening of

content from fact, this is everywhere the common mark of

appearance. It does not seem exclusively confined to or

distinctive of thinking. Thought does not seem co-

extensive in general with the relational form, and it

must be said to accept, as well as to create, ideal

distinctions. Ideality appears, in short, often as the

result of psychical changes and processes which do not

seem, in the proper sense, to imply any thinking. These

are difficulties, but still they may perhaps be dealt

with. For, just as we could set no limits to the

possible existences of souls, so we can fix no bounds to

the possible working of thought and will. Our mere

failure to discover them here or there, and whether

within ourselves or again outside us, does not anywhere

disprove their existence. And as souls to an unknown

extent can have their life and world in common, so the

effects of will and thought may show themselves there

where the actual process is not experienced. That which

comes to me as a mechanical occurrence, or again as an