It is therefore most important to understand (if

possible) the ultimate nature both of pleasure and pain,

the conditions of both and also their effects. For I

would add in passing that to suppose that anything could

happen uncaused, or could have no effects at all, seems,

at least to me, most absurd. But unfortunately a perfect

knowledge about pain and pleasure, if attainable, is not

yet attained. I am but very incompletely acquainted with

the literature of the subject, but still this result, I

fear, must be admitted as true. Mr. Marshall's

Interesting book on Pleasure and Pain, and the admirable

chapter in Mr. Stout's Psychology both seem to me, the

former especially, more or less to force their

conclusions. And if, leaving psychology, we betake

ourselves to abstract metaphysics, I do not see how we

are able to draw any conclusions at all about pleasure

or pain. Still, in general, though in this matter we

have no proof, up to a certain point we possess, I

think, a very strong probability. The compatibility of a

balance of pain with general peace and rest of mind

seems to me so improbable that I am inclined to give it

but very little weight. But, this being granted, the

question is whether it helps us to go forward. For it

will be said, "Admit that the Universe is such as not to

be able to contradict itself in and for knowledge, yet

why, none the less, should it not be loaded with a

balance of misery and of practical unrest. Nay Hell

itself, when once you have explained Hell, is for the

intellect perfect, and itself is the intellect's

Heaven." But deferring for a moment the question about

explanation, I make this reply. We can directly use the

intellect pure, I believe, but indirectly the intellect

I am sure is not pure, nor does any mere intellect

exist. A merely intellectual harmony is an abstraction,

and it is a legitimate abstraction, but if the harmony

were merely intellectual it would be nothing at all.

And, by an alteration in conditions which are not

directly intellectual, you may thus indirectly ruin the

intellectual world. Now this I take to be the case with

our alleged possible surplus of pain. That surplus must,

I consider, indirectly produce, and appear in the

intellect as, a self-contradiction.

We can hardly suppose that in the Whole this balance

of pain and unrest could go on quite unperceived, shut

off from the intellect in some by-world of mere feeling

or sensation. And, if it were so, the intellect itself

would by this have been made imperfect. For, failing to

be all-inclusive, it would have become limited from the

outside and so defective, and so by consequence also

internally discordant. The pain therefore must be taken

to enter into the world of perception and thought; and,

if so, we must assume it to show itself in some form of

dislike, aversion, longing or regret, or in short as a

mode of unsatisfied desire. But unsatisfied desire

involves, and it must involve, an idea which at once

qualifies a sensation and is discordant with it. The

reader will find this explained above in the Note to

pp. 96-100, as well as in Mind, No. 49. The apple, for

instance, which you want to eat and which you cannot

reach, is a presentation together with an ideal

adjective logically contrary thereto; and if you could,

by a distinction in the subject of the inconsistent

adjectives, remove this logical contradiction, the desire so far also would be gone. Now in a

total Universe which owns a balance of pain and of

unsatisfied desire, I do not see that the contradiction

inherent in this unsatisfied desire could possibly be

resolved. The possibility of resolution depends (as we

know) on rearrangement within the whole, and it

presupposes that in the end no element of idea contrary

to presentation is left outstanding. And if the Reality

were not the complete identity of idea and existence,

but had, with an outstanding element of pain, a

necessary overplus of unsatisfied desire, and had so on

the whole an element of outstanding idea not at one with

sensation--the possibility of resolving this

contradiction would seem in principle excluded. The

collision could be shifted at most from point to point

within the whole, but for the whole always it would

remain. Hence, because a balance of pain seems to lead

to unsatisfied desire, and that to logical collision, we

can argue indirectly to a state at least free from pain,

if not to a balance of pleasure. And I believe this

conclusion to be sound.

Objections, I am well aware, will be raised from

various sides, and I cannot usefully attempt to

anticipate them, but on one or two points I will add a

word of explanation. It will or may be objected that

desire does not essentially involve an idea. Now though

I am quite convinced that this objection is wrong, and

though I am ready to discuss it in detail, I cannot well

do so here. I will however point out that, even if

conation without idea at a certain stage exists, yet in

the Whole we can hardly take that to continue

unperceived. And, as soon as it is perceived, I would

submit that then it will imply both an idea and a

contradiction. And, without dwelling further on this

point, I will pass on to another. It has been objected

that whatever can be explained is harmonious

intellectually, and that a miserable Universe might be

explained by science, and would therefore be

intellectually perfect. But, I reply at once, the

intellect is very far from being satisfied by a

"scientific explanation," for that in the end is never

consistent. In the end it connects particulars

unintelligibly with an unintelligible law, and such an

external connection is not a real harmony. A real

intellectual harmony involves, I must insist, the

perfect identity throughout of idea with existence. And

if ideas of what should be, and what is not, were in the

majority (as in a miserable Universe they must be),

there could not then, I submit, be an intellectual

harmony.

My conclusion, I am fully aware, has not been

demonstrated (p. 534). The unhappiness of the world

remains a possibility to be emphasized by the over-

doubtful or gloomy. This possibility, so far as I see,

cannot be removed except through a perfect understanding

of, or, to say the least, about, both pain and pleasure.

If we had a complete knowledge otherwise of the world in

system, such that nothing possible fell outside it, and

if that complete system owned a balance of pleasure, the

case would be altered. But since even then, so far as I

can comprehend, this balance of pleasure remains a mere

external fact, and is not and cannot be internally

understood to qualify the system, the system would have

to be in the completest sense all-inclusive and

exhaustive. Any unknown conditions, such as I have

admitted, on p. 535, would have to be impossible. But

for myself I cannot believe that such knowledge is

within our grasp; and, so far as pleasure is concerned,

I have to end with a result the opposite of which I

cannot call completely impossible.

p. 206. In what I have said here about the sense of

Time, I am not implying that in my view it is there from

the first. On the contrary I think the opposite is more

probable; but I saw no use in expressing an opinion.

Chapter xviii. The main doctrines put forward in this

Chapter and in Chapter iv, have been criticised

incidentally by Professor Watson in the Philosophical

Review for July and September 1895. In these articles I

have to my regret often found it impossible to decide

where Professor Watson is criticising myself, or some

other writer, and where again he is developing something

which he takes to be more or less our common property.

And where he is plainly criticising myself, I cannot

always discover the point of the criticism. Hence what

follows must be offered as subject to some doubt.

The main doctrine to which I am committed, and which

Professor Watson certainly condemns, is the regarding

Time "as not an ultimate or true determination of

reality but a `mere appearance.'" Professor Watson, with some other critics, has

misunderstood the words "mere appearance." The point he wishes to make, I presume,

is this, that everything determines Reality in its own

place and degree, and therefore everything has its

truth. And I myself have also laid stress on this point.

But, agreeing so far, Professor Watson and myself seem

to differ as follows. Though he agrees that as a

determination of Reality time is inadequate and partial

and has to be corrected by something more true,

Professor Watson objects to my calling it not an

ultimate or true determination, and he denies that it is

self-contradictory and false. Now here I have to join

issue. I deny that time or anything else could possibly

be inadequate, if it were not self-contradictory. And I

would ask, If this or any other determination is a true

and consistent one, how are we to take on ourselves to

correct it? This doctrine of a merely external

correction of what is not false, and this refusal to

admit the internal inconsistency of lower points of

view, though we have to attribute it to Professor

Watson, is certainly not explained by him. I venture

however to think that some explanation is required, and

in the absence of it I must insist both that time is

inconsistent, and that, if it were not so, it would also

not be inadequate, and again that no idea can be

inadequate if it is not more or less false. This is the

main point on which Professor Watson and myself seem to

differ.

In reply to detail it is hard for me to say anything

where I so often fail to apprehend. As I do not hold "a

pure continuous quantity" to be self-consistent, how,

when time is regarded thus, am I affected? How is it

relevant to urge that time "can be thought," when the

question is whether it can be thought consistently, and

surely not in the least whether it can be thought at

all? And if it is so easy to understand that the idea of

change is not really inconsistent, cannot Professor

Watson formulate it for us in a way which is true and

ultimate, and then explain what right he has to treat it

as calling for correction? The objection--to turn to

another point--raised against the doctrine of distinct

time-series, I am unable to

follow. Why and how does this doctrine rest on the

(obviously false) view of time's independent reality?

Why, because time is an aspect of the one reality, must

all series in time have a temporal unity? Why again must

there be only one causal order? Where again and why am I

taken as holding that "pure time" has direction? With

regard to these criticisms I can only say that I find

them incomprehensible.

Nor do I understand what in the end Professor Watson

thinks about the ultimate truth of succession and

change. The view of Reality as one self-consciousness

realizing itself in many self-consciousnesses does not,

so far as Professor Watson has stated it, appear to my

mind to contain any answer whatever to this question.

The many selves seem (we know) to themselves to be a

succession of events, past, present and future. By a

succession I do not of course mean a mere succession,

but still I mean a succession. Well, all this birth and

death, arising and perishing of individuals, is it

ultimately true and real or is it not? For myself, I

reply that it is not so. I reply that these successive