Idea must be altered. More or less, they all require a

supplementation and re-arrangement. But of this

necessity, and of the amount of it, we may be totally

unaware. We commonly use ideas with no clear notion as

to how far they are conditional, and are incapable of

being predicated downright of reality. To the

suppositions implied in our statements we usually are

blind; or the precise extent of them is, at all events,

not distinctly realized. This is a subject upon which it

might be interesting to enlarge, but I have perhaps

already said enough to make good our result. However

little it may appear so, to think is always, in

effect, to judge. And all judgments we have found to be

more or less true, and in different degrees to depart

from, and to realize, the standard. With this we may

return from what has been, perhaps, to some extent a

digression.

Our single standard, as we saw above, wears various

aspects, and I will now proceed briefly to exemplify its

detail. (a) If we take, first, an appearance in time,

and desire to estimate the amount of its reality, we

have, on one side, to consider its harmoniousness. We

have to ask, that is, how far, before its contents can

take their place as an adjective of the Real, they would

require re-arrangement. We have to enquire how far, in

other words, these contents are, or are not, self-

consistent and systematic. And then, on the other side,

we must have regard to the extent of time, or space, or

both, which our appearance occupies. Other things being equal, whatever

spreads more widely in space, or again lasts longer in

time, is therefore more real. But (b), beside events, it

Is necessary to take account of laws. These are more and

less abstract or concrete, and here our standard in its

application will once more diverge. The abstract truths,

for example, of mathematics on one side, and, on the

other side, the more concrete connections of life or

mind, will each set up a varying claim. The first are

more remote from fact, more empty and incapable of self-

existence, and they are therefore less true. But the

second, on the other hand, are narrower, and on this

account more false, since clearly they pervade, and hold

good over, a less extent of reality. Or, from the other

side, the law which is more abstract contradicts itself

more, because it is determined by exclusion

from a wider area. Again the generalization nearer

sense, being fuller of irrelevancy, will, looked at from

this point of view, be more internally discordant. In

brief, whether the system and the true individual is

sought in temporal existence, or in the realm standing

above events, the standard still is the same. And it is

applied always under the double form of inclusiveness

and harmony. To be deficient in either of these aspects