Is to fall short of perfection; and, in the end, any

deficiency implies failure in both aspects alike.

And we shall find that our account still holds good

when we pass on to consider higher appearances of the

universe. It would be a poor world which consisted

merely of phenomenal events, and of the laws that

somehow reign above them. And in our everyday life we

soon transcend this unnatural divorce between principle

and fact. (c) We reckon an event to be important in

proportion to its effectiveness, so far as its being,

that is, spreads in influence beyond the area of its

private limits. It is obvious that here the two

features, of self-sufficiency and self-transcendence,

are already discrepant. We reach a higher stage where

some existence embodies, or in any way presents in

itself, a law and a principle. However, in the mere

example and instance of an universal truth, the fact and

the law are still essentially alien to each other, and

the defective character of their union is plainly

visible. Our standard moves us on towards an individual

with laws of its own, and to laws which form the vital

substance of a single existence. And an imperfect

appearance of this character we were compelled, in our

last chapter, to recognize in the individual habits of

the soul. Further in the beauty which presents us with a

realized type, we find another form of the union of fact

with principle. And, passing from this to conscious

life, we are called on still for further uses and fresh

applications of our standard. In the will of

the individual, or of the community, so far as

adequately carried out and expressing itself in outward

fact, we have a new claim to harmonious and self-

Included reality. And we have to consider in each case

the consistency, together with the range and area, of

the principle, and the degree up to which it has

mastered and passed into existence. And we should find

ourselves led on from this, by partial defect, to higher

levels of being. We should arrive at the personal

relation of the individual to ends theoretical and

practical, ends which call for realization, but which

from their nature cannot be realized in a finite

personality. And, once more here, our standard must be

called in when we endeavour, as we must, to form a

comparative estimate. For, apart from the success or

failure of the individual's will, these ideas of

ultimate goodness and reality themselves possess, of

course, very different values. And we have to measure

the amount of discordancy and limitation, which fixes

the place to be assigned, in each case, to these various

appearances of the Absolute.

To some of these provinces of life I shall have to

return in later chapters. But there are several points

to which, at present, I would draw attention. I would

repeat, first, that I am not undertaking to set out

completely the different aspects of the world; nor am I

trying to arrange these according to their comparative

degrees of reality and truth. A serious attempt to

perform this would have to be made by any rational

system of first principles, but in this work I am

dealing solely with some main features of things.

However, in the second place, there is a consideration

which I would urge on the reader. With any view of the

world which confines known reality to existence in time,

and which limits truth to the attempt to reproduce

somehow the series of events--with any view for which

merely a thing exists, or barely does not

exist, and for which an idea is false, or else is true--

how is it possible to be just to the various orders of

appearance? For, if we are consistent, we shall send the

mass of our chief human interests away to some unreal

limbo of undistinguished degradation. And, if we are not

consistent, yet how can we proceed rationally without an