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without perceiving it, since otherwise the limitation of his knowledge, or
its erroneous character, would destroy the harmony of his nature. But, if
the Absolute were not personal, I can conceive nothing in the recogni-
tion of that fact which need mar the harmony of the person who recog-
nizes it. He will know the other finite persons in the universe. He will
feel that his relations with them are consistent with his own deepest and
most fundamental nature. Why should he be dissatisfied because the
unity in which those relations bind him and them is not itself a person?
79. We now pass to Lotze s second positive argument. He asserts
that of the full personality which is possible only for the Infinite a
feeble reflection is given also to the finite; for the characteristics pecu-
liar to the finite are not producing conditions of self-existence, but ob-
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/67
stacles to its unconditioned development, although we are accustomed,
unjustifiably, to deduce from these characteristics its capacity of per-
sonal existence. The finite being always works with powers with which
it did not endow itself, and according to laws which it did not estab-
lish that is, it works by means of a mental organization which is realised
not only in it, but also in innumerable similar beings. Hence in reflecting
on self it may easily seem to it as though there were in itself some ob-
scure and unknown substance something which is in the Ego though it
is not the Ego itself, and to which, as to its subject, the whole personal
development is attached. And hence there arise the questions never to
be quite silenced What are we ourselves? What is our soul? What is
our self that obscure being, incomprehensible to ourselves, that stirs
in our feelings and our passions, and never rises into complete self-
consciousness? The fact that these questions can arise shows how far
personality is from being developed in us to the extent which its notion
admits and requires. It can be perfect only in the Infinite Being which, in
surveying all its conditions or actions, never finds any content of that
which it suffers, or any law of its working, the meaning and origin of
which are not transparently plain to it, and capable of being explained
by reference to its own nature. Further the position of the finite mind,
which attaches it as a constituent of the whole to some definite place in
the cosmic order, requires that its inner life should be awakened by
successive stimuli from without, and that its course should proceed ac-
cording to the laws of a psychical mechanism, in obedience to which
individual ideas, feelings, and efforts press upon and supplant one an-
other. Hence the whole self can never be brought together at any one
moment, our self-consciousness never presents to us a complete and
perfect picture of our Ego not even of its nature at any moment, and
much less of the unity of its development in time.
In point of fact we have little ground for speaking of the personality
of finite beings; it is an ideal, which, like all that is ideal, belongs uncon-
ditionally only to the Infinite, but like all that is good appertains to us
only conditionally and hence imperfectly. 47
80. It may be freely admitted that a perfect personality is a self-
determined whole, not hampered and thwarted from the outside, and
that the Absolute is such a whole. It must also be granted that every
finite self is in relation to, and determined by, its surroundings. But it
does not follow from these admissions, either that the finite person is not
a perfect realisation of personality, or that the Absolute is a person at
68/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
all. For determination from outside is compatible with complete self-
determination, and thus the finite person may be a self-determined whole.
And, on the other hand, not every self-determined whole is a person, and
the Absolute may therefore be self-determined without being personal.
Every self-determined whole is a unity. And every unity must, as
Hegel teaches us, have a multiplicity connected with it. But there are
two ways in which this may happen. The multiplicity may be simply
inside the unity which it differentiates. Or it may be outside that unity. It
can never be merely outside it, for in that case it would not affect it at
all. But, in this case, it is in the unity, only because, and in so far as, it is
also outside it. We may say of these different relations to multiplicity
that in the first case the unity is a system of differentiations, in the
second it is a centre of differentiations. One unity is as real as the other,
but they differ, and the difference is important.
The Absolute has the first sort of unity. Its multiplicity is necessar-
ily due to differentiations inside it, since nothing exists outside it. On the
other hand the finite self has the second sort of unity. Its multiplicity is
in one sense inside it, since nothing can differentiate consciousness which
is not in consciousness. But, on the other hand, the multiplicity is equally
outside the self. All knowledge, all volition, all emotions involve a refer-
ence to some reality other than the self which knows, wills, and feels.
Suppose the self to exist alone, all other reality being destroyed, and all
the content of the self goes, and the self with it.
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