J. M. E. McTaggart

“ In the first place, can there be really two independent powers in the universe? Surely not. As Mr. Bradley remarks (Appearance and Reality, p. 141) , “Plurality must contradict independence. If the beings are not in relation, they cannot be many; but if they are in relation they cease forthwith to be absolute. For, on the one hand, plurality has no meaning, unless the units are somehow taken together. If you abolish and remove all relations, there seems no sense left in which you can speak of plurality. But, on the other hand, relations destroy the real’s self-dependence. ”

“ And in so far as events in time are taken to be, as such, real, it must follow that reality does not appear rational. If an organic whole — and such we have taken the universe to be — is perfect, then any one of its parts, taken separately from the whole, cannot possibly be perfect. For in such a whole all the parts presuppose one another, and any one, taken by itself, must bear the traces of its isolation and incompleteness. And not only each event, but the whole universe taken as a series of events, would thus appear imperfect. ”

“ For if the universal harmony can make any evil to individuals compatible with its own purposes, there is no principle upon which we can limit the amount which it can tolerate. Such a view could not possibly be accepted as in any way consistent with Hegel’s system. It would be in direct opposition to its whole tendency, which is to regard the universal as only gaining reality and validity when, by its union with the particular, it becomes the individual. For Hegel the ideal must lie, not in ignoring the claims of individuals, but in seeing in them the embodiment of the universal. ”

“ We may, as I have tried to show, be sure that, if Hegel’s dialectic is true, then such a synthesis must be possible, because it is the only way of harmonising all the facts. At the same time, the fact that the dialectic cannot be true, unless some synthesis which we do not know, and whose nature we cannot even conceive, relieves it from an obstacle which would otherwise be fatal, certainly lessens the chance that it is true, even if no error in it has yet been discovered. For our only right to accept such an extreme hypothesis. ”

“ But if we try to find the reason inside the nature of the eternal reality, we shall find it to be incompatible with the complete rationality which, according to Hegel’s theory, that reality must possess. For the process in time is, by the hypothesis, the root of all irrationality, and how can it spring from anything which is quite free of irrationality? Why should a concrete and perfect whole proceed to make itself imperfect, for the sake of gradually getting rid of the imperfection again? ”

“ Is there any other method which might be more successful? Can the denial of the ultimate reality of time, which caused the difficulty, by rendering it necessary to take the dialectic as eternally realised, be made to cure the wound which it has itself made? ”

“ If the irrational is absolutely unreal now, it can never become less real in the future. Thus our ascription of complete rationality to the universe leads us to a belief that one factor in experience, as it presents itself to us, is fundamentally and permanently irrational — a somewhat singular conclusion from such a premise.
To put the difficulty from a more practical point of view, either the imperfection in experience leaves a stain on perfection, or it does not. ”

“ For every word and every action implies some theory of metaphysics. Every assertion or denial of fact — including the denial that there is any certain knowledge at all — asserts that something is certain. And to assert this, and yet to reject all ultimate explanations of the universe, is a contradiction at least as serious as any of those into which we were led by our attempt to explain away imperfection in obedience to the demands of Hegel’s system. ”

“ If we endeavour to treat evil as absolutely unreal, we have to reject the one basis of all knowledge. But in so far as we accept it as a manifestation of reality, we find it impossible to avoid qualifying the cause by the nature of the effect which it produces, and so contradicting the main result of the dialectic — the harmony and perfection of the Absolute. ”

“ And if we cannot keep our two principles distinct, but are compelled to regard them as united in a higher unity, we might as well return explicitly to monism.
But even if we could keep the two principles independent, it seems doubtful if we should be able to reach by means of this theory a solution of our difficulty. The forces working for and against the rationality of the universe must either be in equilibrium or not. If they are not in equilibrium, then one must be gaining on the other. The universe is then fundamentally a process. In this case we shall gain nothing by adopting dualism. ”

“ We must then refer the universe to two independent and opposed forces. Nor will it make any important difference if we make the second force to be, not irrationality, but some blind force not in itself hostile to reason. For in order to account for the thwarted rationality which meets us everywhere in the universe, we shall have to suppose that the result of the force is, as a fact, opposed to reason, even if opposition to reason is not its essential nature. ”

“ However much we may endeavour to make the imperfection of the universe merely negative, it is impossible to escape from the fact that, as an element in presentation, it requires a positive cause. If we denied this, we should be forced into the position that not only was our experience of imperfection a delusion, but that it was actually non-existent. And this, as was mentioned above, is an impossibility. All reasoning depends on the fact that every appearance has a reality of which it is the appearance. ”

“ The conclusion, that the universe is timelessly perfect, which appears to be in conflict with certain facts, is not a mere hypothesis, but asserts itself to be a correct deduction from other facts as certain as those which oppose it. Hence there is no reason why one should yield to the other. The inference that the universe is completely rational, and the inference that it is not, are both deduced by reasoning from the facts of experience. ”

“ Now, if we look at the universe as in time, it will appear to be a succession of events, so that only part of it is existing at any given instant, the rest being either past or future. Each of these events will be represented as real in itself, and not merely as a moment in a real whole. ”

“ But as soon as we try to construct such a theory, difficulties arise. The two principles, of rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is referred, will have to be absolutely separate and independent. For if there were any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate explanation of the universe, and our theory, having become monistic, resolves itself into one of the others, according to the attitude of this single principle towards reason, whether favourable, hostile, or indifferent. ”

“ None of those considerations which make us consider each separate person as an ultimate reality, whose claims to self-realisation must be satisfied, and cannot be transcended, apply to separate periods of time. Indeed the whole drift of Hegel’s system is as much against the ultimate reality of a succession of phenomena, as such, as it is for the ultimate reality of individual persons, as such. To deny any reality in what now presents itself to us as a time-series would indeed be suicidal. ”

“ If it does, there is no absolute perfection, and we have no right to expect that the imperfection around us is a delusion or a transitory phase. But if it does not, then there is no reason why the perfection should ever feel intolerant of it, and again we have no right to hope for its disappearance. The whole practical interest of philosophy is thus completely overthrown. ”

“ The completely irrational could never be known to exist, for even to say a thing exists implies its determination by at least one predicate, and therefore its comparative rationality. More particularly, we may remark here that such a theory would meet with a difficulty precisely analogous to that which conflicts with Hegel’s theory, except that in this case the stumbling-block would lie, not in the existence of some irrationality in the universe, but in the existence of some rationality. ”

“ We cannot therefore become aware of any inadequacy which there may be in the idea of process, or of any synthesis which would reconcile that idea with the idea of eternal existence, except as the last stage in our comprehension of the universe. The gradual comprehension is itself a process, and to pass beyond that form must be impossible while any further steps remain to be taken. ”

“ If the same problem, or one of like nature, proves equally insoluble in any possible system, we may be forced to admit the existence of an incompleteness in our philosophy, but we shall no longer have any reason to reject one system in favour of another. Now, besides the theory which has brought us into this trouble — the theory that reality is fundamentally rational — there are, it would seem, three other possibilities. Reality may be fundamentally irrational. It may be the product of two independent principles of rationality and irrationality. ”

“ We find then as many, and as grave, difficulties in our way when we take up any other system, or when we attempt to take up no system at all, as met us when we considered Hegel’s theory, and our position towards the latter must be to some degree modified. We can no longer reject it, because it appears to lead to an absurdity, if every possible form in which it can be rejected involves a similar absurdity. At the same time we cannot possibly acquiesce in an unreconciled contradiction. ”

“ It is a fact which cannot be denied that sometimes that which was good becomes evil, and sometimes that which was evil becomes good. Now, if the two principles are exactly balanced, how could such a change take place? Of course we cannot prove that the balance between the two forces does not remain the same, if we consider the whole universe. Every movement in the one direction, in one part of the whole, may be balanced by a corresponding move in the other direction somewhere else. ”

“ And so, if the truth were to be found in a synthesis of the rational and the irrational, that synthesis would itself be rational — re.solving, as it would, the whole universe into a unity expressible by thought. Thus we should have come round again to Hegel’s position that the world is fundamentally rational.
We need not spend much time over the supposition that the world is fundamentally irrational — not merely regardless of reason, but contrary to reason. ”

“ As I have tried to show, the eternal realisation of the Absolute Idea, and the existence of change and evil, are, for us as we are, absolutely incompatible, nor can we even imagine a way in which they should cease to be so. ”

“ Such a theory, since it declares that the universe can be really perfect, although imperfect for individuals, implies that some individuals, at any rate, can be treated merely as means and not as ends in themselves. ”

“ For the two forces which we are asked to take as absolutely opposed are, by the hypothesis which assumed them, indissolubly united. Both forces are regarded as all-pervading. Neither can exist by itself anywhere. Every fact in the universe is due to the interaction of the two. And, further, they can only be described and defined in relation to one another. If the dualism is between the rational and the irrational as such, it is obvious that the latter, at any rate, has only meaning in relation to its opposite. ”

“ We may say that it is also possible that the two predicates should be combined in a higher unity. This would leave it scarcely correct to say, without qualification, that either is asserted or either denied of the subject. But synthesis is itself a process of reasoning, and unites its two terms by a category in which we recognise the nature of each extreme as a subordinate moment, which is harmonised with the other. The harmony involves that, wherever a synthesis is possible, reason is supreme. ”

“ It is possible, also, to see some reasons why such a solution, if possible at all, should not be possible yet, and why it would be the last abstraction to be removed as the dialectic process rebuilds concrete realities. Our aim is to reconcile the fact that the Absolute Idea exists eternally in its full perfection, with the fact that it manifests itself as something incomplete and imperfect. ”

“ This he does by taking the finite individual to be, as such, only appearance and not reality, from which it follows that it must distort, and cannot adequately partake in, the harmony of the Absolute. It may be doubted whether we do not fall into more difficulties than we avoid by this low estimate of the conscious individual. But, at any rate, such a solution would be impracticable for any one who accepted Hegel’s version of the Absolute Idea, to which the individual is the highest form that the universal can take. ”

“ The objections which apply to the attempt to save the perfection of the Absolute by ignoring the claims of individuals will not apply to our endeavour to escape from our difficulty by ignoring, so to speak, the claims of particular moments of time. ”

“ And, again, the relations themselves must belong to a larger reality. To stand in a relation and not to be relative, to support it and yet not to be affected and undermined by it, seem out of the question. Diversity in the real cannot be the plurality of independent beings. ”