Completeness

“ Now this disposition of our finite will, this tendency to a selection of our objects as unique, is precisely the character which our Fourth Conception regards as also belonging to that Absolute Will which faces the final meaning and fulfilment of the world. For the world as a whole is, from our point of view, an individual fact, not merely by virtue of the completeness of the contents of the Absolute Experience, but by reason of the definiteness of the selection of that object which shall be permitted to fulfil the final meaning. ”

“ It denotes a greater emphasis on the perfection that exists within the act itself - the utmost completeness. Moreover, every act that refers to its own perfection and higher level indicates a greater understanding of the existence and perfection of the act - its ultimate completion. This understanding enables the knowledgeable to comprehend the existence and perfection of the act, which would not be possible if the act were not separate from its creator. ”

“ My thesis is essentially this, that you cannot rationally conceive what human experience is, and means, except by regarding it as the fragment of an experience that is infinitely richer than ours, and that possesses a world-embracing unity and completeness of constitution. My argument for this thesis has been dependent on an assertion about the sense in which any opinion whatever can be either true or false, and upon a doctrine regarding that insight to which we appeal whenever we make any significant assertion. ”

“ In virtue of man's access to Reason or the Whole, the human form is a pledge of wholeness, suggests to our imagination the perfection of truth or goodness, and exposes by contrast any halfness or imperfection. ”

“ This faculty is reason,—the supreme faculty, above sensibility, above understanding. Reason gives the final generalization, the idea of a universe comprehending the infinitude of details presented by the senses, and the worlds of knowledge shaped by the understanding; the idea of a personality embracing the infinite complexities of feeling, and gathering under one dominion the realms of consciousness; the idea of a supreme unity combining in itself both the other ideas; the absolute perfection, the infinite and eternal One, which men describe by the word God. ”

“ But, as I have maintained in developing our Fourth Conception of Being, while our finitude always shows us that we have not won the whole of Being, it is the fulfilment, the always relative and imperfect fulfilment, — but still the fulfilment of our internal meanings, and not the opaque resistance which the world offers to these meanings, which both defines our warrant for finding that the universe has Being, and gives us, in the form of the Internal Meaning of our Ideas, our only and our valid means for defining wherein that Being consists. ”

“ And we observe the constitution of that realm. It is through and through a constitution that answers our questions, embodies our meanings, integrates our purposes. It is then in essence a realm of fact fulfilling purpose, of life embodying idea, of meaning won by means of the experience of its own content. The now present but passing form of our human consciousness is fragmentary. We wait, wonder, pass from fact to fact, from fragment to fragment. What a study of the concept of Being reveals to us is precisely that the whole has a meaning, and is real only as a Meaning Embodied. ”

“ The world that thus expresses meaning appears, from the absolute point of view, as an unique whole, but as also an unique selected whole, such that neither for the whole nor for any of the parts could any other fact be substituted, without failure in the realization of precisely this totality of determinate meaning. ”

“ In view of this essential feature of our finite situation as thinkers, it follows at once that the whole world of truth and being must exist only as present, in all its variety, its wealth, its relationships, its entire constitution, to the unity of a single consciousness, which includes both our own and all finite conscious meanings in one final eternally present insight. This complete insight is indeed not merely one, but is observant of all the real finite varieties, of experience, of meaning, and of life. ”

“ There is, indeed, a sense, in which, according to our view, any rational idea in the whole universe seeks and in its complete development finds, as the expression of its ultimate meaning, the whole of the universe. ”

“ If, as some affirm, the universe is the dwelling-place of the All Perfect, what reason can be given for the existence, side by side with that All Perfect one, or within him, of a multitude of imperfect images of his Perfection—like you and me? In the presence of One who has all purposes already fulfilled in himself what purpose can be served by our introduction into the scheme of things? ”

“ It is a life expressing in fulness what every transient moment of human consciousness fragmentarily embodies, and ideally seeks.
And as to finality, what constitution shall that realm of actual experience possess at all unless this constitution, in its wholeness, is indeed final, and final precisely in the sense of our Fourth Conception? For finality means, for us, the individual constitution of the realm of fact, interpreted in the only possible consistent way. You say, “Experience is.” If you are an empiricist you also say, “All that is, is, in at least one aspect, experienced fact.” ”

“ Yet, to use once more the inevitable formula of our finite thinking, we must assert that the Absolute Experience has such constitution as is implied in its fulfilment of the system of ideas. Hence the Absolute Experience, so we assert, is no chaos. Since perfection, worth, significance, fulness of life, organisation, are ideas, the Absolute Experience must present, that is, must be asserted by us as presenting, or, viewed in itself, simply does present, an organised, significant, purposeful or teleological, worthy, perfect whole of fact ”

“ The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims, not only for such a transcendentalist writer, but for all of us, in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance. As time, space, and the ether soak through all things, so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice, soak through all things good, strong, significant, and just. ”

“ And, as we have already seen, and in the present lecture shall further illustrate, the relation of partial and total meaning is, at the same time, the relation of any finite will to the expression of the complete intent of that same will. Without contradiction, therefore, you are unable to assert the real Being of any world, unless you conceive that world as the expressed will whose partial momentary embodiment you even now observe, whenever you get any rational idea before your mind. ”

“ How in the concrete it takes place, in what special ways our consciousness is at once transcended, and included in a wider experience, it is the purpose of our whole present series of discussions to make clearer; and not until the end of the undertaking can one judge the degree of our success.
We proceed next to the characterization of certain more special principles that consciously determine us, at any moment, to acknowledge as real one rather than another fact or system of concrete facts, such as the existence of our fellows, or of Nature, or our own past lives. ”

“ I felt happy that I should never be finally separated from the contemplation of them, or of the things about which they are written. Knowledge shall vanish away, but it shall be because perfection shall come. ”

“ But the Absolute Experience and Will form, as we have asserted, one Unity of consciousness, one moment or instant of fulfilled life, over against which there is no external Other wherewith this whole could be contrasted. If I know myself by contrast with my neighbour or with my distant ideal, how can the Absolute, who has no neighbours, and no unfulfilled ideals, know such a contrast between himself and somebody else? In this sense, one would say, the Absolute must simply transcend self-consciousness. ”

“ Is it, in its final and pervading Power, a bad or a good sort of universe that we open our eyes upon, when we begin to exercise our senses? What are its final relations to me, and my final relations to it? Nobody doubts the existence of things and persons, so far as they are revealed to the senses. But what is our implied Common Sense of the final meaning of the Whole? ”

“ The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms—the incarnation of the spirit. ”

“ It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential—their one illuminating and convincing quality—the very truth of their existence. ”

“ The Theory of Being requires us to view every fact of nature, and of man’s life, as a fragmentary glimpse of the Absolute life, as a revelation, however mysterious and to us men now in detail illegible, of the unity of the perfect Whole. Why we hold this to be a true theory, we have set forth at length in the foregoing series of lectures; and the detailed proof of the general thesis concerns us here no longer. ”

“ And nevertheless, your future and your past, your aspect of individuality, and of freedom, and the various aspects wherein you are dependent upon the rest of the world, your whole life of deeds, and your attainment of your individual goal through your deeds, — all these manifold facts that are yours and that constitute you, are present at once to the Absolute, — as facts in the world, as temporal contents eternally viewed, — as a process eternally finished, — but eternally finished precisely by virtue of the temporal sequence of your deeds. ”

“ And to sum up, let us overcome all our difficulties by declaring that all the many Beyonds, which single significant judgments seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are present as fully realized intended objects to the unity of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or false, are but fragments, the whole being at once Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. ”

“ The more so as the necessary foreignness of the absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of totality, which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of perfection in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is inspiring. ”

“ The content, be it objective or merely subjective, real or ideal, remains always the same, an aggregate of relations, not something that is in-and-for-itself, the notion of the thing, or the infinite, with which knowledge must have to do. ”

“ To these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond,—conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme Good. ”

“ There is also another perfection, because there are six transcendent principles, to wit: one, good, true, thing, something, and being. And for these great perfections and dignities, the Creator regards it in his works, for he created everything in six days. ”

“ What remains to be done is, not to explain how such a world manages to be what it is, nor how we came to form these notions, but merely this—to expel from the circle and totality of our conceptions those abstract notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and define them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious view. ”

“ This generalised form of attention, which we attribute to the Absolute Experience, is now conceived by us as that aspect of this Absolute which, in the total movement of the world’s unity, determines the ideas to find this concrete realisation which they do find. ”

“ If, then, your conscious ideas are naught, your Absolute is naught in precisely the same sense, and in precisely the same degree as the ideas and as the finite facts are naught. On the other hand, if your Absolute is real, then, unless it has a distinguishing positive content of its own, unless it is more than mere finality and peace, the finite world of conscious strivings after it, is precisely as real as itself, since your Absolute borrows all its Being from its contrast with those strivings. ”

“ As we conceive this single, indivisible, underived, independent, and eternal agent, or perfection to be absolutely infinite, and illimitable in all possible ways, or manner, of exerting Himself, we, of course, conceive all the qualities, indicated by the divine acts, which we call attributes, to be absolutely infinite, perfect, and eternal: and thus we derive the doctrine of the absolute perfection, and infinitude of all, and each of the Divine Attributes. ”

“ But at each moment the wholeness of mind is spiritual and aesthetic, the wholeness of a meaning or a picture, and no knife can divide it. Its immortality, too, is timeless, like that of the truths and forms in which it is absorbed. ”

“ The idea, I have said, seeks its own. It can be judged by nothing but what it intends. Whether I think of God or of yesterday’s events, of my own death, or of the destiny of mankind, of mathematical truth, or of physical facts, of affairs of business, or of Being itself, it is first of all what I mean, and not what somebody merely external to myself might desire me to mean, that both gives me an object, and determines for me the standard of correspondence to the object whereby I must be judged. ”

“ We have said that a meaning gets wholeness and individuality of expression precisely in so far as it gets, at the same time, conscious determination. An imperfect idea is vague. It is general. But it is so, in our own finite consciousness, in two senses. (1) Any finite idea, as we have seen, sends us to some other experience to furnish us yet further instances that are needed for its whole expression. ”