Finite being

“ But, for such an experience, this constitution of the finite is a fact determined from an absolute point of view, and every finite incompleteness and struggle appears as a part of a whole in whose wholeness the fragments find their true place, the ideas their realisation, the seeking its fulfilment, and our whole life its truth, and so its eternal rest, — that peace which transcends the storms of its agony and its restlessness. ”

“ That great need of man, the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them. ”

“ Thus we may see from the side alike of cognition and of will how the whole life of the finite being forms a constant endeavour to widen experience into the complete apprehension of a content which, because infinite, could not be apprehended without the disappearance of finitude itself. ”

“ In consequence of these considerations, our primary question in regard to the finite human individual, in his relation to the divine life, is merely the question, In what sense does the finite Being retain, despite the unity of the whole divine life, any individual significance of his own, and what is the relation of this finite significance to the meaning and plan of the whole? But for the answer to this, our really important question, we may now be prepared, if we next lay new stress upon certain aspects of the Fourth Conception of Being, to which we have made repeated reference. ”

“ Eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity,"—says the man in the iron cage of Despair. This finite world has indeed great power to stir man, but the other world has an infinitely greater power. ”

“ For perceive me, fair and gentle lord, as this base body of ours being altogether thing material is also thing corruptible, so is it also a thing finite, and as it is a thing finite so are its sensations, be they of pleasure or pain, finite also—therefore soon must end. ”

“ But the finite, just because its very nature as finite is to aspire to a perfection which is out of reach, must have its experience marked with the distinction of now from by and by, of desire from performance. In this temporal character of all finite experience we may perhaps afterwards discern the ultimate ground of morality, as we can already discern in the unresting struggle of the finite to overcome its finitude, practical evidence that time is not a form which adequately expresses the nature of Reality, and must therefore be imperfect appearance. ”

“ If we conceive infinite being as the cause of all finite beings, then the former exists in a manner appropriate to its all-perfect reality, and finite beings in a manner proportionate to their limited realities ”

“ Thus we finite beings are confronted by a not-self ultimately because in our very finitude, as we have seen in earlier chapters, we contain in ourselves a principle of strife and disharmony. The not-self is no merely external environment, but an inevitable consequence of the imperfection of internal structure which belongs to all finitude. ”

“ But when we have asserted, as we have now done, that every moment of every finite consciousness has some unique character, and when we have asserted, as we have also done, that in our rational life our momentary will and its finite expression belong to this very unique aspect of our finite life, we have indeed found, in our finite will, an aspect which no causation could ever by any possibility explain. ”

“ So soon as we reflect upon the activity of the Ego, the Ego is necessarily finite; so soon as the Ego is conscious of its finitude, it is conscious of striving beyond these limits, and so of its infinitude. Were the question raised, Is the Ego, then, infinite? the Ego, by the very question, is finite. Is the Ego finite? ”

“ It is true that finite things as finite ought in justice to be viewed as non-ultimate, and as pointing beyond themselves. This negativity of finite things however is their own dialectic, and in order to ascertain it we must pay attention to their positive content. ”

“ You will, in all your life thereafter, never believe to know more than that you are finite, and finite in this determined manner, which you must explain to yourself, by the existence of such a determined world ”

“ If this be true, then the total limitation, the determination, the fragmentariness, the ignorance, the error, — yes (as forms or cases of ignorance and error) , the evil, the pain, the horror, the longing, the travail, the faith, the devotion, the endless flight from its own worthlessness, — that constitutes the very essence of the world of finite experience, is, as a positive reality, somewhere so experienced in its wholeness that this entire constitution of the finite appears as a world beyond which, in its whole constitution, nothing exists or can exist. ”

“ And finally, we learned that all the aspirations of finite individuals must be somehow met and made good in the ultimate Reality, though not necessarily in the form in 409which they are consciously entertained by the finite aspirant. ”

“ In all bodily things, even the most beautiful, there is something finite. We must reach out our poor, feeble, trembling hands to the infinite. I think everyone who is born does that through life, often without being conscious of it. ”

“ But as soon as we begin to call ourselves to account for our actions, reason compels us to fix this aim higher and higher, till we come at last to the highest end of our existence: and here that longing for the infinite which is inherent in our being, is baffled by the limits of our finite existence. All that we do, all that we effect, is vain and perishable; death stands everywhere in the back ground, and to it every well or ill- spent moment brings us nearer and closer ”

“ All such things pertain to the world quâ relative, in which our finite experiences lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest. What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? I am finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up with the finite world as such, and with things that have a history. ”

“ A personal mind manifests all manner of error, and thus proves the material theory incorrect. Who hath found finite life or love sufficient to meet the demands of human want and woe, — stilling the desires, satisfying the aspirations? Infinite Mind cannot be in a finite form, or it would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth. ”

“ But if the reader will follow me, I think I can show him that the mere finitude of the mind is a more difficult thesis to support than its infinity.
It would be well if I could ask the reader to tell me what he means by ‘finite.’ As that can not be, I must say that finite is limited or ended. To be finite is to be some one among others, some one which is not others. One finite ends where the other finite begins; it is bounded from the outside, and can not go beyond itself without becoming something else, and thereby perishing. ”

“ Hence, — and here, indeed, is the conclusion of the whole matter, — the very effort hypothetically to assert that the whole world of experience is a world of fragmentary and finite experience is an effort involving a contradiction. ”

“ In itself the finite is but an abstraction, to which imagination has given an apparent independence. All limitation or determination is negative, and in order to apprehend positive reality we must abstract from limits. By denying the negative, we reach the affirmative; by annihilating finitude in our thought, and so undoing the illusory work of the imagination, we reach the indeterminate or unconditioned being which alone truly is. All division, distinction and relation are but entia rationis. ”

“ But it is an inevitable consequence of the want of complete internal harmony we call finitude, that the aims and interests of the finite subject cannot be in the same degree present to its apprehension all at once and together. In being aware of its own internal purpose or meaning, it must, because it is finite and therefore not ultimately a completely harmonious systematic whole, be aware of that purpose as only partially fulfilled. ”

“ All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite; ”

“ 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. ”

“ When, in the first section of this paper, we interpreted the implications of finite experience, and found that, in order to avoid contradiction, all finite experience must be regarded as a fragment of a whole, whose content is present in the unity of consciousness of one absolute moment, — in all this we did not assert that the contents of finite experience need an external cause, or that the Absolute is the cause of the relative. ”

“ Whence have we deduced the idea of the infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and suppose something infinite and perfect? ”

“ Where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else, that is the finite. The Infinite is immortal, the finite is mortal.'
'Sir, in what does the Infinite rest?'
'In its own greatness—or not even in greatness [253] .'
2. 'In the world they call cows and horses, elephants and gold, slaves, wives, fields and houses greatness. I do not mean this,' thus he spoke; 'for in that case one being (the possessor) rests in something else, (but the Infinite cannot rest in something different from itself.) ”

“ To later lectures must be left both the fuller development and the further defence of this conception of Being. But our argument in its favor is, in its foundation, already before you. Being is something Other than themselves which finite ideas seek. They seek Being as that which, if at present known, would end their doubts. Now Being is not something independent of finite ideas, nor yet a merely immediate fact that quenches them. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we start from experience, the Good, the final-end is something subjective merely, and in this case the contradiction between Man’s finite life and the Good would have to exist always. ”

“ And this relatively external truth which is intended by the finite consciousness, and which is inclusive of all that at any instant this finite consciousness finds present to itself, is a truth whose Being can be neither of the realistic type, nor of the mystical type, nor of the merely valid type of Being, nor of any form except a conscious form, — a form whose existence includes and completes what the finite thinker at any moment undertakes to know. ”

“ We might well say of all the infinite ideals that they differ from the finite ones simply in this, that the finite can be attained but once, and then are ended, while the infinite are continually attained. ”

“ Now of course I accept to the full the responsibility of our theory to account in the end, not for the mere fact that some finite purposes are defeated, but for the fact that, in human experience, the very purposes which refer, as ideal strivings, to certain objects as their ends, appear, so far as our more direct mortal ken extends, to be for the instant defeated in presence of the very objects to which they have made reference. ”

“ But whatsoever affliction happens in this life is more light and short, in comparison to eternal torments, than the momentary prick of a needle to the life of man, the longest that ever any man lived ; for there is no comparison between that which is finite and that which is infinite. ”

“ And he says thus to himself: “Finite is the world, so that a path could be traced round it [161] . And why is this so? Since I, by means of ardour of exertion of application of earnestness of careful thought, can reach up to such rapture of heart that, rapt in heart, I dwell in the world perceiving it to be finite-by that I know this.”
‘This, brethren, is the first case.
18. ‘The second case is similar, only that the conclusion is: [23] ‘Infinite is the world without a limit. Those recluses and Brahmans who say it is finite, so that a path could be traced round it, are wrong [162] .” ”

“ So far the experience of such a life is the experience of nothing in particular, — of no meaning. It is indeed true that an object which we regard as possible in the sense that it is still lacking, but is needed for a specific purpose, is precisely the object which our finite experience seeks, longs to possess, regards as beyond itself, calls therefore the desired Other. The absence of such an object is indeed a lack, a relative defeat of the finite purpose. ”

“ It is eternally asserting itself afresh, through countless finite wills. Each one of these finite wills, as moral agent, builds its sense world, and finds, in this sense world, the manifestations of other agents. ”

“ And yet these so-called persons are rightly designated as only finite selves, mutually relative and phenomenal merely, since the reality of the unifying Organic Experience, as reached by the argument, requires that it shall be strictly one and indivisible, and that the supposed manifold of finite selves shall none of them have any real and changeless Self but this. ”