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surrounding reality, and is more fully conscious of the way in which his
relations to that reality permeate and determine his whole nature.
There can be only one meaning in calling a thing imperfect without
qualification that it does not realise the ideal inherent in its nature.
Now what necessary imperfection in the realisation of my nature is
brought about by the mere fact that I am not the universe? What postu-
late or aspiration is involved in personality which is incompatible with
external relations on the part of the person? Lotze mentions none, nor
can I conceive what they would be.
Of course, if the relations of the person with the rest of reality are
such as to cramp and thwart the development of his ideal nature, then
the personality will be rendered more or less imperfect. But then the
imperfection which is never quite absent, no doubt, in the world we
live in is not the result of the finitude. It is not because we are in
relation to other reality that we are imperfect, but because we are in the
wrong relations.
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/71
Relation to something external does not in itself destroy the har-
mony of the related object. No doubt it does so in any being which does
not accept and acquiesce in the relation. For then there would be con-
flict and not harmony. Nothing could be less harmonious than the state
of a finite being who was trying to realise an ideal of isolation. But if the
ideal which he posited was one of life as a part of a vitally connected
whole and such an ideal does not seem repugnant to our nature what
want of harmony would be introduced by the fact that he was a member
of such a whole?
83. There is thus no reason to hold that a finite person is necessarily
an imperfect person. And, even if this were so, it would give us no
reason to believe that the Absolute was a person. It is true that the
Absolute is not finite, and is not related to anything outside itself. And
therefore it has a quality which, if it were a person, would make it the
only perfect person, on this theory of what constitutes the perfection of
personality. But, even if it were essential to a perfect person to have
nothing outside him, it would not follow that to be the whole of reality
was sufficient to constitute a perfect person, or even to constitute a
person at all. Personality, Lotze has told us, consists in self-enjoyment,
in direct sense of self, 48 and, even if we admit his contention that only
the Infinite could have this perfectly, it does not follow that the Infinite
has it at all. (I am using Infinite here in the more ordinary sense of the
word. By Hegel s usage a finite person who was not the whole reality
but was completely harmonious with himself would be as infinite as the
Absolute.)
84. Thus Lotze s argument has two defects. He has not shown that
the finitude of finite persons makes them imperfect, and he has not shown
that the perfect self-determination of the Absolute is the self-determina-
tion of a person. In leaving the consideration of Lotze s treatment of the
subject, it is to be noticed that our objections to it do not challenge
Lotze s right to consider the Absolute as personal. For he regarded the
Absolute as not exhausted by its manifestations, and those manifesta-
tions as to a certain extent, from an ethical point of view, outside the
Absolute. And this obviously introduces fresh considerations. We have
only dealt with those of his arguments for the personality of the Abso-
lute which are also applicable to the Absolute as Hegel has conceived it.
85. These criticisms of Lotze may suggest to us a more direct and
independent argument. The finite person is dependent, for the element of
differentiation and multiplicity, on its relations with outside reality. And,
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while that element is, in one sense, inside the person, in another sense it
is outside him. For the person distinguishes himself from every element
of his content. There is no part of that content which he cannot make
into an object, and so put over against himself as the subject.
There must, therefore, be some element in the person other than the
differentiation or multiplicity some element which is not only inside
the person in the sense in which the multiplicity is inside, but which is
also inside in the sense in which the multiplicity is outside. For unless
something remains inside, in this sense, it would be impossible to say
that anything was outside. This element can have no differentiation or
multiplicity in it. For all multiplicity belongs to the content which can
be distinguished from the self, and which can therefore be said, in this
sense, to fall outside the person. It follows that the element in question
must be absolutely simple and indivisible a pure unit.
Here again we must be on our guard against a class of objections to
such conclusions as this, which, while professing to be objections to
atomism, are really based upon it. To deny that an element in a whole
can have a nature, which it would be impossible for the whole itself to
have, is an atomistic fallacy. For it tacitly assumes that a complex whole
is built up out of its elements, and that those elements could exist, or at
any rate be imagined, outside of the whole. In that case they would
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