70 HUMANISM iv 



very unreasonable that the Absolute should. If it does 

 change, both the fact and the manner of that change must 

 remain wholly inexplicable facts. And if transeunt action 

 be a mystery, immanent action in the Absolute is not 

 only as great a mystery, but, in addition, comes very near 

 to being an absurdity. 



Taking next the argument from commensurability 

 (Met. 69), I cannot see either that it validly leads to 

 any conclusion at all, or to the conclusion Lotze desires. 

 It argues from the fact that all things are comparable or 

 commensurable to a ground of this commensurability. If 

 all things had been quite incommensurable, like, e.g., 

 sweet and red, there would have been no principle of 

 connexion between them. There would have been no 

 reason to expect the consequence F from the relation of 

 two incommensurables A and B, rather than any other. 

 For that relation would have been the same as that of A 

 to M or B to N or M to N. Hence there would be no 

 reason for any definite connexion whatever. Commensur 

 ability, therefore, being a fact, its origin from a single root 

 in the permanent immanence of the elements of the world 

 in one being is rendered probable. 



Now I cannot see the cogency of this argument. Its 

 very statement seems defective, and involves an un 

 distributed middle in arguing from the common incom 

 mensurability of the relation of A to B and of M to N to 

 their identity, in spite of the fact that incommensurables 

 may be very various. And even if we overlooked this, 

 the logical inference from the supposition that every pair 

 of the world s elements stood in the same relation would 

 seem to be not to a world of a chaotic and infinite variety, 

 but to one of eternal monotony, in which whatever com 

 bination of elements was tried the same consequence 

 always ensued ! 



Nor, looking at the matter more broadly, can I see 

 that commensurability proves anything. In a very general 

 sense it must, of course, be granted ; for if the elements 

 of a proposed universe had turned out to be absolutely 

 incommensurable, no world could have resulted. There 



