xv PHILOSOPHY AND A FUTURE LIFE 287 



connexion with our friends ; but do they cut us, or we 

 them, or both, or neither ? &quot; But for what reason we cannot 

 say. It may be that the deceased has ceased to be ; it 

 may also be that he has ceased to interact with us until 

 we also have followed his example. Similarly, when we 

 witness a death, all that we can safely and scientifically 

 say is that a peculiar feature in our experience which 

 impelled us to assume a self-conscious spirit, analogous to 

 our own, in order to account for the behaviour of the 

 complex of phenomena we called the body of our fellow- 

 man, has undergone a change such that the behaviour of 

 his body no longer warrants the inference of the 

 presence of his spirit. Again, the reason may be either 

 that the spirit is destroyed, or that it has ceased to animate 

 the body. Thus it would seem as though all that could 

 be affirmed for certain about death was that it was a 

 disruption of the common world in which spirits acted 

 together ; what else or what more it was would remain 

 in doubt the spirit may have perished or it may just 

 have passed away. 



Thus, so far as philosophy can determine, it would 

 seem as if the chances of destruction and survival were 



alike. Hence the infinite diversity of individual judgments and valuations. But 

 if this were all, there would be no possibility of what Professor Ward has well 

 called intersubjective intercourse. So we have managed to some extent to act 

 concordantly with regard to the objects of our most pressing practical concerns. 

 You and I, e.g. , are said to perceive a common red, when we classify colours 

 alike. But whether your experience in perceiving red is the same as mine, it 

 is meaningless to ask (p. 31). For the common red means merely such practical 

 agreement. And when we go onto ask what is beautiful, and good, and right, 

 and pleasant, we soon discover how narrow are the limits of such practical agree 

 ment, and are forced to realise that to a large extent we still literally live in different 

 worlds. And, as noted above, death seems to terminate the common world in 

 time as completely as individuality limits its extent. (4) The Absolute or universal 

 consciousness on scrutiny turns out to be neither divine nor conscious. Or rather 

 the connotation both of God and of consciousness has to be radically changed 

 to accommodate it. An all-containing consciousness cannot be a moral being. It 

 is the Devil just as much as God, and indeed the Absolute must be defined in 

 Hegelian terms as the synthesis of God and the Devil. And however much it 

 may contain consciousness, it is hard to see how it can be itself conscious. 

 Indeed in the end it seems describable in negatives alone, and by contrast with 

 the contents of our experience ; it has all things, but is not any of the things it 

 has. For the whole cannot be anything that we predicate of its parts. 



In short it seems impossible really to think out the conception of a single 

 subject of all experience except upon solipsistic lines. If one consents to solipsism 

 it is easy enough, but not a bit more satisfactory. For solipsism is just the view 

 we are driven out of by the considerations which induce us to construct a common 

 world. 



