xii ACTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE 213 



popular theological conceptions of Heaven and Eternity. 

 We have merely to add that this motionless functioning 

 is suffused with a glow of aesthetic delight, to get a 

 complete conceptual interpretation of what theology has 

 called the Beatific Vision. 



IV 



But of course all this sounds unfamiliar and fantastical 

 and is not quite easy to grasp if it had been, the notions 

 of Heaven and Eternity would hardly have become 

 targets for so much cheap scorn. And it is needless also 

 to deny that there seems to be a paradox here which 

 demands a defence. 



The paradox is that it has been implied that there 

 can be activity, life, and consciousness without change, 

 imperfection, or decay. This seems an utter paradox 

 because in our actual experience consciousness is a 

 succession of mental states or processes, because life is 

 sustained by a continual metabolism, and activities are 

 recognized only by the changes which they exhibit. We 

 are therefore accustomed to regard a changeless activity 

 as equivalent to rest, i.e. as cessation of activity, as death. 



About these facts, of course, there is no dispute. All 

 motions are measured by the unequal rates of change, and 

 when bodies maintain the same position relatively to each 

 other, they are taken to be at rest. Similarly, it is not 

 to be denied that vital function consumes living tissue, 

 and no one would dream of disputing that consciousness 

 is a continuous flow of experiences. 



The only question is as to what inferences we are 

 entitled to draw from these facts, and by what conceptions 

 we are to interpret a transcending of change such as is 

 conceivable, though not imaginable. 



Accordingly I propose to show: (i) That we are not 

 entitled to infer from the facts the impossibility of an 

 evepyeia dicwqcrta*; ; (2) that it is by this conception 

 rather than by that of rest that the ultimate ideal of 



M 



