78 THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS 



be proved to be spiritual and the last dualism be overcome. 

 And it is certainly not realised that if Idealism succeeded 

 in this enterprise and reduced all things into feeling, it 

 would then be obliged either to content itself with a world 

 without distinctions, or to evolve out of feeling the differ- 

 ences it had deleted. In fact, this abstract Idealism is 

 not explaining the world of objects, but explaining it away. 

 And its spiritualisation of it will remain barren as barren 

 as the otiose acknowledgment of a secular-minded man that 

 God exists until it reinstates the variety of real being, 

 which it has melted down into the dismal sameness of mere 

 feeling. 



Philosophy, it seems to me, is crying aloud for a more 

 objective expression of the truth. Having proved that 

 the_real world is ideal., it must prove that the ideal world 

 is reaj : that space is real, and time is real, and matter is 

 real, and that the self-exclusive relations of natural objects 

 hold just because they are all manifestations of spirit. For 

 rational life also has its double movement. Spirit also 

 scatters as well as gathers. It surpasses natural life in the 

 intensity of its oneness, for it is all in every part ; it is 

 itself the essence of all its elements. But it surpasses it, 

 too, in the variety of its content, in the depth of the differ- 

 ences it comprises, and the independent significance with 

 which it endows them. Rational beings, just in the degree 

 to which their spiritual nature is realised, possess a private 

 intensity of distinct individuality, an impermeable inter- 

 nality of intellectual life, an undivided exclusiveness of 

 moral responsibility, a repellent force against, and an 

 uncompromising antagonism to all mere "otherness," of 

 which natural objects are not capable. And yet, in virtue 

 of this, they are under an intrinsic necessity of mutual 



