422 ESSAYS LV PHILOSOPHY 



preeminently so. (See my pp. 330 seq., 363, and 373). 

 Eternity, self-existence, self-activity, freedom, and infinity 

 are to me all interchangeable terms, and are so treated 

 wherever they turn up in the course of the book. My 

 reviewer falls into a non sequitur when he concludes that 

 I make God finite because I make him one of a commu- 

 nity of spirits, each absolutely real ; not God's, Jinitnde, but 

 his definiteness^ is w^hat follows from that. This confusion 

 of the definite with the finite is very comm.on, and is the 

 explanation of two tendencies in sceptical thinking — the 

 tendency to deny the personality of God, whose infinity is 

 supposed to mean his utter indefiniteness, and the ten- 

 dency, in recoil from the former, to assert God's finitude 

 in order to save his personality, which of course must be 

 definite. But the true infinite, as distinguished from the 

 pseudo-infinite, the infinite of quality in contrast to the 

 infinite of quantity, is entirely definite ; more definite, 

 indeed, than any finite can be. 



(3) Mr. McTaggart misconstrues my various statements 

 about the imperfection in all spirits other than God. He 

 supposes me to hold this imperfection to be incompatible 

 with their being perfect in any sense whatever, and he 

 mildly blames me for overlooking the classic distinction 

 between the vievv^ sub specie (Bterni and the view sub specie 

 temporis, whereby the seeming contradiction involved in 

 an imperfect-perfect might be reconciled. But my actual 

 doctrine about the spirits other than God is exactly his 

 own. " Sub specie cEternitatis, every self is perfect ; sub 

 specie temporis, it is progressing towards a perfection as yet 

 unattained," he says. And the very quotation from me 

 on which he bases his criticism (see my p. ^(^i) expresses 

 this, almost in open words : " The personality of every 

 soul lies precisely in the relation . . . between that gen- 

 uine infinity (self-activity) which marks its organising 

 essence, and the finitude ... to which the infinity [only 



