424 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



may come) to include sin, and only exhibits its perfection 

 in its power to return to wholeness through the process 

 of time. 



That I have chiefly dwelt on perfection and imperfection 

 as respectively the attributes of God and of the non-divine 

 minds, without entering into the subtle distinction between 

 kinds of perfection, is indeed a fact, but it should be regarded 

 as a rhetorical rather than a philosophical procedure. That 

 is to say, my book was aimed at readers of general cultiva- 

 tion rather than at metaphysical experts, and so I thought 

 I should carry my new argument for the reality of God more 

 surely home if I kept out of the region of the supersubtile, 

 and relied upon those aspects of the difference between God 

 and other minds which are the most obvious. The point 

 of my argument, in this connexion, is that in God there is 

 a perfection in which there is no imperfection at all, while 

 in every other mind imperfection is present, though under- 

 going an endless process of cancellation. Of course, subtly 

 analysed, this last means a species of perfection. But again 

 my point is, that the sole possible basis for species in perfec- 

 lion is, primarily, the contrast between absolute perfection 

 fexcludent of imperfection) and perfection that embraces and 

 ])roceeds to reduce imperfection ; and, next, the manifold 

 modes of which this second species is susceptible, resting 

 on what I have called (see my pp. 363, 374) the "rate " of 

 adjustment between the infinite (or perfect) and the finite 

 (or defective) aspects of the mental being. 



(4) In connexion with my argtiment for the existence of 

 God, Mr. McTaggart makes this statement : " Among the 

 different grades [of intelligent beings] which . . . are really 

 possible . . . the author assumes that the highest grade of 

 all — that of the ideal Type — is one, and consequently that 

 a being exists who realises the Type. So far as I can see, he 

 does not attempt to prove this." Just what Mr. McTaggart 

 means by his word "this," I am in some doubt — whether 



