WHY THE ABSOLUTE CANNOT CHANGE. 335 



Standpoint of the Absolute, change Is impossible. 

 And this is precisely what the Eleatics did : they 

 showed that the conceptions of the changes and 

 motions which appeared to our senses involved con- 

 tradictions to our reason {cp. ch. iii. § 8), and inferred 

 from this that the sensible world was an illusion. 

 And, we may add, an inexplicable and impracticable 

 illusion. For what theory or practice is possible of 

 life, if change, the fundamental characteristic of the 

 world, Is to be treated as nought ? To us change is 

 real, and change of content is real ; to us there Is a 

 meaning in saying the world is poorer in virtue and 

 in wisdom when a good and wise man dies. Does 

 it not then sound like a derision of our whole life to 

 say the All is as rich as before, and all our changes 

 and our losses are illusions ? A view of the Deity 

 which leads to such conclusions has nothing to do 

 with human life ; it must be banished from all minds 

 that wish to retain their sanity. 



For the examination shows that if the Absolute 

 is real, the relative is absolutely unreal, and that the 

 philosophic account of the real world thus leads to 

 the curious conclusion that it is supposed to be ex- 

 plained by a principle which reduces it to absolute 

 unreality. The pantheistic conception of the Deity 

 absorbs the world into God, and then discovers that 

 the latter cannot assimilate it : so it Is compelled to 

 reject it as an illusion, and arrives at the self-contra- 

 dictory reductio ad absurdum, that from the stand- 

 point of the finite, God Is nothing, while from the 

 standpoint of the Infinite, the world is nothing, 

 whereas from the standpoint of Practice they both 

 agree in the corollary that the world is irrational 

 and inexplicable. 



§ 13. But here we may fitly introduce the 



