A WHOLE NECESSARILY FINITE. 



34J 



universe as such. And as every world, irrespective 

 of its content and character, may be equally con- 

 ceived as a whole, it was inevitable that the Deity 

 of Pantheism should be absolutely indifferent to the 

 world (§§ II, 12) and to everything happening within 

 it. For the inference from the worst world, and the 

 most discordant content to such an Absolute would 

 be just as valid and just as cogent as from the most 

 perfect. God would in any case and under all cir- 

 cumstances be the totality of existence. 



But this reasoning contains flaws which thoroughly 

 vitiate it. In the first place, a whole is necessarily 

 finite, for two reasons, (i) Because all our thought 

 deals only with conceptions, and conceptions are 

 necessarily finite {cp, \ 1 2 note) : hence we, in 

 applying to a thing any conception of our thought, 

 \n this case the conception of a whole, necessarily 

 imply that the reality is as finite as our conception, 

 (2) Because, according to its only true and valid 

 definition, infinity consists just in the impossibility of 

 completing a whole by successive synthesis {cp, ch. ix. 

 § 3). If, therefore, the world is a real whole, it is for 

 that very reason not infinite. But this proof of the 

 necessary finitude of wholes may be said to show 

 not so much that Pantheism is mistaken in- deifying 

 the universe as a whole, as that the expression of 

 ''the Infinite" is ill-suited to describe the totality of 

 things. Yet even granting this, it would be no. 

 slight help to the cause of clear thought, if the 

 Infinite could be finally banished from the vocab- 

 ulary of philosophy. 



§ 18. Secondly, even permitting Pantheism to 

 regard its deity, the absolute whole, as. finite, it is 

 yet impossible to regard it, in the way Pantheism 

 does, as a real and all-embracing existence. For. 



