THE NATURE OF PERFECT BEING. 437 



ness of Time, and the sceptical objections to a 

 Time independent of our measurements of Time 

 (ch. iii. § 6) should have cured us of the fancy that 

 absoliite Time could exist, which was not relative 

 to change of some sort. And so the case we antici- 

 pated in an earlier chapter (ix. § 1 1) would have been 

 realized, and Time would have passed into Eternity. 

 And in that state all difficulties would be solved, 

 and all discords harmonized. There would be in 

 it no change. Becoming, or death, but life eternal. 

 The problems of our imperfect life would have been 

 either answered or seen to be unmeaning. Pain 

 and Evil would have ceased to be actual, and their 

 past actuality would be approved of as the necessary 

 means to perfect harmony. The infinity of Time 

 and the infinity of Becoming would have ceased to 

 perplex beings who would see how the absence of 

 the perfect equipoise of Being dissevered the union 

 of Eternity into the discordant trinity of Time. 

 The discrepancy between thought and feeling (ch. iii. 

 §§ 1 3-1 7) would have disappeared ; our interpretation 

 of Becoming by means of Being would have been 

 justified when all beings had become perfect. For 

 all would appear as they really were, we should 

 think them such as they were, think them as we 

 perceived them, and perceive them as we thought 

 them ; reality would have realized the ideals of our 

 thought, and so our ideals would no longer be un- 

 real, and our thought would no longer need to 

 idealize realities with which it was in perfect corre- 

 spondence (ch. V. v^ 2). And whereas the pre-cosmic 

 put an end to further inquiry by destroying the mean- 

 ing of the questions asked, the post-cosmic would 

 put an end to inquiry by making it impossible to ask 

 them. For how could the endless regress of cans- 



