PERFECTION C0NCE1VAT5LE NOT IMACilNABLE. 445 



minates In a perfect activity, which sums up and 

 inckides all the activities of hfe, and realizes in 

 actuality all the powers of which we are capable. 



§ 8. The claims of the Being, which is the end 

 of the world-process, to be regarded as perfect 

 activity having been vindicated, the question natur- 

 ally arises, of what this activity consists, whether, 

 e.<^., it takes the form of a perpetued oratorio, or 

 of eternal buffalo hunting ; whether eternity is spent 

 In the society of Houris, or In the fighting and 

 feasting of Walhalla. The question is a natural 

 one, but the mistaken mode of answering it has 

 perhaps done more to discredit the conception it 

 Avas intended to elucidate than all the attacks of its 

 adversaries. For nothing is In the long run more 

 fatal to the Interests of an ideal than the attempt 

 to identify It with the sensuous Imagery of an in- 

 adequate presentation. Such a procedure confuses 

 the presentation with the conception,^ and leads to 

 the rejection of the latter as soon as men become 

 conscious of the absurdity of the former. Now it 

 follows from the very nature of the conception of 

 perfect activity that we can Imagine no adequate 

 content for It in terms of imperfect activities. For 

 that activity Is Immeasurably exalted above our 

 present state of existence, and, as we saw (ch. vi. 

 § 12), the lower can never anticipate the actual con- 

 tent of the higher life ; it can at the most determine 

 it as the perfection of the forms in which the lower 

 is cast. 



^ "Conception" in English is very ambiguous, and corres- 

 ponds both to " Vorstelkmg " and "Begriff"' in German. The 

 possession of this distinction would have spared us a vast amount 

 of bad logic, bad psychology, and futile dispute about the " incon- 

 ceivable." 



