44^ CONCLUSION. 



And, moreover, the demand that we should de- 

 termine the content of the ideal of perfect activity 

 involves a forgetful n ess of the method whereby we 

 found that ideal. If it is an ideal of our thought, 

 it cannot for that very reason as yet be realized 

 in the sensible world, and the attempts to imagine 

 it in terms of the sensible are not only fruitless, but 

 wrong in principle. 



We must avoid, therefore, with equal care the 

 contrary errors of regarding the conception of perfect 

 activity either as unthinkable or as imaginable. It 

 is not imaginable, because the real world presents 

 us only with activities which are essentially imper- 

 fect. It is pre-eminently thinkable, because it is 

 the ideal towards which the Real tends, and the 

 standard to which it is referred, the conception by 

 which it becomes intelligible. 



And this conceivability of Perfection, in spite of 

 the inadequacy of the sensuous content our imagin- 

 ation essays to give it, is a point of such importance 

 as to warrant a brief digression in order to realize 

 precisely the cardinal affirmation on which the pos- 

 sibility of Being rests. It affirms that if we are 

 right in interpreting Reality by our thought, i.e., if 

 knowledge is a reality and not an elaborate illusion, 

 then reality must realize the ideals of that thought. 

 Now in all knowledge we use the category of Being, 

 we describe all things as being or not being, and 

 assert that everything must either be or not be. 

 Without the standard of Being to refer to, the Becom- 

 ing of the world would be utterly indescribable and 

 unknowable (ch. iii. § 13 ; iv. § 22). But if we mean 

 to assert that our standard is a true one, that the 

 real world is really subject to the laws of our think- 

 ing faculty, we must assert also all that is implied in 



