44^ co^XLusJON. 



thing- more. It is perfect knowledge, perfect good- 

 ness, perfect beauty and perfect happiness, because 

 it is that into which they all pass and are united. 

 And in it they are so absorbed that they no longer 

 exist in isolation and in opposition to one another. 

 They are fused In a whole which reconciles, unites 

 and transcends them. And so it would inadequately 

 represent the reality to say that perfect activity 

 was either knowledge, or goodness, or beauty, or 

 happiness. 



It could not, strictly speaking, be knowledge. For 

 perfect knowledge, the knowledge of all that Is to 

 be known, the highest activity of reason In which 

 reason were fully master of Its subject-matter, would 

 be a state radically different from anything we now 

 call thought. To a perfect reason, to which all 

 knowledge Is an ever-present actuality, the exercise 

 of anything like thought seems needless and degrad- 

 Incr. For all our thlnklno- Involves chans^e and 

 transition from thought to thought, and therefore 

 Time ; and In this case, moreover, It could discover 

 nothing that was not already known. 



And so with perfect goodness. The perfection 

 of the moral consciousness would issue in the siipra- 

 uioral. Goodness which has become so perfect, so 

 Ingrained In nature, that the suggestion of evil can 

 no longer strike a responsive chord, that wrong- 

 doing- can no longer offer any temptation, Is no 

 longer goodness in any human sense. And more- 

 over, not only does wrong action become ** a moral 

 Impossibility " In the perfectloning of the moral 

 consciousness, but the occasion for moral action 

 gradually vanishes as the moral environment aj)- 

 proaches perfection. As Mr. Spencer so well says, 

 self-sacrifice becomes an impossibility where each Is 



