We have seen that an idea is more true in proportion as it approaches Reality. And it approaches Reality in proportion as it grows internally more complete. And from this we possibly might conclude that thought, if completed as such, would itself be real; or that the ideal conditions, if fully there, would be the same as actual perfection. But such a conclusion would not hold; for we have found that mere thought could never, as such, be completed; and it therefore remains internally inconsistent and defective. And we have perceived, on the other side, that thought, completed, is forced to transcend itself. It has then to become one thing with sense and feeling. And, since these conditions of its perfection are partly alien to itself, we cannot say either that, by itself, it can arrive at completion, or that, when perfected, it, as such, any longer exists.
And, with this, we may advance to the consideration of several questions. We found (Chapter xxii.) that parts of the physical world might exist, and yet might exist, for us, only in the shape of thought. But we realized also that in the Absolute, where the contents of all finite selves are fused, these thought-existences must, in some way, be re-combined with sense. And the same conclusion held good also with psychical dispositions (Chapter xxiii.). These, in their proper character, have no being except in the world of thought. For they, as we saw, are conditional; and the conditional, as such, has not actual existence. But once more here the ideas—how in detail we cannot say—must find their complement in the Whole. With the addition of this other side they will make part of the concrete Reality.
Our present chapter, perhaps, may have helped us to see more clearly on these points. For we have found that ideal conditions, to be complete and in this way to become real, must transcend themselves. They have to pass beyond the world
