For knowledge and truth—if we suppose them to possess that identity—would have been, therewith, absorbed and transmuted. But on the other hand the universe does not exist, and it cannot possibly exist, as truth or knowledge, in such a way as not to be contained and included in the truth we call absolute. For, to repeat it once more, such a possibility is self-destructive. We may perhaps say that, if per impossibile this could be possible, we at least could not possibly entertain the idea of it. For such an idea, in being entertained, vanishes into its opposite or into nonsense. Absolute truth is error only if you expect from it more that mere general knowledge. It is abstract,[1] and fails to supply its own subordinate details. It is one-sided, and cannot give bodily all sides of the Whole. But on the other side nothing, so far as it goes, can fall outside it. It is utterly all-inclusive and contains beforehand all that could ever be set against it. For nothing can be set against it, which does not become intellectual, and itself enter as a vassal into the kingdom of truth. Thus, even when you go beyond it, you can never advance outside it. When you take in more, you are condemned to take in more of the self-same sort. The universe, as truth, in other words preserves one character, and of that character we possess infallible knowledge.
And, if we view the matter from another side, there is no opposition between Reality and truth. Reality, to be complete, must take in and absorb this partial aspect of itself. And truth itself would
- ↑ It is not abstract in the way in which we have seen that all finite truth is abstract. That was precarious intellectually, since, more or less, it left other truth outside and over against it. It was thus always one piece among other pieces of the world of truth. It could be added to, intellectually, so as to be transformed. Absolute truth, on the other hand, cannot be altered by the addition of any truth. There is no possible truth which does not fall under it as one of its own details. Unless you presuppose it, in short, no other truth remains truth at all.
