than truth, and something for us unattainable. We have thus left due space for the exercise of doubt and wonder. We admit the healthy scepticism for which all knowledge in a sense is vanity, which feels in its heart that science is a poor thing if measured by the wealth of the real universe. We justify the natural wonder which delights to stray beyond our daylight world, and to follow paths that lead into half-known half-unknowable regions. Our conclusion, in brief, has explained and has confirmed the irresistible impression that all is beyond us.
Everything is error, but everything is not illusion. It is error where, and in so far as, our ideas are not the same as reality. It is illusion where, and in so far as, this difference turns to a conflict in our nature. Where experience, inward or outward, clashes with our views, where there arises thus disorder confusion and pain, we may speak of illusion. It is the course of events in collision with the set of our ideas. Now error, in the sense of one-sided and partial truth, is necessary to our being. Indeed nothing else, so to speak, could be relative to our needs, nothing else could answer the purpose of truth. And, to suit the divergent aspects of our inconsistent finite lives, a variety of error in the shape of diverse partial truths is required. And, if things could be otherwise, then, so far as we see, finite life would be impossible. Therefore we must have error present always, and this presence entails some amount of illusion. Finite beings, themselves not self-consistent, have to realize their various aspects in the chance-world of temporal events. And hence ideas and existence cannot precisely correspond, while the want of this correspondence must to some extent mean illusion. There are finite souls, we must admit sadly, to whom, on the whole, life has proved a disappointment and cheat. There is perhaps no one to whom, at certain moments and
