cover everything except the Universe taken as such. And of course to ask if in this sense relations generally, or again space or time or quantity, are or are not qualities, would be absurd. The question begins to have an interest however when we consider any attempt to set up some form of finite existence, or existence itself, as real in distinction from character in its widest sense, or an attempt in other words to discover a finite something which from some side of its being is not a ‘somewhat.’ And since in any something the distinction of ‘that’ from ‘what’ is not absolute but only relative, such a pursuit is in the end illusory. All appearance in the end is but content and character which qualifies the Absolute, and it is in the end the Absolute alone to which the term quality cannot be applied. Here first we find a reality which is beyond a mere ‘what’; but neither here nor anywhere can we find a reality which is merely ‘that.’ To make reality these two aspects must be united inseparably, and indeed their separation is appearance itself. So that if the question ‘Is all identity qualitative’ means ‘Is every sameness that of qualities proper,’ we must answer it in the negative. But in any other sense our answer to the question must be affirmative. For we must repel the suggestion of a sameness which is not that of content and which consists in an identity of mere existence.
From this I pass to a kindred question, Is all identity ideal? It is so always, we must reply, in this sense that it involves the self-transcendence of that which is identical. Where there is no diversity there is no identity at all, the identity in abstraction from the diversity having lost its character. But, on the other hand, where the diversity is not of itself the same, but is only taken so or made so from the outside, once more identity has vanished. Sameness, in short, cannot be external merely; but this means that the character and being of the diverse is carried beyond and is beyond itself, and is the character of what is so beyond—and this is ideality.[1] Thus the unity of any felt whole in this sense is ideal, and the same is true emphatically of the identity in any spatial or temporal continuum. The parts there exist only so far as they are relative, determined from the outside, and themselves on the other hand passing each beyond itself and determining the character of the whole. And within each part again the parts are in the same way ideal. Nothing in fact can be more absurd than the common attempt to find the unity and continuity of the discrete in something outside the series. For if the discretes of themselves were not continuous,
- ↑ The union of aspects in each diverse aspect is, I admit, unintelligible for us in the end. But we are bound to hold that these aspects are really inseparable, and we are bound to deny that their union is external, for that is a standing contradiction.
