which was good becomes evil, and sometimes that which was evil becomes good. Now, if the two principles are exactly balanced, how could such a change take place? Of course we cannot prove that the balance between the two forces does not remain the same, if we consider the whole universe. Every movement in the one direction, in one part of the whole, may be balanced by a corresponding move in the other direction somewhere else. As we do not know the entire universe in detail, it is quite impossible for us to refute this. But this will not remove the difficulty. We have two principles whose relations to one another are constant. Yet the facts around us, which are manifestations of these two principles, and of these two principles only, are constantly changing. If we are to take time and change as ultimate facts, such a contradiction seems insuperable. On the other hand, to deny the ultimate validity of time and change, commits us to the series of arguments, the failure of which first led us to doubt Hegel’s position. If time could be viewed as a manifestation of the timeless, we need not have abandoned monism, for the difficulty of imperfection could then have been solved. On the other hand, if time cannot be viewed in this way, the contradiction between the unchanging relation of the principles and the constant change of their effects appears hopeless.
There remains only the theory that the world is exclusively the product of a principle which regards neither rationality nor irrationality, but is directed to some aim outside them, or to no aim at all. Such a theory might account, no doubt, for the fact that the world is not a complete and perfect manifestation either of rationality or of irrationality. But it is hardly exaggerated to say that this is the only fact about the world which it would account for. The idea of such a principle is contradictory. We can have no conception of its operation, of its nature, or even of its existence, without bringing it under some predicates of the reason. And if this is valid, then the principle is, to some extent at least, rational. Even this would be sufficient to destroy the theory. And, besides this, we should have to refute the detail of Hegel’s dialectic before we could escape the conclusion that, if any categories of reason can be predicated of any subject, we are bound to admit the validity of the Absolute Idea of the same subject-matter, so that whatever is rational in part must be rational completely.
It would seem then that any other system offers as many obstacles to a satisfactory explanation of our difficulty as were presented by Hegel’s theory. Is the inquirer then
