should cease to be so. If we could imagine such a way we should have solved the problem, for as this way would be the only chance of rescuing our knowledge from hopeless confusion, we should be justified in taking it.
All I wish to suggest is that it is conceivable that there should be such a synthesis, although it is not conceivable what synthesis it could be, and that, although there is no positive evidence for it, there is no evidence against it. And as either the incompatibility of the two propositions, or the evidence for one of them, must be a mistake, we may have at any rate a hope that some solution may lie in this direction.
In so far as we are certain that neither the arguments for the eternal perfection of the Absolute Idea, nor for the existence of process and change, are erroneous, we should be able to go beyond this negative position, and assert positively the existence of the synthesis, though we should be as unable as before to comprehend of what nature it could be. We could then avail ourself of Mr. Bradley’s maxim, “what may be and must be, certainly is”. That the synthesis must exist would, on the hypothesis we are considering, be beyond doubt. For if both the lines of argument which lead respectively to the eternal reality of the Absolute Idea, and the existence of change could be known to be, not merely unrefuted, but true, then they must somehow be compatible. That all truth is harmonious is the postulate of reasoning, the denial of which would abolish all tests of truth and falsehood, and so make all judgment unmeaning. And since the two propositions are, as we have seen throughout this paper, incompatible as they stand in their immediacy, the only way in which they can possibly be made compatible is by a synthesis which unites by transcending them.
Can we then say of such a synthesis that it may be? Of course it is not possible to do so unless negatively. A positive assertion that there was no reason whatever why a thing should not exist could only be obtained by a complete knowledge of it, and, if we had a complete knowledge of it, it would not be necessary to resort to indirect proof to discover whether it existed or not. But we have, it would seem, a right to say that no reason appears why it should not exist. If the Hegelian dialectic is true (and if it were not, our difficulty would not have arisen) we know that predicates which seem to be contrary can be united and harmonised by a synthesis. And the fact that such a synthesis is not conceivable by us need not make us consider it impossible. Till such a synthesis is found it must always appear inconceivable,
