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perfectly a title which is properly refused to unities which, in perfec-
tion, are not perfected but transcended. But this change in the meaning
of personality would also be confusing. For it would compel us to say of
such philosophies as Lotze s and Mr Bradley s, which do not accept the
finite self as an adequate expression of reality, that they denied human
personality, which would be a considerable departure from the ordinary
meaning of words.
Thus considerable inconvenience would be caused by extending the
meaning of personality to include an Absolute without a direct sense of
self. Nor does it appear what advantage would be gained by keeping a
name when the old meaning has been surrendered.
90. It has often been suggested that the Absolute, if not a person,
may be something higher than a person. And this view has often been
gladly adopted by those to whom the only other alternative seemed to be
that it should be something lower. But from what has been said about
the nature of the Absolute, it will follow that the whole question is un-
meaning. The unity of the Absolute is not more or less perfect than that
unity of each of its differentiations which we call personality. Each has
an entirely different ideal of perfection the Absolute to be the unity of
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/77
its differentiations, the perfect differentiation to be the unity of all the
surrounding differentiations. Neither of these ideals is higher than the
other. Each is indispensable to the other. The differentiations cannot
exist except in the Absolute, nor could the Absolute exist unless each of
its differentiations was a person.
To ask which of the two is the higher is as unmeaning as to ask
whether the state or the citizen49 is higher. The state and the citizen have
each their own excellencies. And these cannot be compared, since they
have different ideals of excellence. The perfection of the citizen is not to
be like a state, nor the perfection of a state to be like a citizen. And
neither of them has any worth except in its difference from the other, for,
except for that difference, neither could exist. A state cannot exist with-
out citizens, nor citizens without a state. The general unwillingness to
regard the Absolute as impersonal is, I think, largely due to a failure to
recognize this complementary character of the two unities. It is sup-
posed that, if the Absolute is not personal, it must be higher or lower
than persons. To suppose it to be lower might perhaps be maintained to
be contradictory, and would certainly be cheerless. But if we make the
Absolute to be higher than personality, it must surpass and transcend it,
and it is thus natural to say that the Absolute is personal and more.
91. I have now explained, as far as I am able, the grounds on which
I think that personality ought not to be ascribed to the Absolute, if we
accept Hegel s account of the Absolute as correct. It remains for us to
consider what effect, on our conduct and our feelings, would be pro-
duced by the general adoption of such a belief a belief which is, of
course, equivalent to a rejection of the notion of a personal God. I have
endeavoured to show above50 that the nature of these effects is irrelevant
to the truth of the belief. But it is nevertheless a matter of interest.
Let us begin with the effects of such a belief on conduct. Would it,
in the first place, render virtue less binding, less imperative, than be-
fore? Surely not. Different philosophers have given very differing ac-
counts of the nature of moral obligation, but I doubt if any of them have
so bound it up with the notion of God s personality that the disproof of
that personality would efface the distinction between virtue and vice.
Some moralists, indeed, have asserted that any satisfactory morality
rests entirely on the belief that God will ensure that the righteous shall
be happier than the wicked. And it has also been asserted that it would
be absurd to act virtuously unless we believed that virtue would win in
the long run. But these two theories, while they certainly require that the
78/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
Absolute should work for righteousness, do not require a personal Ab-
solute. If, on the other hand, we hold it not impossible to pursue the
good, irrespective of our personal happiness, and without the certainty
of eventual victory, the obligation, whatever it may be, to virtuous ac-
tion will remain unaffected by whatever theory we may hold as to the
nature of the Absolute.
Nor would our views on the personality of the Absolute affect our
power of determining particular actions to be virtuous or vicious. Some
systems assert that good and evil depend on the arbitrary will of God.
But this is only a theory of the genesis of distinctions which are admit-
ted to exist. Indeed, it is only from the existence of the distinctions that
the will of God in the matter is inferred. If a personal God were rejected,
these systems would require a fresh theory of the causes which make
benevolence right and cowardice wrong. But the rejection could have no
tendency to make us suppose that benevolence was wrong and coward-
ice right.
92. So much is very generally admitted. It is seldom asserted at the
present day that, without a belief in a personal God, we should have no [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]