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the view that Selfhood depends on limitation, and he puts his result in three propositions. 1 These are (1) that Selfhood does not depend on an opposition of Ego and Non-Ego, but in an immediate consciousness of one's own existence which is the ground of that opposition: (2) that finite spirit develops its Self-consciousness only 'through influences that come to it from the World-whole with which it is not identical', and so through its opposition to an alien being: (3) that this, however, constitutes precisely the imperfection of finite spirit, and makes it incorrect to ascribe personality in the complete sense to any being but God Himself.

Lotze's method therefore seems to be first to establish the existence of an Absolute and then to show that this Absolute is personal: he could not therefore distinguish between the sole reality and a supreme reality. But in this discussion it might be best to adopt the distinction. If then it is maintained that only the Absolute Whole can exhibit the perfection denied to finite beings, it is impossible not to regret the conclusion. For if we have little ground, as Lotze urges, to speak of finite beings as personal, we seem to have none at all for speaking of an infinite personality in this first and fullest sense. The reason of this is precisely the known existence of finite self-consciousness. These finite persons would have to become phases in the infinite person, supposing such a being to exist, and this is not an intelligible idea.

No being, it is admitted, is infinite except the universe itself: of anything short of the universe it may truly be said that there is something outside it. Now in our previous accounts of personality it is clear that all persons must be self-conscious. If therefore infinite being is an 1 Ibid., pp. 579, 580.

infinite person it must be self-conscious. But some of the parts of this infinite being are themselves self-conscious. The problem is therefore to conceive how a number of selves can all be incorporated in one self. Fascinating as the idea may be, it presents insoluble difficulty. If it were merely necessary to combine in one supreme self all the qualities and powers that exist in the finite selves, the problem is acute enough. A mind which combines all the deficiencies of the village idiot and all the speculative power of Hegel and Newton: ali the bestial desires of the lowest criminal and all the noblest self-devotion of a St. Francis,-such a mind is already a new world. If it existed it would possess only in the smallest imaginable degree those characteristics of formal unity and proportion which have been found to be distinctive of what we called high personality: it would be not more completely personal, but infinitely less personal than many of the known selves of everyday life. But the difficulty is still greater. In each finite self there is a sense of self, a consciousness of different activities as being all 'mine'. These thoughts too have to be incorporated in this infinite nondescript which we are called upon to admire as the highest development of personal life. Now if A, B, C, and D are all self-conscious how can E be at once self-conscious himself and contain within himself the other four self-consciousnesses? The only path open to the thinkers we are examining seems to be to treat this finite self-consciousness as illusory. Now if we do this, in the first place we are degrading something with which we are familiar and which in spite of its critics is intelligible though certainly not wholly explicable from itself', in the interests of a doctrine which in any case outruns all our power of

imagination: in the second place we merely change the nature of the problem and must now strain our energies to discover how the illusion can remain as a real fact in a supreme mind that does not share it. It is impossible that if Smith and Jones are really self-conscious beings they should be parts of one self-conscious being: but if their self-consciousness is an illusion it is impossible to see how their false beliefs on the question can co-exist with the one true person's knowledge. That inconsistent and contradictory thoughts should exist in a mind is very frequently the case but that this should be a mark of its infinite perfcction is too paradoxical to be even credible.

Among the idealist thinkers who support the views here dismissed, Professor Bosanquet is prominent, and it may be worth while to look at an illustration in which he helps out the doctrine. He compares the relation of the infinite to the finite persons with the relation of Dante's mind to the characters of the Divine Comedy in which it is expressed. Need it be pointed out that so far as they exist only in the Divine Comedy, the characters do not think for themselves and are not conscious of their own existence? Dante's mind lives in them only because their minds do not really live at all. Where there is real conscious and self-conscious thought and will, there are minds which exist for themselves and so cannot be reduced to parts in one higher self-conscious mind.

It is possible that reference might here be made to certain remarkable facts of abnormal psychology. The lack of coherence which, as we have seen, all known persons exhibit in some degree, may become so marked as to justify our speaking of a 'dissociated personality'. In certain astonishing cases of extreme 'dissociation

several persons seem to emerge out of one. By a monstrous leap of the imagination we might build up on known facts of this kind the conception of one complete mind of which we are ourselves the severed parts.

But in these cases it may well be doubted whether the personality thus divided remains one at all. The character of the new personalities formed out of it may be explicable only with reference to the original more or less coherent character. In a recent case investigated by Dr. Morton Prince, e. g. C the normal personality existing before and after the illness splits into B and A: of whom A' was neurasthenic and represented the ethical and religious aspects of the original personality', B was completely 'egoistic and emancipated', and represented the irresponsible pleasure-loving side of the character.1 But observe that in these abnormal cases the original coherent whole does not coexist with the alternating phases into which it sometimes is severed: the task of the physician is to restore the original balance, and not till it is fulfilled is it possible to talk of one person in this connexion. But on the absolute idealists' view the unity and coherence of the absolute person coexists with, and indeed lives in, the division and conflict of the finite selves. Morbid psychology does not in any way suggest how this could be possible, though it admittedly presents difficult and important problems about the degree of coherence necessary to constituted personality.

In the illustrations taken from Bosanquet and abnormal psychology it is already easy to notice how insensibly the passage may be effected from the assertion of one mind comprehending all else to the assertion of one mind as the creator or origin of all else. It may be well to 1 See the Report in the Sociological Journal for January, 1914.

examine this latter idea more closely. We cannot allow that the Absolute Whole would be a perfect person. Must it be maintained that only a supreme mind which creates all things and finds them all thus explicable from its own nature, would show personality in its perfection? I wish to take three points for consideration.

First the nature of one mind in which everything else including the characters of all other minds is grounded, baffles imagination almost as much as the Absolute Personality we have already considered. If the nature of finite minds is grounded in the nature of the one creative mind, must there not be differences within the creative mind that account for the differences in the created? Now it is difficult to conceive how any one mind can contain the seeds of all these differences without coming back in principle to the insoluble problem of constructing one self in which all other selves are held together: the difficulty is if anything increased by putting this strange amalgamate mind at the beginning of things and making all particular minds later derivations from it, needless exhibitions of its internal contradictions.

Secondly, in any case, once the creation is accomplished, there is no longer one mind but many minds: there is no longer in any true sense an infinite person at all. True the creative mind might feel in the world which it surveyed a satisfaction which the created minds did not share. But even this is not necessary.

For thirdly we can easily imagine a world that finite minds, though they could not explain it simply by reference to themselves, nevertheless found altogether in accordance with their wishes. After the event they might approve absolutely what they had not originated. Such a mind, though not sole cause of itself and its environment,