fashion to sneer at mere numerical considerations, I cannot see that a world in which there was only one omniscient thinker would be as good as a world in which there were many. When there was nothing to do but think and no mistakes were possible, it certainly would not be a matter of great importance whether one thinker was engaged on the task or many. But an infinite number of omniscient thinkers would still seem in such cases to be slightly better than any smaller number. Each thinker would then be like Aristotle's God: and if Aristotle had not dwelt on the perfection in the object of perfect thought rather than on the thinking of it, he too might have found it advantageous to reduplicate the Divine existence ad infinitum. A very similar argument applies to will. Here too it has been supposed that so far as different persons all willed, they must all will different things. This would be due either to a defect of power, a limitation in their spheres of influence, or to real defects in goodness. The wills in question would either refer to different objects altogether or would strive for different changes in the same object. 'Perfect volition would mean perfect acquiescence in everything. Now men can be easily differentiated by the fact that they acquiesce in different things. So they can be differentiated by the fact that they acquiesce in different sides of the same thing But there can be only one way of acquiescing in the whole nature of any one thing, and only one way therefore of acquiescing in the whole nature of everything, and the ground of differentiation is consequently wanting.' Nothing could be plainer than that different wills on this ground could not really be devoted 1 McTaggart, Hegelian Cosmology, p. 185. to the same object. But it is even clearer here than in the case of knowledge that the foundation of the whole argument is wrong. Will differentiates itself not only by willing different objects, but of its own nature. There is no will but the will of this person or that: and if many persons all will the same things, they still remain many persons. The view we are examining finds it can give no further account of the difference it meets and therefore denies that it does or can exist. In the same way men are always contesting the nature of ultimate facts, simply because they are ultimate and cannot be further defined. But it is a mere ungrounded prejudice to affirm that unless the objects of mental activities differ the activities themselves must be one and not many. Let me once again illustrate the point by taking that actual condition of things which would most nearly illustrate the coincidence of wills which Dr. McTaggart finds to be an impossible conception. Suppose a number of men all wholly devoted to certain political objects. At some supreme crisis, in some great assembly they may literally act in perfect unison the harmony of their wills may be as nearly absolute as is possible under human conditions. But the truth that they act as one man is only remarkable because they are nevertheless not one man but many: and they are not many men merely in virtue of the fact that beside their wills they possess different bodily or mental qualities to which at the moment no importance can be attached, and which they do not employ till the crisis is over. Even if all other differences were finally stripped off, there would be as truly as before a harmony of wills, not a bare identity: there would be many willing one end. In the world of spirit the differentiation of personality is final and self-sufficient. : § 4. Finite Personality necessary for Ideal Goodness FROM what has preceded it follows that the limitation of persons involves no necessary imperfection within knowledge and will. It will follow also that when we assert knowledge or good will to be valuable things, we mean in the fullest sense the existence of persons who know the truth and will the good. Knowledge and good will are not treasures that can be accumulated in lumps till a certain amount has been reached, no matter in whom they inhere. Persons alone can be trained to possess them, and at the end all that has been produced is personal knowledge and virtue. Therefore not merely the nature or extent of the knowledge and the virtue interests the moralist. It becomes of equal importance that they should be exhibited in as large a number of persons as possible. Not only would no universe be fully good in which one perfect person coexisted with a number of others less perfect but that universe would be best in which there is found the largest number of perfectly good and wise persons. The reason I have insisted on this conclusion is that we are very apt to talk of knowledge, or good will, as things to be promoted with insufficient recognition of the truth that they can only be promoted in individuals. But all practical applications of this doctrine belong not to the sort of world we have been imagining but to our own world of concrete facts. It is then that it becomes important not to forget that the growth of knowledge in itself may be an unimportant matter unless it means the development of mental power and enjoyment in a number of persons. It is then that it becomes important to require that a nation should not only be well governed but that its good government should involve the conscious and loyal co-operation of the personal wills of its citizens. But even while we remain in this airy region of imaginary perfections we may find not only-as we have already found an advantage in the multiplicity of persons, but a positive necessity for it. It is possible to point to one kind of excellence that is only possible if a number of persons exists, not merely one infinite knowledge and goodness; or, more exactly, I shall contend that one element of 'infinite goodness' could not be present if there was but one person in the universe-to go even further, that the most essential element of infinite goodness could not be present. We have talked of good will. But the most characteristic form of good will is will for some one else's good. The devotion of one person to another is the highest form of goodness with which we are acquainted, and a world in which the triumph of knowledge was complete, the harmony between will and environment absolute, would still be inferior even to the world we know if this kind of goodness were absent from it. Here is to be seen the real importance of that defence of finite personality which the foregoing discussion is intended to set up. For at this point it ought to become clear that a large province of moral goodness is concerned with the relations of persons to one another, and that these relations are indispensable to perfection. It is also unfortunately true that we have reached a sphere where the heat of rhetoric is only too likely to break through the cool dispassionate contemplation of philosophy. So many hymns have been sung to love, so many lives lost in its service, that it is a little difficult to sit down calmly and reason out certain consequences of the universal esteem in which it is held. The chief consolation for such an attempt is that if it succeeds it may justify the silent conviction of generations against the one-sided wisdom of the schools. A large body of ethical doctrine insists that there are certain good things that action can secure, and that any action which secures them will be good; best of all being of course the action that secures the greatest amount of good. What these good things are has been a matter of long discussion. In the earliest form of the views we are considering they would be reduced to pleasure. But it is possible to hold that there are other ends of action besides pleasure, while nevertheless the view that action must be justified by the end it secures is still maintained. An advance is occasionally made on these views by asserting that the will set towards these desirable objects is itself good and in that case the good will expressed in an action cannot very well stand on the same level as the ends attained by it. But even so, the content of the good will, it is supposed, must simply be those desirable objects-let us say, for example, pleasure and knowledge: we will aright when we will the greatest amount of pleasure and knowledge whether in ourselves or in others. The distribution of these good things is not a matter of the first importance: every one is to count for one and no one for more than one, we are told if we become anxious. But all that is meant by this formula, except for revolutionaries who misapply it, is that an equal amount of pleasure in me is neither more nor less desirable than an equal amount of pleasure in you. But now let the magic arts of the casuist be invoked. You and I at the end of a long day's walk under a broiling hot sun have reached a desolate inn. We are both of us equally fond of cider, equally, but much less, |