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special branch of study may be changed by the common action of a moder-
ate number of writers on philosophy. But to change the popular meaning of
the word God, and its equivalents in the other European languages, in the
mouths of the millions of people who use them, would be impossible, even
if it were desirable. Besides, the popular terminology has no word by which
it can replace God, while philosophy has already a synonym for God in the
wider sense namely the Absolute. And, finally, philosophers are by no
means unanimous in agreeing with the usage of Spinoza and Hegel. Kant
himself uses God in the narrower sense.
I think, therefore, that it will be best to depart from Hegel s own
usage, and to express our result by saying that the Absolute is not God,
and, in consequence, that there is no God. This corollary implies that
the word God signifies not only a personal, but also a supreme being,
and that no finite differentiation of the Absolute, whatever his power
and wisdom, would be entitled to the name. It may be objected that this
would cause the theory of the dialectic to be classed, under the name of
Atheism, with very different systems such as deny the unity of all
reality to be spiritual, or deny it to be more vital than a mere aggregate.
But all negative names must be more or less miscellaneous in their de-
notation. It is much more important to preserve a definite meaning for
Theism than for Atheism, and this can only be done if Theism is uni-
formly used to include a belief in the personality of God.
Chapter IV: The Supreme Good and the Moral
Criterion
97. What may we conclude, on Hegelian principles, about the Supreme
Good? The Logic has given us the Absolute Idea, which stands to knowl-
edge in the same relation as the idea of the Supreme Good, if there is
one, stands to action. In examining the Absolute Idea, we find it in-
volves the existence of a unity of individuals, each of whom, perfectly
individual through his perfect unity with all the rest, places before him-
self an end and finds the whole of the universe in complete harmony
with that end.
If we have been justified in taking the Absolute Idea as only ex-
pressible in a unity of individuals, the rest of this description clearly
follows. The individuals must be in harmony, and how can a conscious
individual be in harmony with another, except by proposing an end to
which that other is a means, though not, of course, a mere means? Be-
sides this, if we look at the final stages of the Logic, we shall find that
the idea of End, once introduced at the close of the Objective Notion, is
never again lost. It is identical with the category of Life: in Cognition
(which includes Volition) the only change is that the End has become
conscious; while the transition to the Absolute Idea only alters the man-
ner in which the harmony is held to be produced.
This is the supreme reality the only reality sub specie aeternitatis,
the goal of the process of the universe sub specie temporis. It will be
very desirable if we can identify the supreme reality with the supreme
good.
It is not the supreme good simply because it is the supreme reality.
84/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
This is scarcely more than a truism. But it always wants repetition, and
never more than at present. It is often asserted that ideals are real be-
cause they are good, and from this it follows by formal logic that, if they
were not real, they would not be good. Against this we must protest for
the sake both of truth and of goodness. The idea of the good comes from
that paradoxical power which is possessed by every conscious member
of the universe the power to judge and condemn part or all of that very
system of reality of which he himself is a part. If the whole constitution
of the whole universe led, by the clearest development of its essential
nature, to our universal damnation or our resolution into aggregates of
material atoms, the complete and inevitable reality of these results would
not give even the first step towards proving them good.
98. But although the supremely real, as such, is not the supremely
good, we may admit, I think, that if the supreme reality be such as Hegel
has described it to be, then it will coincide with the supreme good. For,
in the reality so defined, every conscious being and there are no other
beings will express all his individuality in one end, which will truly
and adequately express it. The fulfilment of such an end as this would
give satisfaction, not partial and temporary, but complete and eternal.
And since each individual finds the whole universe in harmony with his
end, it will necessarily follow that the end is fulfilled. Here is a supreme
good ready to our hands.
99. Hegel has thus helped us to the conception of the supreme good,
firstly by suggesting it, and secondly by proving that it contains no
contradictory elements. Such a supreme good, we notice, is not purely
hedonistic. It contains pleasure, no doubt, for the fulfilment of the ends
of conscious beings must always involve that. But the pleasure is only
one element of the perfect state. The supreme good is not pleasure as
such, but this particular pleasant state.
100. It does not follow, however, that, because we have determined
the supreme good, we have therefore determined the criterion of moral-
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