these distinctions all character has wholly disappeared, and the Absolute stands outside, an empty residue and bare Thing-in-itself.” This would be a serious misunderstanding. It is true that we do not know how the Absolute overrides the relational form. But it does not follow from this that, when the relational form is gone, the result is really poorer. It is true that with each problem we cannot say how its special discords are harmonized. But is this to deny the reality of diverse contents in the Absolute? Because in detail we cannot tell in what each solution consists, are we therefore driven to assert that all the detail is abolished, and that our Absolute is a flat monotony of emptiness? This would indeed be illogical. For though we do not know in each case what the solution can be, we know that in every case it contains the whole of the variety. We do not know how all these partial unities come together in the Absolute, but we may be sure that the content of not one is obliterated. The Absolute is the richer for every discord, and for all diversity which it embraces; and it is our ignorance only in which consists the poverty of our object. Our knowledge must be poor because it is abstract. We cannot specify the concrete nature of the Absolute’s riches, but with every region of phenomenal existence we can say that it possesses so much more treasure. Objections and problems, one after the other, are not shelved merely, but each is laid up as a positive increase of character in the reality. Thus a man might be ignorant of the exact shape in which his goods have been realized, and yet he might be rationally assured that, with each fresh alienation of visible property, he has somehow corresponding wealth in a superior form.
