alone will be God, but "behind it must ever loom the inexplicable black night of the Metaconscious," which is knowable only in so far as it is transformed into consciousness. But to these glorious anticipations two objections present themselves—(1) Pessimism and (2) the doubt as to the ultimateness of the individual; and the two are connected, since the answer to the first depends on the possibility of refuting the second. The terrible misery of existence can be atoned for only if the individual is more than transitory. "Pain is an accompaniment of hindered activities arising out of the primal sundering of the Metaconscious into conflicting minor centres." It is only, therefore, if metaphysic makes it probable that this hindering is transitory and provisional, that the case for Pessimism is answered.
And there is no reason why the individual who suffers should not be compensated. For the Metaconscious as prius is unreal (p. 410), and its development takes place only through individuals, to destroy whom no machinery exists. This persistence takes the form of "palingenesis," appearing in the lower monads as chemical combination and dissociation. The law of palingenesis is the same as that of life, a struggle for existence, i.e., for the opportunity of developing by fresh experience, between the reincarnating monads, in which those are most successful who have suffered most and are, therefore (sic) most eager for experience. In the end, when mutual coöperation of the monads takes the place of hindrance, the final unity of the Deity, composed of "individuals who have bought their glory by suffering," will emerge, and with complete spontaneity will possess supreme happiness. Yet even so there are immanent in the Metaconscious an infinite number of world-processes, and hence the Absolute is not merely a result but a result never completed.
As to criticism, it is clear that these last sentences are incompatible. For the consummation of the world-process is rendered nugatory by the possibility of starting it afresh, and Mr. Fawcett might have learnt of Sisyphus that a struggle for an end that can never be reached is no answer to Pessimism. No doubt Mr. Fawcett will call it a new world-process, but how can there be a plurality of such processes? If the new world affects the world that is completed, it will re-start the struggle and the process in it, if it does not, it will remain unknowable and non-existent for it. It is clear, then, that this infinite proliferation of individuals from the Metaconscious must somehow be stopped, if a final harmony is not to be a vain dream, and it is equally clear that this is impossible on Mr. Fawcett's conception of the Metaconscious. Nor is this the sole exception to be taken to it. Not even Mr. Fawcett's ingenuity can render it intelligible how the Absolute can have unattained ends, can explain why an unlimited Metaconscious could evolve a harmony only by a process, and by a process, too, involving so much misery. For he expressly debars himself from the supposition that the intelligence also of the Metaconscious is developed in the world-process and that consequently at the outset it simply did not
