II
ABSOLUTENESS NOT SHOWN COMPATIBLE WITH GOODNESS
Passing now to my second point, let us recall what Professor Royce said about the attributes of the Supreme Being; or, rather, let us recollect two of those attributes. I refer to Absoluteness and Goodness. In calling God the Absolute, we mean that he is quite complete — is a rounded whole; has, so to speak, no ragged edges, no internal gaps. Sleep is a chasm in each day of our lives; while, from time to time, we have gaps of unconsciousness. Again, if we try to tear our lives from their setting in the world, we find that the line that bounds them is jagged and broken throughout. At times one feels that his life is exhaustively summed up in relations to other lives, and that what is left over when those bonds are snapped is too poor to be worth saving. Not so the Absolute. His life is completely finished, rounded and whole, and has no relations to any beyond. And now I will ask you to look at this attribute of Absoluteness or Completeness under the conception of time. For, temporally speaking, Completeness is eternal existence.
According to Professor Royce, as readers of his books will readily remember, the whole universe is present to the Supreme Being in one moment, and that moment is eternal. There is for the Supreme Being nothing whatever in the least analogous to what we call the past and the future. What occurred yesterday in
