Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/457

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THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

false. Very well then, that infinite thought must somehow have had all that in it from the beginning. If a man doubts it, let him answer our previous difficulties. Let him show us how he can make an error save through the presence of an actual inclusive thought for which the error always was error and never became such at all. If he can do that, let him try. We should willingly accept the result if he could show it to us. But he cannot. We have rambled over those barren hills already too long. Save for Thought there is no truth, no error. Save for inclusive Thought, there is no truth, no error, in separate thoughts. Separate thoughts as such cannot then know or have the distinction between their own truth and their own falsity in themselves, and apart from the inclusive thought. There is then nothing of truth or of error to be found in the world of separate thoughts as such. All the thoughts are therefore in the last analysis actually true or false, only for the all-including Thought, the Infinite.

We could have reached the same result had we set out from the problem, What is Truth? We chose not to do so because our skepticism had the placid answer ready: “No matter what truth is, for very likely there is little or no truth at all to be had. Why trouble one’s mind to define what a fairy or a brownie is?” “Very well, then,” we said to our skepticism, “if that is thy play, we know a move that thou thinkest not of. We will not ask thee of truth, if thou thinkest there is none. We will ask thee of error, wherein thou revelest.” And our skepticism