For from our point of view, to be, or to be real, means to express, in final and determinate form, the whole meaning and purpose of a system of ideas. But the fact that a given experience anywhere fulfils a particular purpose, implies that this purpose itself is, in some wise, a fact, and has its place in reality. But if this purpose is real, it must, by our hypothesis, be real as a fulfilment of a purpose not absolutely and simply identical with itself. And so any particular purpose of the Absolute is itself such as it is, because it fulfils a particular purpose other than itself. Hence, for us, the Absolute must be a self-representative ordered system, or Kette, of purposes fulfilled; and the ordered system in question must be infinite. I accept this consequence. The Absolute must have the form of a Self. This I have repeatedly maintained in former discussions. Despite that horror of the infinite which Mr. Bradley’s counsel would tend to keep alive in me, I still insist upon the necessity of the consequence. But I also insist upon several important aspects of the Kette in terms of which the Absolute is for me defined. And these aspects enable me to conceive the Absolute not only as infinite, but also as determinate, and not only as a form, but as a life.
First, the implied internal variety is subject to, and is merely expressive of, the perfectly precise and determinate unity of the single plan whereby, at one stroke, the Absolute is defined, or rather defines itself, as a self-representative system. Secondly, because of the now so wearisomely analyzed character of a Kette of the type here in question, the self-possession or self-consciousness of the Absolute does not imply any simple identity of subject and object in the absolute Self. The map of England (the subjective aspect in our original illustration) is not identical with the whole of England. Yet, in the supposed Kette of maps, once taken as real, the whole of England is mapped within itself. Order primarily implies a first that is represented by the second, third, and later members of the order, but that, as first, is itself representative of nothing else. The Absolute, in my conception, has this first aspect, which is essential at once to the immediacy of its
