Chapter XIX: Conclusion

§ 1. Can our Absolute Experience be properly called the
“union of Thought and Will”? The Absolute is certainly
the final realisation of our intellectual and our
practical ideals. But (1) it includes aspects, such as,
_e.g._, æsthetic feeling, pleasure, and pain, which are
neither Thought nor Will. (2) And it cannot possess
either Thought or Will _as such_. Both Thought and Will,
in their own nature, presuppose a Reality which
transcends _mere_ Thought and _mere_ Will. § 2. Our
conclusion may in a sense be said to involve an element
of Agnosticism, and again of Mysticism. But it is only
agnostic in holding that we do not know the precise
nature of the Absolute Experience. It implies no
distrust of the validity of knowledge, so far as it
goes, and bases its apparently agnostic result on the
witness of knowledge itself. Similarly, it is mystical
in transcending, not in refusing to recognise, the
constructions of understanding and will. § 3.
Metaphysics adds nothing to our information, and yields
no fresh springs of action. It is finally only justified
by the persistency of the impulse to speculate on the
nature of things as a whole 408

INDEX 417

ELEMENTS OF METAPHYSICS