igible system at all. Therefore,
if part of the system is non-existent, the whole system--the system as a
whole--must be treated as non-existent. The world is, we are told, a
system; and yet as a system it has (upon the hypothesis) no real
existence. The systematic whole does not exist in matter, for to Dr.
McTaggart matter is merely the experience of Mind. What sort of
existence, then, can an undiscovered planet possess till it is {99}
discovered? For Dr. McTaggart has not provided any mind or minds in and
for which it is to exist. At one time, indeed, Dr. McTaggart seemed
disposed to accept a suggestion of mine that, on his view, each soul must
be omniscient; and to admit that, while in its temporal aspect, each soul
is limited and fallible in its knowledge, it is at the same time
supertemporally omniscient. That is a conception difficult beyond all
the difficulties of the most arbitrary and self-contradicting of orthodox
patristic or scholastic speculations. But, as Dr. McTaggart does not now
seem disposed to insist upon that point, I will say no more about it
except that to my mind it is a theory which defies all intellectual
grasp. It can be stated; it cannot be thought.

Further, I would remind you, the theory is open to all the objections
which I urged against the Pre-existence theory in its pluralistic form.
I have suggested the difficulties involved in the facts of heredity--the
difficulty of understanding how souls whose real intellectual and moral
characteristics are uncaused and eternal should be assigned to parents so
far resembling them as to lead almost inevitably to the inference that
the characteristics of the children are to some extent causally connected
with those of the parents.[4] Now the Pluralist can {100} at least urge
that for this purpose ingenious arrangements are contrived by God--by the
One Spirit whom he regards as incomparably the wisest and most powerful
in the Universe. Dr. McTaggart recognizes no intelligence capable of
grappling with such a problem or succession of problems. But this
particular matter of the assignment of souls to bodies is only a
particular application of a wider difficulty. Dr. McTaggart contends
that the Universe constitutes not merely a physical but a moral order.
He would not deny that the Universe means something; that the series of
events tends towards an end, an end which is also a good; that it has a
purpose and a final cause. And yet this purpose