ll the spirits between them know the world--one
knowing one part, another another--this is a mere hypothesis, opposed to
all the probabilities suggested by experience, and after all would be a
very inadequate answer to our difficulties. Dr. McTaggart insists {124}
that the world of existing things exists as a system. Such existence to
an Idealist must mean existence for a mind; a system not known as a
system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all.

(4) If it be suggested (as Dr. McTaggart was at one time inclined to
suggest) that every mind considered as a timeless Noumenon is omniscient,
though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is
intermittent and always limited, I reply (_a_) the theory seems to me not
only gratuitous but unintelligible, and (_b_) it is open to all the
difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely
subjective delusions. This is too large a question to discuss here: I
can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as Lotze
(see above) and M. Bergson. I may also refer to Mr. Bradley's argument
(_Appearance and Reality_, p. 50 sq.) against the theory that the
individual Ego is out of time.

(5) The theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities
suggested by experience. Soul and organism are connected in such a way
that the pre-existence of one element in what presents itself and works
in our world as a unity is an extremely difficult supposition, and
involves assumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of identity or
continuity that could be claimed for the Ego throughout its successive
lives. A soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have
some identity with its previous state, but not much. Moreover, we should
have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a
certain kind of soul, as well as the resemblance between the individual
and his parents, implies no kind of causal connexion, but is due to mere
accident; or, if it is not to accident, to a very arbitrary kind of
pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest,
and which (upon Dr. McTaggart's theory) there is no creative intelligence
to pre-establish. The theory cannot be absolutely refuted, but all Dr.
McTaggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind, {125} and (I feel sure) to
most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and
improbable. Its sole recommendation