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 Contents
TITLE PAGE
Synopsis
Also by Tansey Morgan
Follow Tansey!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Follow Tansey!
About the Author
Also by Tansey Morgan
Copyright
TWILIGHT WARRIOR
The Harlequin’s Harem
Book Three

By Tansey Morgan
 I can't kill it, I can't stop it, I can only fight it, but I'm getting tired.

Twilight Warrior is the third book in a brand new series by Tansey Morgan, author
of the hit debut novel, 'Serpent's Touch', and the Last Serpent series. Continuing
to write in the style she is best known for, Tansey delivers a "thrilling and unique"
story set in modern day New Orleans, where one woman must face off against an
unknown and unknowable foe, all while discovering who she really is as a person,
and navigating a complicated romantic situation. If you love the paranormal
romance and urban fantasy genres, if you like your stories to have a little bite in
them, if you aren't scared of excitement, if you don't like having to choose
between love interests and would rather have them all, then this is the book for
you.
Also by Tansey Morgan

The Last Serpent

Serpent’s Touch, #1
Serpent’s Desire, #2
Serpent’s Kiss, #3
Serpent’s Bite, #4
Serpent’s Hold, #5
Serpent’s Revenge, #6
The Last Serpent, #7

The Labyrinth Queen

The Labyrinth Queen, #1

The Harlequin’s Harem

Twisted Fate, #1
Harlequin Dreams, #2
Twilight Warrior, #3
 FOLLOW TANSEY

Sign up today to Tansey’s mailing list to keep in touch, receive updates, and
occasionally take part in great contests and giveaways!

SIGN UP HERE!

You can also join Tansey’s Serpent Coven on Facebook, where you’ll be able to
interact with me directly whenever you want! That’s also where I’ll be sharing
early snippets, early cover reveals, and more contests!
 CHAPTER ONE

The French Quarter was quiet, dead, devoid of life and sound and
people, leaving only that awful, open drain smell that seemed to
always fill the air. My feet felt light as I walked along the oddly
smooth ground, as if it were made of felt or fabric rather than
cracked stone. Above me, the sky was churning and turning, dark,
full, and pregnant with rain. The more I walked, the more this place
took on the appearance of a foreign, alien landscape, one that
almost looked like the real thing, but wasn’t.
As I walked, I noticed the bars on either side of me. All of them
were open, but dark and silent. In one bar, the name of which I
didn’t get—not because I didn’t have the ability to read, but because
my brain wasn’t digesting the words in front of me and giving me
something I could work with—the flickering light of a TV flashing
static caught my eye. I tried not to look at it and turned my
attention back to Bourbon street, watching it stretch and elongate in
front of me.
The sky grumbled, and the first pattering of rain touched my
shoulders. I gripped the scepter more tightly and took another step
down the street, watching myself move through it a speed much
faster than my pace would have suggested, until a sound caught my
attention. Someone was playing a piano.
The keystrokes were faint, the melody escaped me, but I thought
it was coming from a bar up ahead and to the left; on the corner of
an unnamed street I didn’t recognize. As I approached, the source of
the sound moved so it no longer sounded like it was coming from
that bar on the corner of the street, but from one further down,
around halfway up the block. I swallowed and kept moving along the
desolate path, always going forward, never going back because I
couldn’t go back.
Not in here.
The outside of the bar where the music was coming from was
blue, and chipped; faded and damaged by the ravages of time.
Something pricked my neck, and I slapped the spot instinctively. My
hand came away red with blood, and parts of a mosquito that was
too large, too alien, to be real, and yet somehow it was real.
The piano music stopped. I walked closer to the bar, keeping my
distance from the double entrance and peering inside. There were
two pianos by the door—dueling pianos—where two musicians
would take turns battling each other for tips and the affection of the
crowd. Both seats were empty, the bar itself was empty, there were
stools arranged around the place, but no one was sitting on them.
In the back, there were two daiquiri machines, each of them
roiling the cold, red liquid inside that I hoped wasn’t blood. The tip
jar sitting between both pianos was full, not with coins, but with tiny
brass balls. As I examined the bar from my vantage point on the
street, my eyebrows meeting in the middle, I felt my heart start to
race, and then I heard another sound.
The jingle of bells.
I spun around on the spot, throwing my stare at the path I had
just come from. Much of it was dark, but I could see all the way to
the last intersection I had crossed. There, walking around the curb
and disappearing behind it, was a tall, slouching figure, draped in
darkness. My heart continued to thump, threatening at any second
to leap out of my chest and explode. I heard the jingle again, this
time coming from the other direction—the way forward instead of
the way back.
When I turned, I saw the figure again, only this time it was
running, sprinting between from one side of the street to the other. I
ran toward it, feet pounding the smooth stone, feeling like I was
flying and yet making very little progress as I went. The figure’s
footsteps made no sounds at all, but the jingle of bells was there,
always there, following it as it moved. It disappeared before I could
reach it. What was worse was, I felt like I hadn’t moved at all.
In fact, no, I hadn’t moved at all.
The sound of a single key being played on one of those pianos,
high and sharp, with enough pitch to make my teeth rattle, caused
me to turn slowly and face the bar I had been standing in front of
only a moment ago. I really hadn’t moved, and when I saw the back
of the figure sitting at the piano closest to the door, I knew why.
It hadn’t wanted me to move.
I swallowed as I turned, trying to wet my dry throat but not
succeeding at all. The thing sitting at the piano played another rote,
then another, and another, rapidly gaining speed until it was playing
an actual song. At first, I thought it may have been playing Für Elise,
or maybe Green sleeves but there were too many sharp notes, too
many dissonant chords, it was like listening to a song you might
hear playing from one of those haunted house attractions at a fair.
The creature—the Death Jester—loomed over the piano not so
much like a pianist tickling the ivories, but like a mad scientist
cutting someone open on his operating table, it’s terribly long arms
moving at awkward angles and stretching easily to catch any of the
keys on the piano should they need to. As the jester played, the
bells on its cap and starry collar jingled and twinkled. Now it was
moving its feet as it played, pressing on the pedals to the beat and
bobbing its head from side to side.
What the fuck is it playing?
For the second time I found myself gripping the scepter more
tightly, so much so my knuckles were turning white. I raised it and
pointed the head of the Talisman—also the face of a jester—at the
thing playing a melody that would haunt my dreams for months. The
jester suddenly slammed its hands against the piano, creating an
explosion of sound that hurt my ears and seemed to echo off into
the distance.
The sky above grumbled again.
“I grow tired of you, child,” the creature said, its voice like silk. It
hadn’t turned to look at me yet, was still hunched over the piano, its
shoulders rising and falling as it drew breaths and exhaled. “Why do
you insist on bringing me here? You owe them nothing.”
“I won’t let you kill people,” I said, though my own voice sounded
like it was coming from somewhere else.
“Tell me, Harlequin, what would they do for you? If you were the
one caught in the path of the hurricane with no means of defending
yourself, would they come to your aid? Would they help? Would they
give as much to you as you have given to them?”
“It’s not about that.”
“I suppose you’re fighting for what’s good and right in the
universe. Let me fill you in on a little secret; there is no such thing
as good, and evil, there is only death, and it comes for all of you.
Today, I am the reaper. Tomorrow, a knife in the dark, a plague, a
fire. Let me feed, Harlequin, so that I may sleep… you can’t keep
fighting me forever; give up, and I’ll spare you and the ones you
care about.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’ll fight until I’m dead.”
I watched one of the jester’s hands slide off the piano as it turned
on the stool it was sitting on. Slowly, the profile of its face came into
view. Before long, I was staring at the thing’s white, porcelain mask,
the roiling sky and even my own body reflected on it. The jester’s
painted lips were red and turned up into a smile, its eye sockets
were black, but from deep within I saw two red dots glowing dying
stars out there, in the infinite void of space.
“Let’s get started, then,” it said, those red lips never moving.
It raised one of its hands, pressed its index and middle fingers
against its thumb, clicked, and the world around me exploded. Light,
sound, smell, it came at me all at once, flooding every last one of
my senses. There were people shouting, music playing, whistles
rattling. I could smell beer, sweat, cologne. People were crowding all
around me, pushing, and shoving, and yelling as if they’d been
swept up into some kind of riotous frenzy, but it wasn’t a riot; it was
a carnival.
I struggled to right myself, moving with the crowd as it tried to
sweep me further down Bourbon street. There were people in
colorful costumes everywhere; women wearing two-piece showgirl
outfits covered in feathers and wearing incredibly flamboyant hair,
while men wore the traditional outfit of the jester, complete with
caps and bells.
People holding sparklers and beer bottles pushed past me as if I
wasn’t even there. Children screamed and laughed and sang with
their parents. One bald man had decided to go shirtless and was
racing down Bourbon street, his chest covered in bead necklaces,
screaming not with the voice of a man but roaring like a lion. To my
right I saw a trio of women pull their tops up and flash their breasts
at the guys standing on a balcony above them. Neither the men nor
the women had faces.
When I felt like I had my balance, I searched for the jester, the
one I was here for, but there was so much color in my eyes, so
many people pushing all around me, it was difficult to draw a clear
line of sight to it. It wasn’t sitting at the piano anymore. In fact,
there was a guy in the jester’s place dueling with another guy sitting
on the piano opposite his. A crowd had formed, and people were
throwing money at them—not bills, but coins, as hard as they could,
some coins drawing blood where they hit.
The current of people carried me along, pushing and shoving me
as if I were a piece of driftwood caught in the frothing rapids of a
violent river. I tried to push one woman away from me, but she
turned and slapped me hard enough across the face that I saw
stars. I cradled my cheek for an instant then stared at her. She was
yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
Before I could act, someone shoved me from behind, pushing me
right into the back of the bald man that had been roaring like a lion.
He turned around, screaming vitriol and hatred at me, and went to
take a swing at me, but I brought the scepter up to block his attack.
Muscly arm and metal collided with a loud ping. Before he could hit
me again, I pulled the scepter back and swung it at the back of the
man’s knee, sending him to the floor as if he was about to propose.
I then brought the scepter around for a back-swing, this time into
his face. The scepter smacked the man square in the what would
have been his mouth with a loud whack.
 When I spun around, scepter poised and ready to strike, the
crowd around me moved back like a school of fish separating at the
sight of a shark. A small, circular clearing opened around me,
creating a gap between me and them. A whistle rang out, and one
of them came at me. I braced myself, anchoring my body with my
right foot and then launching the scepter first into the stomach of
the charging man, and then into the side of his face.
He went down quick, but then a second one came for me. As I
twirled around to hit him, wielding the scepter like a baton, I noticed
his clothes were the same as the other guy’s. In fact, there was
nothing about this one that was different to the last one. The
scepter crashed into the side of his face with a loud crack, and he
went down too. When the third one sprang out of the crowd and
came toward me, I ran at him, vaulted into the air using his
shoulders for support, and hurled myself across the street, at an
impossible distance.
I landed with a clear space roll, when I turned around the group
of people that had been surrounding me had now turned to face me.
They yelled, and pointed, and then the entire carnival brought its
eyes to bear on me; hundreds and hundreds of eyes, some attached
to faces, others attached to faceless heads.
Without thinking about it I started sprinting down Bourbon street,
taking a hard-left turn at the next intersection. The street was quiet
save for the roar of the crowd at my back. They were coming for
me, they were going to hurt me, and as I tried to outrun them, I
remembered that the reason why I couldn’t see the jester was
because they were the jester.
This wasn’t the first, fifth, or even fifteenth time I had faced off
against the jester within the Twilight, but each time it was like I had
to learn some of the rules all over again. Though I remembered
every detail of what happened to me while I was inside the Twilight,
it seemed that information was only available to my waking mind.
Coming back into the Twilight carried the risk of forgetting
something important, something that could help me while I was in
here. I wasn’t sure if that was just another one of this place’s rules,
or if that was the jester’s doing, a way of protecting itself the way
some animals throw clouds of dirt into predators’ eyes.
I continued to run along the side street, with the simple goal of
reaching the next street in my mind. If I could do that, I thought, I
would be safe. At least, without that huge crowd at my back, the
jester would have to try another trick to get me. The roar of people
followed me as I ran, like backup vocals to the music of my heavy
breathing.
When I reached the next street, I took a tight right, and then
everything changed. The people were no longer after me, their
voices just gone leaving only a slight ringing in my ear. I wasn’t
running anymore, either; I was walking casually. And I wasn’t in the
French Quarter anymore—I was walking underneath a purple banner
with illegible writing on it, and into the mouth of a quiet, dead,
fairground.
It was like waking up all over again. The memory of what had just
happened faded into the recesses of my mind, where they would
resurface once I woke up; if I woke up. Now I was walking through
the fairground, the scent of cotton candy invading my nose, the
sound of squeaking metal joints and the squawking of crows
pervading the air.
I thought I could hear music again, distant and faint, but it wasn’t
a piano this time; it was an accordion, and it was also playing an
imperfect, lopsided melody. I walked past an unmanned food cart,
the contents of which were rotting and covered in maggots. Nearby,
the wall of a shooting range wasn’t just covered in tiny pockmarks
from where small metal pellets had been hitting for years, but also
splattered with blood. A rusted Ferris wheel which looked more like a
death-trap than an attraction towered above, its carts swaying
gently with the wind, its joints groaning.
A crow squawked, drawing my attention across the fairground.
The grey sky above rumbled, and this time it opened, unloading a
torrent of rain on my head. I watched the drops fall, my eyes
following them as if they were coming in slow motion, then I saw
the bodies. There were hundreds of them scattered across the
fairground, some laying on their backs, others on their fronts, all of
them were covered in blood that was pooling beneath them and
running as water fell on it.
I walked forward, stepping lightly around them, careful not to step
in any blood if I could help it. One man, I saw, had his throat ripped
open and blood was pouring out of it. A woman’s eyes—these bodies
had faces—had been gouged out, and blood was running down the
side of her face and out of her mouth. Everywhere I looked, there
was death, and blood. Most of the people here I didn’t know, but
some I did.
There was Evelyn, her fiery red hair caked with dark red blood,
her face looked like it had been savaged by an animal with sharp
nails. A few feet away was Lucia, lying on her side with a stab
wound in her stomach, blood trickling down to the ground. My
parents were there, people I used to work with were there, people
who lived in my building were there, everyone had been killed
somehow.
Then I saw the only body that wasn’t on the floor; it was hanging
from a lamp-post at the foot of the Ferris wheel, the breeze gently
pushing it this way and that. I approached, my heart hammering
against my temples, my fingertips, because I knew without seeing,
without truly knowing, who it was hanging from his neck from that
lamp-post, and I could do nothing but walk toward it, because I
couldn’t walk back, and staying still meant death when the jester
was around. Like a moth to a flame, I was pulled toward that body
swinging lightly from its neck, drawn inevitably to it until I saw his
face.
Damon.
His skin was pale, deathly pale, his eyes were bulging, his mouth
slack, lips blue. My heart wrenched at the sight. I wanted to stop, to
turn away, to wretch, but I couldn’t, because if I reacted, then the
jester would get what it needed from me, and I would be feeding it
with my own fear, my own pain.
“Andi,” a voice called out.
I turned my eyes up as the Ferris wheel started up, whining and
protesting as the massive metal structure began to turn. There,
sitting in one of the cars, was the jester. It was waving a gloved
hand at me as if it were a royal waving at the peasants that worship
it, then it pointed across from where I stood, and I found myself
powerless to stop from turning and giving my attention to what it
wanted me to see.
Eli.
He was upside down, shirtless, and strapped to a giant wheel.
Embedded in his chest, his shoulders, his legs, were knives that had
been thrown at him, lines of blood dribbling from each of the
wounds. His eyes were open, his mouth, like Damon’s, was slack and
open, his eyes also open but drooping and lifeless; all of the light
had gone from him.
They’re just pictures, I thought, but I couldn’t think this away.
They weren’t just pictures. The jester was imprinting, infecting, my
mind with not only the images, but also the doubt that I was even
dreaming at all. It seemed impossible that this creature could do
that considering I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing
on a logical level, but people always have a layer of doubt that
they’re dreaming when they’re deep inside; whatever is happening is
real enough to make you feel true joy, like holding onto a check for a
million dollars, or true fear, like being chased by a demon down a
dark hallway.
“Killing them was fun,” the jester said, and though it was far from
where I was standing, its voice was close enough to my ear to make
the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. “This one squealed
the most.”
Again, my attention was pulled, this time toward a carousel which
had been dark and quiet, until now. The lights flickered on, the
busted old PA system came to life, and a twisted ratchet came
through the speakers that sounded like two organs fighting each
other for the right to create the most messed up, nightmarish music;
if you could call it music.
Horses impaled to the top and bottom of the carousel passed by,
the odd train and car floated along, and then there was Logan. Like
the horses, he was also impaled and suspended in the air, bobbing
along with the rest of the carousel. He was facing the floor, his
shoulders were slumped, knuckles dragging. The pole entered
through his back and came out through his stomach, the underside
of which was covered in blood.
My stomach twisted like a rag over a sink. I wanted to hurl, to
scream, to run, but I couldn’t. I had to stand where I was, had to try
and push the images back, make them disappear, stop them from
closing in on me like walls—on three sides Logan, Eli, and Damon,
on the other, the Death Jester. I turned around again, using every
ounce of my willpower, and brought my eyes to bear on the Ferris
wheel. The jester was there, it had stepped out of the car and was
carefully dancing around the many, many dead bodies scattered
around the fairground, its bells jingling.
“I hope you like what I’ve done with the place,” it said, its voice
smooth and soft, “I made it just for you, Andi.”
I swallowed hard and dug deep. “Do you think this scares me?”
The jester stopped dancing and stared at the floor. It raised itself
up to full height, easily seven feet, then violently turned its head in
my direction to look at me, its neck and shoulders cracking with a
sound like gunshots popping off and echoing into the distance.
“Yes,” it said, “I do.”
Steeling myself against the horror all around me, I took a step
toward it, then another. “You’re wrong. This is nothing but smoke
and mirrors, party tricks. How long have you been trying to do to me
what you did to all those other people? Has it worked?”
The jester said nothing. A breeze passed between us, one that
reeked of blood and death.
“You can show me all you want,” I said, “But you’re going to have
to do better than that if you want to kill me.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Andi. I want to sleep, but you won’t let
me, and so I’m going to make sure you hurt, and I will eat your hurt
and be nourished by it, perhaps not enough to thrive, but enough to
survive. We can keep dancing, but I will be dancing long after you’ve
become a corpse and your body is rotting underground. Remember
that.”
I raised the scepter, directing the head at the jester. “I might die
fighting you, but I’m going to fight for a long, long time, and you’re
just going to get hungrier and hungrier. I don’t think that’s ever
happened to you before, so we’re going to find out just how long
you can really dance for. Because I think you’re going to make a
mistake, and when you do, I’m going to be there to put you back
into the hole you came out of.”
The jester lowered its head and flexed its long fingers. “Maybe I’ll
bring you with me. Don’t you think that’ll be fun, Andi? The things I
could show you.”
A trickle of power raced through me, a vibration that started in my
chest and moved through my arm and into my hand. This was it.
This was how I knew the jester had used too much of its own
energy trying to get me to crack, it was how I knew this whole thing
was over. “Until tomorrow,” I said, and the fairground around us
collapsed as if I had created a black hole where the jester was
standing, and everything except for me was being pulled in until
nothing remained but darkness, and silence.
I shot awake bolt upright, gasping for air, drenched in cold sweat.
My chest, the back of my neck, my hair, my pillow, I was covered in
it. The soft, morning breeze coming through the window felt like ice
against my skin, but it was daylight at least, I was in my bed, and I
was alive. I rubbed my eyes with one hand, in the other I had the
scepter, my hand so tightly wrapped around it my knuckles were
white.
The tiredness set in almost immediately. I could have done with
another hour or two of sleep, but it was morning, the others were
probably up, and I couldn’t risk going back to sleep anyway. There
was always a chance the jester was there, waiting, even though its
power was strongest at night. I’d just have to be tired again today,
not like that would be different from any other day from the past
three weeks.
 CHAPTER TWO

Beads of sweat weren’t just forming on my forehead, they were

pouring down my face, pooling around my eyes, and streaking down
my cheeks. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and stared at
Logan who stood across from me, shirtless and tanned, looking
every bit like the Roman Gladiator everyone came to the colosseum
to see.
His chest was heaving, his shoulders and arms glistening with
sweat, the tattoos on his body looking all the more vibrant for it. He
flexed his fingers, clenching them into fists and relaxing them over
and over, never taking his eyes off me, not for a moment. He was
easily three times my size, nothing but rippling abs and chords of
muscle. I, on the other hand, was small and taut, like a bowstring,
standing before him wearing a pair of black yoga pants and a tight
black tank top. Ever since Logan and I had started training outdoors
almost every morning my skin had also taken on a healthy tan.
I was looking good and feeling good, and I almost thought Logan
was stalling just long enough to drink in the sight of me. The
thought sent an electric current running up and down my spine in an
instant. My cheeks flushed. “Well?” I asked.
“You’re impressive,” he said.
That shook me. “I’m… what?”
“Come at me again, and this time don’t hold back. Try to hit me,
try to make it hurt.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Logan.”
“If you don’t hurt me, I’m going to hurt you.”
 More electricity pulsed through me. “Alright,” I said, tightening my
hands into fists. I broke into a run, heart thumping, hands pumping
at my sides, the muscles in my legs pushing me to move faster with
every step I took. Logan braced himself, taking a sideways stance
that made him seem to almost shrink in front of me.
When I thought I was close enough to hit him with a punch, I dug
my left foot into the ground and, using the momentum from my run,
I threw a fist at him. Naturally he was able to block the fist with his
forearm and swing it aside, but I was ready with my left hand,
swinging it around in a small arc and aiming it at his midsection.
Logan stepped back, dodging the hit, then he reached out to grab
me, but I rolled past him and out of his reach.
Logan turned around in time to deflect the kick I had thrown at
him from behind with his shin. He went to grab my foot, but I was
too fast for him. Before he could grab me, I was on my feet again,
throwing punch after punch which he was able to block and dodge,
though not with nearly as much ease as he may have wanted to
display. I wasn’t just keeping him on his toes, one lapse in
concentration from him and I would finally, after three weeks, land a
punch on his substantial body.
But it was I who lapsed. I went to throw a right hook into his
torso, having spotted an opening, but my movements were too
sluggish, too slow. Logan intercepted my punch by grabbing my arm
and twisting me around. He then wrapped an arm around my waist
and pulled me to him, pressing my back against his chest.
“Got you,” he said, with a sense of triumph to his voice.
His heart was beating so hard and fast I could hear it pumping
against the back of my head. His body was so warm, it was almost
suffocating, but the closeness wasn’t unwelcomed, nor was the
feeling of safety that came with being wrapped up in Logan’s arms.
For all of his strength, all of his power, he had a warm, tender
energy that I was only happy to soak up and enjoy. Only I couldn’t
enjoy it for long.
Dark spots began winking into existence in front of my eyes, my
vision started to blacken, and the world tilted over.
I blinked hard, then rubbed my eyes. “Hey,” I said.
 “You passed out,” Logan said.
“Shit.”
“I think it’s the heat. We pushed too hard today.”
“We don’t exactly have an indoor space we can train in.”
“Maybe I should look into that. Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I think so. I’m not sure what happened, exactly. You’d
grabbed me and I just passed out.”
“You slowed down first. I noticed.”
“Noticed?”
Logan handed me a glass of water, and I drank it in one go.
“You’ve improved a lot over the past few weeks. I don’t know if it’s
my training or what, but you’re taking leaps with your development.
I thought maybe you’d been going to someone else for training too.”
A cold, sick feeling moved through me, the kind you get when
you’re withholding vital information from someone else. I had been
holding onto a secret for going on three weeks. Neither Logan,
Damon, or even Eli knew that, every night, the jester and I dueled
within the Twilight. I had wanted to tell them the second time it
happened, but there was nothing they could do to help me, and I
wanted a little normalcy to return to my life, so I kept my midnight
fights to myself, and the world around me did start to look normal
again for a while.
Eli had convinced me to give up the lease on my place and I had
moved in here as a semi-permanent guest, like Logan and Damon.
Together the three of us had managed to dig into a bunch of
pending DPA cases and close them, snuffing out rogue hauntings,
finding missing Mages, all while tracking down the circus. It was
good to know we were making a difference, and if that good feeling
came with the price of my silence and tiredness, then so be it.
But I had just passed out in front of Logan, and while he believed
it was the heat, how long until something like this happens again?
“It’s not that,” I said.
“So, you just woke up one morning and decided you could fight?”
“I—”
The front door opened, letting the scent of summer itself into the
house. Damon followed, wearing his usual uniform of black pants
and a black shirt, unbuttoned at the top, sleeves rolled up. My chest
tightened when I saw him, not because I thought he looked
delicious in what he was wearing, with his sandy brown hair flicked
over his head, some strands of it falling wildly across his face, but
because last night I had seen him hanging from a lamp-post by his
neck and wiping the images from my mind wasn’t something I had
been able to easily do.
“She’s awake,” Logan said.
Damon turned his attention to me. “Passed out, huh?”
“Did you rush here from work?”
“Logan said it wasn’t serious but I wanted to check in anyway.”
“I’m fine, really, but thank you.”
“How did it happen?”
“The heat, I think,” Logan said, “I don’t think we can keep doing
this outside.”
“We aren’t exactly spoiled for choice,” Damon said, “Not unless we
can find a big enough spot to rent that’ll suit your purposes, and we
aren’t going to find any nearby.” His eyes narrowed as they fell on
me. “What is it?” he asked, his tone not exactly accusatory, but more
like he’d just clued in on something and was looking for
confirmation.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He squatted in front of me and took my hand. “I’m going to ask
you this once. Is something going on?”
I gave him a curious look but didn’t immediately answer. “Again…
what do you mean?”
“I just sensed something from you.”
“Sensed? Did you read my mind? Because that wasn’t cool the
first time.”
“I didn’t read your mind—you’d broadcasted the thought for
anyone with a psychic antenna within range to hear. That wasn’t my
fault.”
I sat up and waited for the head-rush to fade, taking the dizziness
with it. Damon and Logan were looking at me, waiting for me to
answer them, to tell them what was going on. This time, there
would be no hiding it. In my mind, the day that I told them what
had been happening to me, Eli was here too, but he was at the
office working late. I supposed I could have chosen to stall them by
asking to wait for Eli’s return, but they’d start worrying, or worse,
call Eli back home before he had been able to finish what he was
doing for the day.
“Okay,” I said, tucking loose strands of hair behind my ear, “I’ll tell
you.”
“Tell us what?” Damon asked, a little impatiently I might add.
“I’d thought maybe you’d have figured it out by now at least.”
“Me?”
“You’ve always got such a good read on my emotional and mental
state. I guess I’ve been hiding it pretty well.”
“Hiding what?” Logan asked.
I bit my lower lip. “The jester…”
Damon and Logan shared a concerned look. “Tell me what you’re
talking about,” Damon asked.
I took a breath. “The last time I saw the jester wasn’t three weeks
ago, like I’d said.”
“You mean, like you insist every time we’ve asked you?”
I nodded. “I know, I’ve lied, but the truth is… I see the jester
every night. Every night I enter the Twilight when I dream, and
every night I use the scepter to lure the jester to me so it can’t find
someone else to hurt.”
“For three weeks? Why would you lie about something like that?”
“It’s going to sound stupid, but I had been handling the situation,
and things had been going so well for us… I thought if I could just
keep it coming to me every night, it would eventually run out of
power and go to sleep.”
Damon’s eyes narrowed. “But that hasn’t happened.”
I swallowed hard. “No… even though it hasn’t been able to kill
me, I think it’s still feeding off me. What little I give it every night
seems to be enough to keep it active, keep it coming back.”
“Coming back and doing… what?” Logan asked.
It occurred to me then that neither Damon nor Logan had much
of an idea of what happened in the Twilight, or even what it really
was. Neither man had ever been to the Twilight; for them, they had
just been dreaming. I, however, spent almost as many hours
conscious and inside the Twilight as I did conscious and awake. To
say it was exhausting was an understatement. It wasn’t that I didn’t
sleep, it just felt like I wasn’t sleeping, and that was somehow
worse. But I had been handling the situation, truly, at least until
today; this was the first time I had found myself giving in to the
exhaustion.
I explained my dream from last night to Damon and Logan, who
hung onto my every word, anxious to hear the next. When I got to
the fairground sequence, to the bodies, to Damon hanging from the
post, to Eli pinned to the spinning wheel, to Logan looking like a
grotesque carrousel ride, Logan stopped me.
I reached for his hand and took it. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“This is what you do every night?” he asked, “You go into the
Twilight and you… fight?”
At the same time, Damon asked “How could you keep this from
us?” while Logan said, “That’s awesome.” Their voices overlapped,
and they stared at each other, having each said something entirely
different; Damon had scolded me, while Logan seemed downright
impressed.
“What?” Damon asked.
“No wonder she’s been getting faster and stronger,” Logan said,
looking over at me, “How is it even possible that you can train while
you’re asleep?”
I shrugged. “The mind is at work, I guess. I’m not really
sleeping.”
“Andi, do you have any idea how dangerous what you’re doing
is?” Damon asked, “You know the jester has the power to kill people
in their dreams. If something were to happen to you while you’re
asleep, how would we be able to help? How would we know if you
were to die?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to keep it from you.”
“We could have helped you, Andi.”
“I think what she’s doing is badass,” Logan said, “Fighting the
jester off single-handedly every single night? If all you’ve got to
show for it is a little tiredness, that’s impressive.”
 “I don’t think we should be encouraging this,” Damon said.
“Encouraging her to defend herself and to get better at dealing
with people and things that want to kill her? I think we should.”
“Guys,” I said, interrupting the squabble, “I know you both want
what’s best for me, but I did this because I also want what’s best for
us as a group. The fact is, until we can find a way for the three of
you to be able to use your own magic inside of the Twilight, I don’t
have another choice but to do this on my own. I just chose to
shoulder the responsibility.”
“Andi, I’m just worried about you,” Damon said, “You get that,
right?”
Blood flushed to my cheeks. I wanted to turn away from him. I
could hear the disappointment in his voice, and I almost couldn’t
bear it. Instead of looking down, I looked at Logan. “I’m sorry I
didn’t tell anyone,” I said, “I hope you can understand why I did it.”
Logan nodded. “I understand, and Damon does too. Eli will when
we tell him. Damon just doesn’t like not being kept in the loop.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Damon asked.
“Nothing, I get it,” I said, “But you know now, so, there’s nothing
to hide.”
A pause passed between us. Outside, a bird chirped, and a car
hissed along down the street. As the seconds passed, I got the
impression Damon’s frustration was starting to settle. “Will it happen
again tonight?” Damon asked.
I glanced at both men, then nodded. “It’s happened every single
night.”
“Does it happen every time you sleep, or just at night?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, if you’re tired, then maybe you can get some sleep during
the day.”
“But then I can’t enter the Twilight at night when it’s hunting for
food.”
“I think I can come up with a solution for that.”
“What kind of solution?”
Damon checked his watch. “It’s still early, how about I take you
out for lunch and we can talk about it? I’ve got something else I
want to talk to you about, too.”
“Something else?”
“We’ll discuss it over lunch. Logan, do you want to come with us?”
Logan shook his head. “Thanks, but no. I’ve got a couple of things
to take care of.”
“That sounds ominous, Logan,” I said.
Logan stood and grinned at me. “It was supposed to.” He leaned
over and kissed me lightly on the cheek, sending a pulse of warm
tingles through my entire body like ripples in a pond. “It’s pretty hot
what you’ve been doing,” he said.
He walked off before I could reply, leaving my body charged and
questions burning on my lips.
“Shall we?” Damon asked, extending his hand toward me.
I took it and rose gently enough that my head didn’t spin for a
second time. “Where are we going?” I asked. “I need to have a
shower and change first.”
“Go ahead. I found a place that does great lobster in the French
Quarter—felt like a taste of home today.”
“I thought you were born in Chicago.”
“I was, but I’ve lived in Boston for more of my adult life than I
have in Chicago. They’re both my home.”
“And this thing you’ve gotta talk to me about, should I be
worried?
He shrugged. “I guess you’ll find out when we get there.”
 CHAPTER THREE

Taste of Maine was a small, fancy eatery nestled between

Bourbon and Dauphine street, right at the heart of the French
Quarter. Though there was only one street-facing window,
everything about this restaurant screamed bright, from the cream
walls, to the high ceiling, to the white tablecloths. There were two
sides to the restaurant, divided by a brightly lit display of aquatic
animals suspended in the air, sharks, octopi, schools of fish, that
kind of thing. There was a bar at the back at which some were
enjoying an after-lunch cocktail, and the air was full with the salty
scent of grilled fish and melting butter. All in all, the restaurant
carried itself with a sense of finery and class I wasn’t used to.
My taste buds prickled as Damon and I were shown to a table he
had reserved for us. Immediately after sitting, we were each handed
a menu and told of the day’s specials; a red snapper ceviche served
with sweet potato fries and fried red royal shrimp in a Vietnamese
sauce. Damon ordered the classic lobster roll, which according to the
waitress was caught less than two days ago, and I ordered the
same.
The waitress then filled our glasses with water and left with our
orders, leaving the pitcher on the table.
I tried to stare around the room and take it in, the walls, the
wooden pylons, the people, but my eyes kept going back to Damon
and his sandy brown hair. In this light, he looked every bit as
handsome as he had always been, and more. I couldn’t let go of his
eyes, crystal blue and flecked with silver. I had never seen eyes as
clear as his, as inviting as the water on the beach of some tropical,
untouched-by-man island.
“So,” he said, “How do you like the place?”
“I’ve never been here,” I said, “Congratulations for taking me
somewhere new in my own home town.”
“I don’t think it deserves congratulations considering the night we
met you’d mentioned how only tourists partied on the French
Quarter.”
“True, but I do like to eat, and the French Quarter really does
have some awesome places to eat at, like Duke’s. I’ve also never
eaten lobster before, so this’ll be a first.”
“Never? I thought seafood was big in New Orleans.”
“Shrimp is, sure. Clams, oysters, too. I guess lobster would be up
there on the list, but I couldn’t exactly afford it on a waitress’s
salary, even when the tips were good.”
“Well, according to the reviews, this one is the best in town.”
“It looks like the kind of place that only serves up the best.”
“And that’s why I brought you here.”
“Really? Not because you had something you wanted to talk to me
about?”
“That also.”
“Well? Are you going to leave me in suspense all day or are we
going to get to it?”
“All in good time.” He sipped his water. “First, I want to talk about
what we were discussing back at the house.”
I lowered my voice. “The jester.”
“Yes. I’ve been considering it, and I think I have a solution. I wish
you’d have told me sooner, maybe I could have helped you deal with
it from the start and save you from the exhaustion you’ve been
feeling today, but there’s no use dwelling about things we can’t
change.”
“What have you come up with?”
He took another sip. “I want you to put me in control of your
sleeping routine.”
“You want to… what?”
 He nodded. “The jester doesn’t have the power to enter your
dreams because it wants to, correct?”
“I don’t know if that’s true. It was able to enter the dreams of
other people and kill them while they slept.”
“Yes, but as far as I know, those people were all human, which
means we as Mages have some kind of natural protection against it.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “I think it doesn’t like eating the dreams of
Mages because we’re harder to get a reaction from.”
Damon tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’re Mages, right? We’ve seen things people don’t see,
we know things people don’t know. It’s harder to scare us. Humans
though, they don’t know the things we know. They scare more
easily. I don’t think it’s a question of it can’t enter our dreams, I
think it won’t.”
“Even if it means dying?”
I paused. “We can’t kill it, you know that, right?”
“Everything can be killed.”
“Not this. Not it. We can only put it to sleep. I’m dragging it into
my own dreams every night, hoping that it’ll starve itself, but it is
feeding from me, even if it’s only enough to remain active. That’s
why I have to do what I do every night.”
Damon considered my words while drinking another swig of water.
He set his glass down. “I’m concerned about the psychological
impact this is having on your mind. Physiologically, you’re getting the
sleep you need to be getting. Your brain, likewise, seems to be
getting enough sleep—if you weren’t, you’d have been dead two
weeks ago. But you’re still tired enough that you passed out earlier,
and as much as we can all blame the heat, I doubt it. Your body is
definitely lacking the benefit of a real, undisturbed sleep, and that’s
what I want to make sure you get.”
“So, you want to take control of my sleeping habits?”
“With magic I can help you get the equivalent of about 6 hours
rest with only two hours of actually being asleep.”
 “Won’t that mean that I can’t sleep that night, though? No, I can’t
do that. I need to draw the jester to me at night, that’s when it
hunts; when the majority of people are asleep.”
“I can induce a restful sleep during the day and then also induce a
longer sleep at night. You’ll lose two hours of your day to get the
rest you need, and then at night you’ll still be able to sleep and
enter the Twilight.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That sounds like a lot of magic, won’t you
suffer?”
He shrugged. “I’m not the one that has to fight an ancient
creature that eats dreams every night. I can take the strain on my
body if it means you’ll be a little better equipped to protect yourself
against that thing.”
“Damon… are you sure?”
He nodded. “I’m sure. Anyone would do the same in my position.”
I reached for his hand and took it. “No, not anyone.”
“Anyone who understands just what’s at stake here, then, and I
do understand what’s at stake. On one hand there’s the lives of any
countless number of people who might succumb to the jester’s
predations, on the other hand there’s yours. I won’t gamble with
yours.”
“We’ll try it. When we get back to the house, we’ll try it. God
knows I could do with some real, restful sleep.”
“And then tonight I’ll put you to sleep, and you can face off
against the jester again.”
“Don’t remind me.” Damon squeezed my hand, and I squeezed his
in return. He then let his eyes fall on the union of our skin, and
something passed in front of his eyes. Not a light—no, this wasn’t
magic. It was more like the shadow of a cloud passing over your
own shadow, something dark that tasted like concern, or… “Damon?”
My voice won his attention again and he turned his eyes up at
me. “What is it?”
“Are you okay?”
A pause. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
My heart started to beat a little more rapidly inside of my chest,
and a cold wash pushed through me. “Go ahead.”
Another random document with
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comprehensiveness, and again to the inner harmony or systematic
structure of the interest it embodies, it constitutes a genuine self-
existing individual whole of the kind which psychologists recognise
as a “self.” And again, in so far as my life exhibits determinate
character, so far do these systematic purposes or minor “selves”
form a larger system, also individual, which may be called my “total
self.” And both the many lesser “selves” and the larger “self” are real
in the same sense of the word. Neither exists merely in or for the
other; the wider or whole “self” is no mere collection or resultant or
product of the more special “selves,” nor are they again mere results
of a theoretical process of analysis and abstraction. In so far as they
are genuine systems at all, they are not mere “parts” of a whole, but
each is the expression, in a concrete conscious life, of the nature of
a larger whole from a special “point of view.” The whole, if not
equally in every part, is yet as a whole present in every part, and
precisely for that reason the category of part and whole is
inadequate to express their relation. Somewhat after this fashion we
must conceive the structure of any individual whole of lesser
individuals. Why, in spite of the analogy, it is desirable not to speak
of the whole of Reality as a “Self,” will be made clearer as we
proceed.[63]
§ 8. The view we have formulated is perhaps more closely akin to
Spinoza’s conception of the relation of the human mind to the
“infinite intellect of God,” than to any other historically famous theory.
According to Spinoza, the individual human mind is an “eternal mode
of consciousness which, taken together with all other such ‘modes,’
makes up the infinite intellect of God.” The meaning of the epithet
“eternal” we cannot, of course, enter into until we have discussed the
relation of the time-process to experience. The rest of the definition
pretty clearly coincides in its general sense with the view we have
tried to expound of the nature of the relation between the supreme
experience and its constituent experiences. For the “modes” of
Spinoza are definitely thought of as genuinely individual
manifestations of the nature of his ultimate reality, “substance” or
“God.” Their individuality and their infinite multiplicity is no result of
illusion or illegitimate abstraction. And, on the other hand,
“substance” itself is genuinely individual; it is no mere abstract name
for the common properties of a number of ultimately independent
things.
Most of the adverse criticism which Spinozism has met with, as far
at least as regards its doctrine of the nature of the human mind,
seems to be based on misapprehension about the first of these
points. From his use of the numerical category of whole and part to
express the relation between substance and its modes, Spinoza has
incorrectly been taken to be denying the fact of the genuine
individuality of the finite experience, and therefore to be declaring the
very existence of the finite to be mere baseless illusion. With his
doctrine as thus misinterpreted, ours has, of course, no similarity.
Nothing is explained away by calling it “illusion”; the “illusory” fact is
there in spite of the hard names you choose to bestow on it, and
demands explanation no less than any other fact. Our theory aims
not at dismissing finite individuality as illusion, but at ascertaining
what it means, what are its limits, and how it stands related to the
complete individual whole of experience which Spinoza calls the
infinitus intellectus Dei.[64]
The mention of Spinoza will no doubt suggest to the reader the
famous doctrine, which has played so large a part in the subsequent
development of philosophical Monism, of the double “aspects” or
“attributes” of Reality. It is from Spinoza that modern Monism has
learned the view that the mental and physical orders are related as
two parallel but distinct manifestations of a common underlying
reality, so that to every member of one order there corresponds a
determinate member of the other. The two are thus everywhere
inseparable and everywhere irreducible “parallel” expressions of a
nature which is neither mental nor physical. On this fundamental
point our theory, as will have been seen already, completely parts
company with Spinozism. That the nature of one and the same
common whole should be equally manifested in two entirely
irreducible forms, is a patent impossibility. Either the unity of the
whole or the absolute disparateness of its twin manifestations must
be surrendered if we are to think consistently. Hence we cannot
avoid asking in which of the two series the assumed common nature
is more adequately expressed. According as we answer this
question we shall find ourselves led in the end either to thorough-
going Materialism or to thorough-going Idealism. For our own part,
the perception that Reality is experience and nothing else has
already committed us to the view that both of the seemingly
disparate series must in the end be mental. Thus our doctrine may
be said to be much what Spinoza’s would be if the attribute of
“extension” were removed from his scheme, and the whole of Reality
identified with the “infinite intellect of God.”[65]

Consult further:—B. Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, lect. 2; Logic,

vol. ii. chap. 7; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 13, 14,
20; L. T. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, pt. 3, chap. 6, “Reality as
a System”; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. i. chap. 6 (Eng. trans., vol. i.
pp. 163-191); J. S. Mackenzie, Outlines of Metaphysic, bk. i. chaps.
2, 3; bk. iii. chap. 6; J. E. M‘Taggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology,
chap. 2.
 54. This consideration obviously influenced Leibnitz. It is a much-
decried doctrine in his system that every “monad,” or simple real
thing, perceives nothing but its own internal states; there are no
“windows” through which one monad can behold the states of
another. It is easy to show that this doctrine leads to extremely far-
fetched and fantastic hypotheses to account for the apparent
communication between different monads, but not so easy to show
that Pluralism can afford to dispense with it. See in particular
Leibnitz’s New System of the Nature of Substances (Works, ed.
Erdmann, 124 ff.; ed. Gerhardt, iv. 477 ff.; Eng. trans. in Latta’s
Leibnis: the Monadology, etc., p. 297 ff.), especially §§ 13-17 and
Monadology, §§ 7-9, 51.
55. See for a recent treatment of this point in its bearing upon the
theory of volition and moral accountability, Mr. Bradley’s article on
“Mental Conflict and Imputation” in Mind for July 1902. There is
probably no part of Psychology which suffers more from an improper
over-simplification of awkward facts.
56. As the reader will readily collect from the preceding discussion,
I do not myself admit that they are justified. On the contrary, I should
hold that any consistent Pluralism must issue in what, if I held it
myself, I should feel compelled to describe as Atheism, and the
doctrine of blind chance as the arbiter of all things. In this matter I
should like to associate myself entirely with the emphatic protest of
Mr. Bradley, in Mind July 1902, p. 313, and with the remarks of Mr. B.
Russell in his work on The Philosophy of Leibniz, p. 172. I need not
say that I do not make these remarks for the purpose of
disparagement. By all means, if Atheism is the logical outcome of
consistent thinking, let us say so; what I object to is the constant
appeal to theistic beliefs on the part of metaphysicians who, so far as
I can see, ought to be atheists if they were in earnest with their own
position.
57. For a popular exemplification of the kind of appeal to religious
and ethical interests here objected to, see the first essay in Prof.
James’s Will to Believe. I have never been able to understand why
these appeals, if legitimate, should not be allowed in Psychology or
any other science as readily as in Metaphysics. Would Prof. James
regard it as a valid argument for the “timeless self” or the
Innervationsgefühle, that some men may be better or happier for
believing in them? Or again, is it in itself an objection to the study of
Ethics that certain persons may become both less moral and less
happy as a consequence of studying it?
58. N.B.—These possibilities, it must be remembered, though
numerically infinite, are assumed to be qualitatively determinate,
being constituted of the condition of conformity to the logical principle
of non-contradiction. Now there is no reason in the nature of a
plurality of independent things why this principle should be
recognised rather than not.
59. A medley of independent things would not even be really
“many.” For until you can count “first, second, third....” you have not
your Many. And nothing but the terms of a coherent connected series
can be counted. What you can count as many is shown by the very
fact of your ability to count it to have a common nature or ground
which permits of its orderly arrangement, and thus to be part of one
system. Compare Plato, Parmenides, 164, 165.
60. As Aristotle more than once says, a human hand, for instance,
is not when severed from the rest of the body a “hand” at all, except
ὁμωνύμως “equivocally,” any more than the “hand” of a statue is a
true hand. (I.e. it is only a “true hand” so long as it does the work of a
hand. Captain Cuttle’s hook probably deserved the name of “hand”
better than the severed member it replaced).
61. I shall attempt to show in a later chapter (Bk. IV. chap. 3) that,
in any useful signification of the term “self,” Reality is not a “self” nor
yet a mere community of “selves.”
62. Again, I must remind the reader that this recognition of the
teleological character of mind does not in the least preclude the
necessity for psychological analysis of mental states. Still less does
it require us to include in our analysis a volitional element as one
distinguishable aspect or component of the isolated mental state by
the side of others, such as the presentational and emotional aspects.
It might even be contended that a “tripartite” or three-aspect
Psychology commits the mistake of counting in the whole psychical
fact as one of its own components.
63. See infra, Bk. IV. chap. 3, where we shall find that the relation
of the individual self to a social whole probably furnishes a still better,
though not altogether satisfactory, illustration of our principle.
64. For Spinoza’s doctrine see especially Ethics, I. 15, 25; II. 11,
40; III. 6-9; V. 22, 23, with the explanations of any good exposition of
his system, such as that of Pollock or Joachim.
65. See further on the “Parallelistic” doctrine, Bk. IV. chap. 2.
 CHAPTER III

REALITY AND ITS APPEARANCES—THE

DEGREES OF REALITY
§ 1. Reality being a single systematic whole, the nature of its constituent elements
is only finally intelligible in the light of the whole system. Hence each of its
“appearances,” if considered as a whole in itself, must be more or less
contradictory. § 2. But some “appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole
more adequately than others, and have therefore a higher degree of reality. §
3. This conception of degree of reality may be illustrated by comparison with
the successive orders of infinites and infinitesimals in Mathematics. It would
be the task of a complete Philosophy to assign the contents of the world to
their proper place in the series of “orders” of reality. § 4. In general any
subordinate whole is real in proportion as it is a self-contained whole. And it is
a self-contained whole in proportion as it is (a) comprehensive, (b) systematic;
that is, a thing is real just so far as it is truly individual. § 5. The two criteria of
individuality, though ultimately coincident, tend in particular cases to fall apart
for our insight, owing to the limitation of human knowledge. § 6. Ultimately
only the whole system of experience is completely individual, all other
individuality is approximate. § 7. In other words, the whole system of
experience is an infinite individual, all subordinate individuality is finite.
Comparison of this position with the doctrines of Leibnitz. § 8. Recapitulatory
statement of the relation of Reality to its Appearances.

§ 1. Reality, we have seen, is to be thought of as a systematic

whole forming a single individual experience, which is composed of
elements or constituents which are in their turn individual
experiences. In each of these constituents the nature of the whole
system manifests itself in a special way. Each of them contributes its
own peculiar content to the whole system, and as the suppression or
change of any one of them would alter the character of the whole, so
it is the nature of the whole which determines the character of each
of its constituents. In this way the whole and its constituent members
are in complete interpenetration and form a perfect systematic unity.
In the happy phrase of Leibnitz, we may say that each of the partial
experiences reflects the whole system from its own peculiar “point of
view.” If we call the completed system, as it is for itself, Reality par
excellence, we may appropriately speak of the partial experiences in
which its nature is diversely manifested as its Appearances. We
must remember, however, that to call them appearances is not to
stamp them as illusory or unreal. They will only be illusory or unreal
when we forget that they are one and all partial aspects or
manifestations of a whole of which none of them adequately
exhausts the contents.
When we forget this and treat any partial experience as though it
were the complete and adequate expression of the whole nature of
Reality,—in other words, when we try to apply to existence or the
universe as a whole conceptions which are only valid for special
aspects of existence,—we shall inevitably find ourselves led to
contradictory and absurd results. Each partial aspect of a total
system can only be ultimately understood by reference to the whole
to which it belongs, and hence any attempt to treat the part in
abstraction as itself a self-contained whole,—or, in other words, to
treat the concepts with which we have to work in dealing with some
special aspect of the world of experience as ultimately valid in their
application to the whole system,—is bound to issue in contradiction.
Again, just because our knowledge of the structure of the system as
a whole is so imperfect as it is, our insight into the structure of its
constituents is also necessarily limited. Hence it will commonly
happen that, even within the limits of their applicability, the special
concepts of our various sciences are not, when thought out, free
from internal contradiction. For instance, we are led to absurd results
when we try, as Materialism does, to interpret the whole system of
experience in terms of the concepts used in the purely physical
sciences; and again, even in their restricted use as physical
categories, these concepts seem incapable of being so defined as to
involve no element of contradiction.
In both these senses all Appearance implies an element of
contradiction; only for an insight which could take in at once the
whole system of existence would its details be completely coherent
and harmonious. But this does not alter the fact that, so far as our
insight into any part of the whole and its connection with other parts
is self-consistent, it does convey genuine, though imperfect,
knowledge of the whole. Though our detailed insight into the
structure of the whole may never reach the ideal of perfect self-
consistency, yet it may approximate to that ideal in different degrees,
at different stages, or with reference to different aspects. And the
closer the approximation the less the modification which our
knowledge would require to bring it into complete harmony with itself,
and the greater therefore the element of truth about Reality which it
contains.
In particular, we must carefully avoid falling into the mistake of
thinking of the Reality and the world of its appearances as though
they formed two distinct realms. In a systematic unity, we must
remember, the whole can exist only in so far as it expresses its
nature in the system of its parts, and again the parts can have no
being except as the whole expresses itself through them. To the
degree to which this condition is departed from by any of the types of
system familiar to us, those systems fall short of being perfectly
systematic. Reality, then, being a systematic whole, can have no
being apart from its appearance, though neither any of them taken
singly, nor yet the sum of them thought of collectively,[66] can exhaust
its contents. And though no appearance is the whole of Reality, in
none of them all does the whole Reality fail to manifest itself as a
whole. The whole is truly, as a whole, present in each and every
part, while yet no part is the whole.[67]
We may once more illustrate by an appeal to our own direct
experience. Consider the way in which we set to work to execute any
systematic scheme or purpose, e.g. the mastery of a particular
science or a particular business. We have in such a case a central
aim or purpose, which in the process of execution spreads out into a
connected system of subordinate ideas and interests welded into
one by the reference to a common end which pervades the whole.
The supreme or central aim is only realised in the successive
realisation of the subordinate stages; at the same time, while it is
what sustains all the members of the system, it has no existence
apart from them, though it is identical neither with any one of them
nor yet with their sum collectively considered.
§ 2. If our conviction that Reality is a single systematic unity
pervading and manifesting itself in lesser systematic unities is
correct, we shall expect to find that some of the lesser systematic
unities with which we have to deal in practical life and in the various
sciences exhibit more of the full character of the whole to which they
belong than others. The “points of view” from which each minor
system reflects the whole, though all true, need not be all equally
true. Though the whole, in a genuine system, must be present as a
whole in every part, it need not be equally present in all; it may well
not be “as full, as perfect in a hair as heart.” To take a concrete
example, a cluster of mass-particles, a machine, a living organism,
and a human mind engaged in the conscious systematic pursuit of
truth, are all to some degree or other systematic unities, and all to
some degree, therefore, repeat the structure of the universal whole
to which they all belong. But it does not follow that all manifest the
structure of that whole with equal adequacy and fulness. Indeed, any
philosophy which admits development as a genuine feature of the
world-process must maintain that they do not, that the nature of the
whole system of Reality is exhibited with infinitely greater adequacy
and clearness in the working of the conscious mind than in the
changes of configuration of the system of mass-particles or even the
vital processes of the physical organism.
In practical life, too, one of our most ineradicable convictions is
that there are degrees of worth which coincide with degrees of the
adequacy with which partial systems exhibit the nature of the larger
wholes to which they belong. For instance, among the different
mental systems which may be called my partial “selves,” there are
some which I call “truer” than others, on the ground that they more
fully reveal my whole character as an individual human being. My
whole character undoubtedly appears in and determines all the
subordinate systems which make up my mental life. Each of them is
the whole character in a special aspect, or as reacting upon a
special system of suggestions, but some of them contain the whole
in a more developed and explicit form than others. I am in one sense
myself wherever I may be and whatever I may be doing, and yet I
am “more myself” in health than in sickness, in the free pursuit of
self-chosen studies than in the forced discharge of uncongenial
tasks imposed on me by the necessity of earning an income.
 We ought, then, to be prepared to find the same state of things
universally in the relation of Reality to its Appearances. In a world
where “higher” and “lower,” “more” and “less” true have a meaning,
some of the lesser systems in which the nature of the whole is
expressed must be fuller and more adequate representations of that
nature than others. This is as much as to say that it would require
comparatively little transformation of some of the partial systems
recognised by our knowledge to show how the common nature of the
whole system of Reality is expressed in them; in other cases the
amount of transformation required to show how the whole repeats
itself in the part would be much more extensive. To take a single
instance, if our preceding analysis of the general nature of Reality is
sound, we can see much more clearly how that nature reappears in
the structure of a human mind than how it is exhibited in what we call
a physical thing, and we may therefore say the human mind
expresses the fundamental character of the whole system much
more fully and adequately than physical nature, as it exists for our
apprehension. More briefly, the same thought may be expressed by
saying that Reality has degrees, and that the forms of Appearance in
which its common nature is most fully and clearly manifested have
the highest degrees of reality.
§ 3. This conception of Reality as capable of degrees may at first
seem paradoxical. How can anything, it will be asked, be more or
less “real” than anything else? Must not anything either be entirely
real or not real at all? But the same difficulty might be raised about
the recognition of degree in other cases where its validity is now
universally admitted. Thus to some minds it has appeared that there
can be no degrees of the infinite or the infinitesimal; all infinites, and
again all zeros, have been declared to be manifestly equal. Yet it
hardly seems possible to escape the conclusion that the concept of
successive orders of infinitely great, and again of infinitely small,
magnitudes is not only intelligible but absolutely necessary if our
thought on quantitative subjects is to be consistent (When the sides
of a rectangle, for instance, become infinitely great or infinitely small
relatively to whatever is our standard of comparison, it still remains a
rectangle, and its area therefore is still determined by the product of
its sides, and is therefore infinitely great or small, as the case may
be, in relation not only to our original standard but to the sides
themselves.[68]) What is in one sense not a matter of degree, may yet
in another not only admit but positively require the distinction of
degrees of more and less. And this is precisely the case with Reality
as it manifests itself in its various appearances. In the sense that it is
the same single experience-system which appears as a whole and in
its whole nature in every one of the subordinate experience-systems,
they are all alike real, and each is as indispensable as every other to
the existence of the whole. In the sense that the whole is more
explicitly present in one than in another, there is an infinity of
possible degrees of reality and unreality. We should be justified in
borrowing a term from mathematical science to mark this double
relation of the appearances to their Reality, and speaking of them as
successive orders of Reality. And we might then say that it is one of
the principal problems of a complete Philosophy to ascertain and
arrange in their proper sequence, as far as the limitations of our
knowledge permit, the orders of Reality.
§ 4. Such a task as this could only be carried out by an intelligence
equally at home in metaphysical analysis and in the results of the
special sciences, and would form the proper work of applied
Metaphysics. In a discussion of general metaphysical principles it is
sufficient to indicate the general nature of the criteria by which the
degree of reality exhibited by any special partial system must be
determined. Now, this general nature has been already made fairly
clear by the foregoing inquiry into the unity of Reality. Reality, we
have seen, is one in the sense of being an individual self-contained
whole of experience. And its individuality means that it is the
systematic embodiment of a single coherent structure in a plurality of
elements or parts, which depend for their whole character upon the
fact that they are the embodiment of precisely this structure. If this is
so, we may say that degrees of reality mean the same thing as
degrees of individuality, and that a thing is real precisely to the same
extent to which it is truly individual.
A thing, that is, no matter of what kind, is really what it appears to
be, just in so far as the thing, as it appears for our knowledge, is
itself a self-contained and therefore unique systematic whole. Or, in
other words, just in so far as what we recognise as one thing shows
itself, in the face of philosophical criticism and analysis, to be a self-
contained systematic whole, so far are we truly apprehending that
thing as a manifestation of the fundamental character of Reality, of
seeing it as it really is, and so far does our knowledge give us
genuine Reality. On the other hand, just so far as what at first
seemed a self-contained whole is discovered by subsequent
analysis not to be so, so far have we failed to see the facts in their
true place in the single whole of Reality, and so far is our knowledge
affected with error and unreality. Or, again, the more truly anything is
a self-contained individual whole, the higher its place in the scale of
Reality.
When we ask what are the marks by which one thing may be
shown to be more of a true individual whole than another, we shall
find that they may be reduced to two, both of which we can easily
see to be in principle the same, though, owing to the limitations of
our insight, they do not always appear to coincide in a given case.
One thing is ceteris paribus more truly an individual whole than
another: (1) when the wealth of detailed content it embraces is
greater; (2) when the completeness of the unity with which it
embraces that detail is greater. Or, the degree of individuality
possessed by any system depends: (1) on its comprehensiveness;
(2) on its internal systematisation. The more a thing includes of
existence and the more harmoniously it includes it, the more
individual it is.
It is manifest, of course, that these two characteristics of a
systematic whole are mutually interdependent. For, precisely
because all Reality is ultimately a single coherent system, the more
there is outside any partial system the greater must be the
dependence of its constituents for their character upon their
connection with reality outside, and the less capable must the
system be of complete explanation from within itself. The more the
partial system embraces, the less will its constituents be determined
by relation to anything outside itself, and the more completely will its
organisation be explicable by reference to its own internal principle
of structure. That is, the greater the comprehensiveness of the
system, the completer in general will be its internal coherence. And,
conversely, the more completely the working of the whole system in
its details is explicable from within as the expression of a single
principle of internal structure, the less must be the dependence of its
contents on any external reality; and therefore, seeing that all reality
is ultimately interconnected, the less must be the extent of what lies
outside the system in question. That is, the greater the internal unity,
the greater in general the comprehensiveness of the system. Thus
ultimately the two criteria of individuality coincide.
§ 5. In practice, however, it constantly happens, as a consequence
of the fragmentary way in which our experiences come to us, that
comprehensiveness and thorough-going systematic unity seem to be
opposed to one another. Thus we can see, as a general principle,
that the systematic organisation of knowledge depends upon its
extent. The wider our knowledge, the greater on the whole the
degree to which it exhibits organic structure; the systematisation of
science and its extension ultimately go together. Yet at any one
moment in the development of knowledge the recognition of fresh
truths may necessitate a temporary introduction of disorganisation
and discrepancy among the accepted principles of science. Thus in
the history of geometry the recognised principles of the science were
temporarily disorganised by the admission of incommensurable
magnitudes which was forced upon the early Greek mathematicians
by the discovery that the side and diagonal of a square have no
common measure, and the discrepancy was only removed when it
became possible to revise the principles of the theory of numbers
itself. So again at the present day there is a real danger that
premature anxiety to give the study of Psychology precise
systematic character by an exact definition of its subject and its
relation to the various physical and mental sciences, may stand in
the way of the extension of our knowledge of the facts of psychical
life. We have often to purchase an important extension of knowledge
at the cost of temporary confusion of principles, and to be content to
wait for the future readjustment of facts to principles in the course of
subsequent progress.
So in our moral life we judge one man’s character more individual
than another’s, either on the ground of the superior breadth of his
interests, or of the superior consistency with which his interests are
wrought into a self-consistent whole. The man of many interests has
so far a truer individuality than the man of few, and again the man of
steady purpose than the man whose energies are dissipated in
seemingly conflicting pursuits. But the two criteria do not always, for
our insight, coincide. An increase in variety and breadth of interests
may be accompanied by a diminution in coherency of aim, and a
gain in coherency of aim appears often to be bought by
concentration upon a few special objects. And we should find it hard
or impossible to decide, where the two aspects of individuality
appear to fall thus apart, whether the man of many interests and
relatively dissipated energies, or the man of few interests and
intense concentration upon them, exhibits the higher individuality.
For what looked like self-dissipation in the pursuit of disconnected
objects might really be the systematic pursuit of a consistent purpose
too wide to be clearly apprehended in its unity either by
contemporary observers or by the actor himself, yet apparent
enough to the reflective historian reading the significance of a life by
its whole effect upon society, and what seemed at the time the single
object of the man of one idea might similarly be found in the light of
the sequel to be the hasty combination of radically inconsistent aims.
[69]

Such reflections, however, only show that our limited insight is

insufficient to assign to every appearance with certainty its own
place in the ordered system of appearances through which the single
Reality expresses itself. They do not touch our general position, that
where comprehensiveness and harmony can be seen to go together,
we are justified in using them as the measure of the individuality and
therefore of the reality of the partial system in which we discover
them. It is on such grounds, for instance, that we may safely
pronounce that an organism, which is the living unity of its members,
is more individual and therefore a higher reality that a mere
aggregate of pre-existing units, in which the nature of the parts is
wholly or mainly independent of the structure of the whole; and
again, that a mind consciously and systematically pursuing a
coherent self-chosen system of ends is more individual, and
therefore again a higher reality, than an organism reacting according
to the temporary character of its environment or its momentary
internal condition in ways which form no systematic execution of a
connected scheme of ends. And it is clear that, if only on this ground,
we should have to say that we are nearer the truth in thinking of the
individual whole of complete Reality as an organism than in thinking
of it as an aggregate, and nearer the truth still in thinking of it as a
mind. Similarly in our judgments upon our own lives and character.
So far as one life possesses more breadth and again more
conscious unity of aim than another, so far it is more truly individual,
and therefore a more adequate type of complete reality. Just so far
as I am individual, I am truly real. And just so far as I fall short of
systematic individuality, whether from the poverty of my interests or
their mutual incompatibility, the appearance of unity in my life is
illusory, and I must be pronounced an unreal appearance.
At this point we may observe our metaphysical criterion of reality
coincides with our ethical criterion of moral worth. For in morality too
we esteem one life worthier than another, either for the superior
comprehensiveness of its ideals or for the thoroughness with which
they are wrought into a harmonious whole of coherent purpose. The
better man is either the man of the wider ideal, or again the man of
completer and purer self-devotion to his ideal. And thus for Morality
the measure of our worth, as for Metaphysics the measure of our
reality, lies in our individuality. And for Morality no less than for
Metaphysics individuality is pre-eminently a thing of degrees. In both
cases, again, the same difficulty besets us as soon as we attempt to
use our criterion for application to particular cases. Its two aspects
fall apart; it is not always the more comprehensive ideal which is
served with the higher fidelity of purpose. And so our actual moral
judgments on the worth of particular men, like our metaphysical
judgments on the order of reality to which particular things belong,
are often necessarily uncertain and fluctuating. We rate one man
morally high for the comprehensive rationality of his ideals, though
he suffers from a lack of concentrated energy, another for the steady
and earnest purpose with which he follows what we perhaps deplore
as a contracted ideal.
§ 6. One more point of supreme importance concerning the
relation of the lesser individuals to the perfect individual which is the
absolute whole of Reality. Now that we have learned what is meant
by degrees of individuality, we can see that there can, in the last
resort, be only one perfect and complete individual, the whole of
Reality itself, and that the subordinate individuals can never be
wholly and entirely individual in themselves. For to be a complete
individual would be, as we have seen, to be a whole system
absolutely self-contained and explicable solely by reference to
internal structure. Whatever requires, for the full understanding of its
systematic character, reference to existence outside itself, we have
seen, must also, so long as it is considered apart from the rest of
existence, be internally wanting in complete systematic harmony,
and thus must fall doubly short of the ideal of individuality.
And precisely because the whole of experience is a single system,
no lesser system within the whole is entirely explicable in terms of its
own internal structure. For a full understanding of the nature of the
lesser system, and of the way in which it manifests a common
character through the variety of its elements, you have always, in the
last resort, to go outside the system itself, and take into account its
relation to the rest of the whole system of existence. And for that
very reason no subordinate individual, considered in itself, is a
completely coherent self-determined whole. For a limited knowledge
like our own, which has in the main to deal with subordinate systems
as we find them, and without that complete understanding of the
whole structure of Reality which would enable us to see their precise
place in the whole, the subordinate systems themselves, when
closely scanned by a resolute philosophical analysis, will inevitably
exhibit some degree of discrepancy and want of systematic unity.
Consider, for instance, such a system as is formed by the life-work
of a man of marked “individuality.” On the whole, the life of such a
man may fairly be said to be the systematic working out of a
consistent scheme of purposes. But this is, after all, only
approximately the truth. It is not the case that the nature of the
central or dominant purpose of the scheme is of itself enough to
determine the nature and order of the successive stages by which it
finds expression. We have to take into account factors in the man’s
“heredity,” and again in his social and physical environment which
form no part of the nature of his central dominant ideal and yet
influence the manner of its fulfilment. We are thus thrown back for
our full understanding of the “individual” system in question upon
circumstances which are, so far as that system is concerned,
“accidental,” i.e. which are equally with itself part of the whole
system of experienced fact, without our being able to see how it and
they form a wider coherent whole. The subordinate individual,
because incapable of explication solely from within, is in the end only
approximately “individual,” and we therefore fall into contradictions
whenever we isolate it from the rest of Reality and treat it as
absolutely individual and self-contained.
In dealing with subordinate wholes, we always, if we go far
enough, come to a point where we have to recognise their
dependence upon a realm of external fact which our knowledge fails
to see in its systematic relation with them, and has therefore to treat
as accidental or as an ultimate “collocation.” This is why, as has
already been said, full knowledge of our own aims and interests as a
genuine systematic whole would coincide with complete insight into
the structure of the whole universe. We may invert the sentiment of a
hackneyed verse, and say with equal truth that until you know what
God and man is, you cannot really know what the “flower in the
crannied wall” is. This is as much as to say that every appearance
must involve some element of contradiction for our philosophical
analysis precisely because we cannot in the end see fully how any
appearance is related to the whole of Reality. But we must carefully
remember that if appearances, taken by themselves, are
contradictory, this is not because they are appearances, but
because, as so taken, they are all to some extent mere appearance.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, that the individuality of
anything less than the ultimate whole of being is a matter of degree
and approximation. We shall be equally in error if we assume that
because no subordinate system is fully individual, some are not
more individual and therefore more real than others or if we declare
that, because whatever is real at all must be in its degree individual,
therefore every element of Reality is completely real in its isolation.
The first error is that of a one-sided Monism, the second that of an
equally one-sided Pluralism.
Once more we may note a point of coincidence between our
general metaphysical theory of individuality and our personal
experience as moral agents. In so far as each of us is truly an
individual, his aims and ends form a system with an internal unity
pervading its structure, and therefore capable of progressive
realisation as a system. Yet again, because each of us is less than
the whole of Reality, or, what is the same thing, because the
systematic unity of our inner life is never complete, and our totality of
interests relations, and aspirations never a completely self-contained
ordered whole, our ideals will always be found to contain aspects
which will not fully harmonise, elements which fall outside such a
unity of structure as it is possible to effect within the limit of our
single personality. And thus all our victories contain an inseparable
element of defeat. The defeated aspects of the self may no doubt,
and in general do, in proportion to the degree of our individuality,
belong to the “lower” and relatively more “untrue” self, yet they are
elements in the whole self, and their suppression is a genuine if
necessary self-suppression. There is a sense in which an aspect of
failure is an inevitable feature in the life of every subordinate and
therefore imperfect individual. Human life, even in the millennium, as
we rightly feel, would not be human life if the note of sadness were
altogether absent from it. Only in the single experience of the
absolute whole can the discordant notes be finally resolved into a
faultless harmony.
§ 7. Technically, we may mark the distinction between complete
and approximate individuality by saying that the absolute whole is an
infinite individual, whereas all lesser wholes are but finite individuals.
And here it is important to note carefully the true meaning of these
often much-abused terms. The infinite must not be confounded with
the indefinite or unfinished. Its fundamental property is not the
merely negative one of having no end or “last term,” but the positive
one of having an internal structure which is the harmonious and
complete expression of a single self-consistent principle. The finite,
again, is finite not primarily merely because it has a “last term,” i.e.
because there is something else outside it, but because its “last
term” is arbitrarily determined, i.e. determined by something other
than the principles of its internal structure. In other words, the
essential defect of the finite is that it is not solely determined by its
own structural principle.
 We can see this even in the simple case of the familiar “infinite
series” of arithmetic and algebra. Such a series as 1, 1/2, 1/4 ... is
“infinite” not merely because you never come to the last term, but
because its character is determined from within, solely by the
principle according to which each term is derived from the one
before it; that the series has no end is a simple consequence of this
positive property of self-determination. But suppose I take n terms of
this series and no more, where n is a specified number, the resulting
series is now finite, not primarily because there are more terms of
the same kind outside it, but because the number of terms to be
taken is not prescribed by the law of formation of the series, but fixed
with reference to some object independent of the principle of the
series itself. In other words, only the infinite is in the full sense of the
words a completely self-determined whole. The finite is the
imperfect, not primarily because there is something outside it, but
because its contents are not solely prescribed by the principle of
structure which they embody. I, for instance, am a finite being, not
principally or merely because there are other men in the world, but
because my ideas and purposes are not a fully coherent systematic
whole in themselves.[70]
The view we have taken of individuality and the distinction
between finite and infinite individuality is closely akin to some of the
most fundamental ideas in the philosophy of Leibnitz. It was the
doctrine of Leibnitz that each of his monads “represented” the nature
of the whole system of existence, i.e. repeated the structure of the
whole in its own special structure, from a particular “point of view.”
According to the fulness and clearness of the “representation,” i.e.
the adequacy with which the structure of the monad repeated the
structure of the whole system, the monads were classed as higher or
lower in the scale of existence. The clearer a monad’s representation
of the whole within itself, the greater the monad’s “activity”; the more
confused the representation, the greater its “passivity.” It followed
that, inasmuch as no created monad fully exhibits the systematic
structure of the whole of Reality within itself, every one contains
some element of “passivity,” and that to be “passive” primarily means
not to be affected by extraneous influences, but to contain internal
“confusion.”