Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/334

 etc., of others, namely, our fellows in society. This primary self in time gets unified, in so far as we come to contrast the varying self-contents with more or less determinate ideals, concerns, plans, which give life a certain unity. From this point of view, I am one Self only in so far as I am conscious of my life — of memories, aspirations, devices, failures, triumphs — as tending, or at least striving; and therefore as known by contrast with, or in the light of, a certain type of fulfilled consciousness, — of attainment, — which is now, as the ideal Self or Other Self, the determining principle that makes my life the life of one being. We have asserted that if this ideal goal becomes an exclusive goal, such that no other is viewed as the possible goal of this life, and if this goal is viewed as one which, if attained through any other life than mine, would not be attained as I meant it to be attained, then my life is defined for me as the life of a unique, and so of a genuinely individual Self. We have asserted, moreover, that a Self so defined is a metaphysically real individual, and is thus defined not only from our point of view, but also from the point of view of the Absolute. We have asserted that such an individual selfhood — the selfhood of a moral Self — is a real fragment of what we have called the Self-Consciousness of the Absolute.

As we began our empirical analysis from below, so we must begin our necessarily incomplete defence of our metaphysical theses from above, and must first briefly explain our application of the category of Self-Consciousness to the Absolute Being.