Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/38

 In a realm of ends the order and meaning would be primarily the outcome of the purposes of the active beings composing it; only to discursive intellects such as ours could this order emanating from individual agents appear as a warp and woof of external law shaping some primordial stuff. As naturalism claims to approximate to a complete formulation of this phenomenal order, so spiritualism may claim to approximate to an interpretation of the underlying reality; but it will have this advantage, that while it may be possible, setting out from mind, to account for mechanism it is impossible, setting out from mechanism, to account for mind.

Such an approximation to a spiritualistic interpretation we actually have in the history of the living world. Here we are ever in the presence of individual things, from which science indeed sets out, but to which it can never return, individuals marked down by dates and places and actually designated or admitting of designation by proper names, individuals who have no ‘doubles,’ whose like all in all we never shall meet again. The events with which we have here to deal are the unique acts and deeds that have their origin in individual centres of experience, not events that seem to occur uniformly as resultants of universal and unvarying law. Further, it is not the intrinsic nature of objects but their value for the particular individual that immediately determines each one's attitude towards them; and as the individuals vary so do their interests and pursuits. But quidquid petitur petitur sub specie boni: the idea of the good,