Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/147

128 pendently of all ideas, I have, once for all, in my real world of objects, two beings, each so far quite separate from the other, and each, by hypothesis, a complete instance of a reality, so far as concerns its independence of the other. If hereupon there is later to appear in my real world any so-called link or tie between the two, — any so-called causal linkage, or spatial connection, or temporal relation, then this so-called linkage will be a new fact, not logically involved in the definition of either of these real beings, in so far as they were first declared to be real. For, by hypothesis, neither of the two, as first defined and as then declared to be independently real, possessed, as far as the definition yet went, any character already involving a tie with the other. For each, consistently with its definite nature, might so far remain unchanged if the other wholly vanished. But then at once it follows, that the new real being, the so-called link, when it comes to light, is as truly and as much another being as the two beings were originally diverse from each other. For if before the link came to light the completely defined beings were real but not yet defined as linked together, the link, when it comes, will be another new being. Furthermore, the link will be a fact, logically independent of both of the original beings. For as another being, a new fact, it will be, by the very definition of what constitutes another being, as independent of them, as each of them is essentially independent of the other. It follows that the so-called link is no link except in name, and can never come to be one; it is simply a third being, independent of both of them, and not yet linked to either