Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/200

Rh lies in the positive contrast-effect that they even now actually present to us. Finite as we are, lost though we seem to be in the woods, or in the “wide air’s wildernesses,” in this world of time and of chance, we have still, like the strayed animals or like the migrating birds, our homing instinct. It is this homing instinct that we for the first merely articulate when we talk of true Being. Being means something for us, however, because of the positive presence, in finite consciousness, of this inner meaning of even our poorest ideas. We seek. That is a fact. We seek a city still out of sight. In the contrast with this goal, we live. But if this be so, then already we actually possess something of Being even in our finite seeking. For the readiness to seek is already something of an attainment, even if a poor one. But when the Mystic, defining his goal wholly in negative terms, lays stress upon the contrast as simply absolute, he finds that so far his Absolute is defined as nothing but the absence of finitude, and so as apparently equivalent to nothing at all, since all definite contents are for us so far finite, and since the absence of finitude is for us the absence of contents. If hereupon the mystic skilfully points out that this apparent zero is still, by virtue of the contrast, defined as our goal, as our coming attainment, as our peace, our hope, our heaven, our God, — then one rightly replies to the mystic that what makes his Absolute appear thus glorious is precisely its presented contrast with our imperfection. But a zero that is contrasted with nothing at all, has so far not even any contrasting character, and remains thus a genuine and absolute nothing. Hence, if the Absolute of the