Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/221

202 that whose essential relation to ideas is that it is their model) and is adapted to their nature as such model. Now independently, I repeat, of this relation, the Real is for us henceforth simply indefinable. Nor can any part, or aspect, or quality of it be defined in logical independence of this relation.

But this new type of Being really involves a new fundamental conception of what it is to be real. To be real now means, primarily, to be valid, to be true, to be in essence the standard for ideas. Our transformed theory is now that our ideas have a standard external to themselves, to which they must correspond. If we retain Being in this sense, we still view it as Other than ideas that relate to it, and as outside of our present knowledge. But we do not, in this case, view the real as conceivable, either in whole or in part, in an entire abstraction from knowledge. It may be somehow real when knowledge is not. That we shall have to see. But in essence it is always related to the purpose of knowledge, and is altered when these relations alter.

And now let us proceed to define more specifically this new conception of Being. Let us take it first in one of its most recent forms.

Is it not indeed plain that, as we ourselves have often heretofore said, when we talk of Being, we are indeed seeking for what, if present, would satisfy or tend to satisfy our conscious needs and meanings? Let us take this very character as the sole basis of our definition of what it is to be. Let us first say that whenever we talk