Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/315

296 world of Being in terms exclusive of individuality, seems forced to say, “The final fact is that there is no individual fact, or, in other words, that there is no unique Being at all, but only a type; so that the Being with which our thoughts are to correspond does not determine the ‘mere ideas’ to any single and unique correspondence with itself, but leaves them finally indeterminate.” But is the Veritas that is thus left us any Veritas at all? Is not the very expression used self-contradictory? Can the absence of finality be the only final fact?

Our general survey of the world of judgments and of reasoning processes, as well as of the accompanying relations between Thought and Experience, is on one side completed. What have we learned? Our survey has not yet solved the problem as to the whole nature of Truth, but has shown us very important features that must, indeed, belong to the inmost essence of the Other that we seek. For one thing, we have found that every step towards Truth is a step away from vague possibilities, and towards determinateness of idea and of experience. Our very ideas themselves, even when expressed as hypotheses, or as universal definitions, or as a priori mathematical constructions, or as judgments of hypothetical or of universal type, are from the outset destructive of vague possibilities, and involve Determination by Negation. That is what every step of our survey has shown. Being, then, viewed as Truth, is to be in any case something determinate, that excludes as well as includes.

As to the vastly important relation of Thought to external Experience, we have seen that our thought, indeed, looks to this external experience to decide whether our