Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/345

326 world as my object; I recognize the superior force of this object, and I have no part in willing that it is my object,” any such submissive observer is invited merely to state what object he means, and what idea he has of it. He will at once find his idea arising before him as a conscious construction, and he will regard this idea as intelligible because he follows its construction with his own unity of purpose. The vaster the world that he then defines as the overwhelming fate of his intelligence, the larger will be the part that his own consciously constructive will has taken in the definition of the idea. And by his will, I mean here not any abstract psychological power or principle so to be named. I speak here of will not as of any causally efficacious entity whatever. I refer only to the mere fact of any one’s consciousness, insisted upon in these discussions from the start, namely, the fact that the contents of an idea are present to mind as the actual embodiment and relative fulfilment of a present purpose, such as for instance you find embodied when you count or sing. Space, time, past, future, things, minds, laws, — all these constituents of the world, our supposed passive spectator of universe indeed recognizes as objects other than the ideal products of his will; but his ideas of these objects come to him precisely as constructive processes, present to his consciousness as his own act, and understood by him so far as they are his own meaning. Moreover, the objects, too, to which these ideas relate, can be understood as objects only when the ideas embody the will to mean them as such objects.

But now, in order that we may also take account of our former problem about the determinateness and individu-