Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/369

350 sameness of nature, which must be possessed, in however slight a measure, by both the knowing idea and the object that it knows. In the world of the Third Conception of Being, that of Validity, the ideas express with more or less precision, and in their own way, precisely that truth which is to be valid beyond them. And, in fact, as we just saw, the most general conditions which determine for us the problem of Being, demand that the purpose which every idea has in seeking its Other, must have some element in common with that which fulfils this very purpose.

Idea and Reality must, then, possess elements that are common to both of them. On the other hand, as we saw, this mere community is wholly inadequate to the tasks of defining what makes the object belong, as object, to a given idea. For, if you view any idea and its supposed object, merely as one might be imagined viewing them from without, it is wholly impossible to determine what degree of correspondence between them is required either to make the reality that precise object sought by the idea, or to render the idea the true representative of the object to which it is said to refer. A true idea, as Spinoza said, must indeed resemble its ideate. But on the other hand, a mere resemblance of idea and ideate is not enough. Nor does the absence of any specific degree of resemblance necessarily involve an error. It is intended resemblance which counts in estimating the truth of ideas. If in fact you suppose, as an ideal case, two human beings, say twins, absolutely to resemble each other, not only in body, but in experience and in thought, so that every idea which one of these beings at any mo-