Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/374

Rh spond, as isolated facts, and where no other and deeper relation links knowledge and Being, is a world where there is so far neither any knowledge nor any Being at all.

But secondly, if you accept our Fourth Conception, you will also agree with Mysticism in so far as, identifying Being with fulfilment of purpose, the mystic says, of the object of any of your ideas: That art thou. For the mystic means this assertion not of the imperfect self of the merely finite idea. He does not mean that this passing thrill of longing is already fully identical with the Other that this very longing seeks. For the mystic, as for the realist, Being is indeed something Other than our mere search for Being. The mystical identification of the world and the Self is meant to be true of the completed, of the fulfilled and final, or Absolute Self. Now, starting with any idea, we shall henceforth say to this idea, regarding its own object, precisely what the mystic says of the Self and the World: That art thou. Namely, the object is for us simply the completely embodied will of the idea. It is nothing else. But we shall henceforth differ from the mystic precisely at the point where the mystic takes refuge in mere negations. We, too, of course, shall also confess our finite ignorance. But the Neti, Neti of Yâjnavalkya, the nescio, nescio of the mediæval mystic, will express for us, not the essential nature of true Being, as the mystic declared, but merely the present inadequacy of your passing idea to its own present and conscious purpose, — a purpose known precisely so far as it is embodied at this instant. We shall say if we follow to its conclusion this our Fourth Con-