Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/375

356 ception, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when the object meant, namely, precisely when that which is perfect is truly said to be, it fulfils, and in so far by supplementing but not otherwise, it takes away that which is in part.” Our final object, the urbs Sion unica, mansio mystica, is for us, as for the mystic, the unique Being wherein this our finite will is fulfilled. But this one object meant, this fulfilment of our will, is not merely “founded in heaven.” Its will is done on earth, not yet in this temporal instant wholly as it is in heaven, but is still really done, in these ideas that already consciously attain a fragment of their own meaning. They are ideas precisely because they do this. The sadness of the mystical longing is now for us lighted by glimpses of the genuine and eternally present truth of the one real world. It is not merely in the mystic trance, but in every rational idea, in so far as it is already a partially embodied purpose, that we now shall in our own way and measure come upon that which is, and catch the deep pulsations of the world. Our instant is not yet the whole of eternity; but the eternal light, the lux eterna, shineth in our every reasonable moment, and lighteth every idea that cometh into the world.

And, thirdly, if you follow our Fourth Conception, you will now agree with the critical rationalist when he asserts that Being essentially involves what gives the validity to ideas. But you will have discovered what conditions are necessary to constitute validity. The valid finite idea is first, for whoever possess it, an observed and empirical fulfilment of purpose. But this fulfilment is also observed in this instant as something incomplete. There-