Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/388

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“But,” our objector next retorts, “your view is still too abstruse for a plain man, — for how can you thus dare to transcend the limits of human consciousness? It is true that when a man thinks, he just then consciously aims only at a meaning which is present to himself at the instant. But you talk now about the constitution of a realm of Being that is to lie beyond the limits of any merely human experience. For you admit that no man has yet seen at any one instant this which you call the whole of his meaning empirically expressed. Now, how can you have any assurance as to such a realm of transcendent and superhuman finality of experience? Perhaps there is experience beyond our own, perhaps not. At all events, any man actually knows only his own contents of experience, and with more or less probability he guesses at the existence of other contents than his own in other men. But nobody can assert, with real or positive assurance, any Being that transcends his own present experience. Yet you talk of final Being, and of its constitution. Perhaps there is no final Being. Perhaps there is only the present fragment of empirical life. Even my own past and future, as you say, are not present to me. How should I myself at this instant know that there exists more than what is now present to me? Why, then, cannot we be mere sceptics, doubting all reality not now and here given?”

I reply at once: State your doubt in a more precise form. Tell what it means. What hypothesis, if any, do you oppose to our own thesis as to this complete and in-