Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/390

Rh poses this circle to be conceived, for the moment, as the whole of Being, as all that there is. Well, what does this hypothetical assertion mean? Stripped of its accessories, it means simply: A certain finite momentary collection of empirical facts, ideas, desires, etc., merely called the present moment, is the universe. Now, to simplify the matter, name this finite conscious instant of experience, of thought and of will, A. One supposes that A is all, or that nothing but A exists. Well, this assertion, like any other metaphysical one, involves a what and a that. Moreover, it asserts the non-being of anything but A. Now an assertion of non-being is subject to the same general conditions as an assertion of Being. Whatever one means by Being, the meaning of the negative of Being, or of the assertion that something does not exist, is determined by the sense given to the predicate by which one affirms Being. Premising this, then, let one estimate the consistency of the hypothesis now in question.

If one asserts: A is all or, There is naught but A, the assertion involves ideas, and if it means anything these ideas possess some object. Now by hypothesis, the present moment, or A, does not itself contain the direct experience of the fact that it includes the whole universe of Being. For if A were certainly aware that nothing besides itself could exist, it would consciously have present what exhausted, even in the very present consciousness of A, the whole possible meaning of the idea of Being. But A would itself then be a completely embodied meaning, an absolutely self-possessed Whole of experience, fulfilling its own purpose. Or in other words,