Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/415

396 follows, in this and in the next lecture, to develope and to reconcile both interpretations. We shall maintain that the unity of the divine life, and the universality of the divine plan, define one aspect, and a most essential aspect of the world of our Fourth Conception. We shall also maintain and try to make in general explicit, how this unity is not only consistent with the ethical meaning of finite individuality, but is also the sole and sufficient basis thereof.

The unity of the whole world, and the unversality of the idea of Being, first demand our attention. We have asserted that our Fourth Conception involves the absolute unity of the final knowing process. In precisely what sense and for what reason do we make this assertion?

Our concept of Being implies that whatever is, is consciously known as the fulfilment of some idea, and is so known either by ourselves at this moment, or by a consciousness inclusive of our own. If we address the finite thinker, and consider the implications of his knowledge, we point out to him that what he now experiences is but a fragment of the object that he means. But the object that he means, so we tell him, can have no form of Being that is independent of his meaning. Nor can he be said to have any meaning not now wholly fulfilled in his present experience, unless that very meaning is present to an insight that includes and completes his own conscious insight according to his own real intent. This essentially idealistic account of what it is to be, we have now elaborately justified by an analysis of the very concept of mean-