Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/418

Rh fact. There is, in consequence, a conscious act or process for which the existence and the relations of all the various knowing processes constitute a present and consciously observed truth. But this assertion, the inevitable consequence of our doctrine, implies that one final knower knows all knowing processes in one inclusive act.

Moreover, let the world of fact, taken in its wholeness, possess any constitution that you please. Assert that any degree of multiplicity, of mutual isolation, of temporal succession, of variety in individual existence, or of other dividing principle, variegates the universe, or keeps finite acts, meanings, and interests asunder. Then, by hypothesis, all this variety and mutual isolation is fact, and by our Fourth Conception of Being it all exists only as a consciously known fact. If the sundered finite forms of consciousness are by hypothesis not mutually inclusive, their very sundering, according to our conception of Being, implies their common presence as facts to a knower who consciously observes their sundering as the fulfilment of his own single meaning.

For otherwise the sundering would exist without being fully and consciously present to anybody; since, in so far as ɑ is sundered from b, there is, neither in ɑ alone nor in b alone, a consciousness of all that the sundering implies for both.

And, finally, the knower of the universe in its wholeness can possess, by our definition, no Being that is unknown to himself. For whatever is, is consciously known. And if the being of ɑ is unknown to ɑ, but is known only to another, namely, to b, there so far exists a fact, namely, the relation of ɑ and b, whose presence