Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/424

Rh realm of eternal validity common sense as well as science recognizes; and as we further saw, when we dealt with our Third Conception, the more transient world of prices, of credits, of social standing, and of institutional existence, is likewise for common sense a realm of true Being, yet a realm neither identical with nature, nor capable of being reduced to the contents present within any number of individual human minds. We have abandoned the Third Conception. But our new conception must find room for the typical instances of Being of the third type, namely, for the mathematical objects, for the socially and morally valid beings. And now, finally, after surveying all these so various types of beings, we have to recall the comment often already made in these lectures, and to assert that not only these different kinds of realities, but also the concrete experiences whereby we come to observe, and the ideas whereby we ourselves define, describe, and in general undertake to know these very objects, are themselves also in their own measure real, and are as truly real as are the various finite objects of common sense that we know.

Now our Fourth Conception of Being, if it is to be adequate to the demands of common sense, must be adjusted to at least all of these varied types of beings. Nature, and the minds of our fellows, together with the contents of these minds, the past and the future beings and events, the eternally and transiently valid truths, and our own experiences and ideas which have all these different sorts of Being for their objects, — all these apparent facts either must be alike comprehended within our final definition of what it is to be, or else must be deliberately