Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/443

424 their objects. Wherever experience contains the fulfilment of a meaning, the answer to a question, the attainment of an empirical unity, there we have so far present an objective content, a plan relatively fulfilled; and precisely such unities, however much they may be supplemented, cannot be ignored in the final unity of the whole of experience.

And so, recognizing as we do the limitations of our consciousness, we now see what can guide us towards a concrete definition of the absolute form of consciousness. Here our general concept of Being gives us our test of truth, but our experience shows us special ways in which facts not only can be unified, but are unified. These ways, as far as they go, are for us valid guides. Thus, then, our general and relatively a priori proof of the unity of Being, in the early part of this lecture, has itself been brought into unity with the empirical view of our real world. We see then how the world of our Fourth Conception must be One. We catch also a glimpse of how it is One.

In sum, then, as to the most general form of the absolute unity, our guide is inevitably the type of empirical unity present in our own passing consciousness, precisely in so far as it has relative wholeness, and is rational. If one asks, “How should the many be one, and how should the whole take on the form of variety?” I answer, “Look within. You may grasp many facts at once; and when you have even the most fragmentary idea, your one purpose is here and now partially em-