Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/452

Rh We have also endeavored to state, in concrete form, of what nature this teleological structure of Reality proves to be.

In the foregoing lecture the unity of the idealistic world engaged our attention. In the present lecture, we are to consider the other aspect, — the Individuality, the Variety of finite beings, and the relative Freedom of finite acts.

No accusation is more frequent than that an Idealism which has once learned to view the world as a rational whole, present in its actuality to the unity of a single consciousness, has then no room either for finite individuality, or for freedom of ethical action. It was for the sake of preparing the way for a fair treatment of this very problem that we from the beginning defined the nature of ideas in terms at once of experience and of will. As we later passed to the assertion of the unity of the world from the final point of view, we have never lost sight of the fact that this is the unity of a divine Will, or, if you please, of a divine Act, at the same time as it is the unity of the divine Insight. The word “Meaning” has for us, from the outset, itself possessed a twofold implication, — not because we preferred ambiguity, but because, once for all, the facts of consciousness warrant, and in fact demand, this twofold interpretation. Whoever is possessed of any meaning, whoever faces truth, whoever rationally knows, has before his consciousness at once, that which possesses the unity of a knowing process, and that which fulfils a purpose, or in other words, that which constitutes