Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/46

Rh which Beethoven composed.” In this same sense, your idea of your absent friend, is, for my definition, an idea primarily, because you now fulfil some of your love for dwelling upon your inner affection for your friend by getting the idea present to mind. But you also regard it as an idea which, in the external sense, is said to mean the real being called your friend, in so far as the idea is said to refer to that real friend, and to resemble him. This external meaning, I say, appears to be very different from the internal meaning, and wholly to transcend the latter.

By thus first distinguishing sharply between the conscious internal meaning of an idea and its apparently external meaning, we get before us an important way of stating the problem of knowledge or, in other words, the problem of the whole relation between Idea and Being. We shall find this not only a very general, but a very fundamental, and, as I believe, despite numerous philosophical discussions, still a comparatively neglected way. And in problems of this kind so much turns upon the statement of the issue, that I must be excused for thus dwelling at length, at this early stage, upon the precise sense in which we are to employ our terms.

Plainly, then, whoever studies either a special science, or a problem of general metaphysics, is indeed concerned with what he then and there views as the external meaning of certain ideas. And an idea, when thus viewed, appears as if it were essentially a sort of imitation or image of a being, and this being, the external object of our thoughtful imitation, appears to be, in so far, quite separate from these our ideas that imitate its characters or that