Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/478

Rh question. Affection first says in presence of an object, imperfectly presented in experience, not only that there shall be further experience completing and fulfilling this meaning, but also that there shall be in this further experience such unity as constitutes an unique object. Affection first declares that there shall be no other object capable of fulfilling this meaning, beyond the single object whose Being I now presuppose. It is thus, for instance, that the lover says, There shall be none like my beloved. It is thus, too, that the mother says, There shall be no child like my child. It is thus that the loyal friend says, There shall be no friend like my friend. It is thus that the finite Self says, No life shall have precisely the meaning that my life has. It is thus also that the ethical consciousness says, My duty shall be that which nobody but myself can conceivably do. In brief, in our finite life, the sense of the determinate selection of the single object that we shall regard as the fulfilment of our meaning, comes earlier to our consciousness than any specific hope that, in our finite capacity, we shall ever live to see this specific meaning wholly fulfilled.

Now this disposition of our finite will, this tendency to a selection of our objects as unique, is precisely the character which our Fourth Conception regards as also belonging to that Absolute Will which faces the final meaning and fulfilment of the world. For the world as a whole is, from our point of view, an individual fact, not merely by virtue of the completeness of the contents of the Absolute Experience, but by reason of the definiteness of the selection of that object which shall be permitted to fulfil the final meaning. No significant purpose, no element of