Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/479

460 meaning that finite ideas demand as necessary for their own fulfilment, could indeed be, according to our thesis, wholly ignored from the absolute point of view. But, on the other hand, the very perfection of the fulfilment would logically require of the divine will the sort of determination of purpose of which we too are conscious when we deal with the objects of the exclusive affection. It is will, then, in God and in man, that logically determines the consciousness of individuality. The individual is, primarily, the object and expression of an exclusive interest, of a determinate selection.

From this point of view, the world in its wholeness might indeed be regarded as, so to speak, an only begotten son of the central purpose, — an unique expression, — unique not merely by reason of its wealth, but of its exclusiveness. And thus the category of individuality would be fulfilled in the whole precisely in the sense in which our finite affection presupposes its fulfilment in individual cases.

We have thus gradually prepared ourselves to define the relation between the Finite and the Absolute Will. We have studied as aspects of will, both selective attention and the nature of individuality. We have indicated, too, the sense in which, for our Fourth Conception, the world is the fulfilment of purpose. And now, to sum up so far, we do not say that any purpose, divine or human, first existing as a merely separate power, thereupon causes its own fulfilment. On the contrary, we say as to God, that from the absolute point of view, the genuine knowledge of