Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/481

462 of distinguishing them. The Divine or Absolute Knowledge this world expresses, by virtue of the unity of consciousness in which all its facts are linked, and by virtue too of that universality of meaning which joins all various ideas, in such wise that every finite idea, in so far as it merely refers to another, or has external reference, is general, while the whole expression of these ideas is unique and individual. In this same sense we can also speak of the world, quite accurately, as the expression, or embodiment, or fulfilment, of the Divine Thought. Will, on the other hand, this world expresses, not as if the Divine Will were an external power causing the world, but in so far as the unity of the whole is teleological, is such as ideas intend; or again, in so far as the world attains wholeness, and needs no fact beyond it for its completion; and finally, in so far as this wholeness and uniqueness of the world is the expression of an ideal selection, whose nature is well exemplified by our own exclusive interests, and whose type of fulfilment we all observe whenever we win a rational ideal goal.

Now all these considerations might seem once more to deprive any finite portion, or aspect, of this conscious universe, of any distinguishable private significance. On the contrary, however, precisely the opposite is the true result. For consider. If the whole world is at once the complete expression of a plan, and also the unique expression of such plan, then every fact in it, precisely in so far as we distinguish that fact from other facts, and consider its internal meaning, is also inevitably unique, sharing in so far the uniqueness of the whole. For, to illustrate, if in the ordinary empirical world of space, this