Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/482

Rh room is unique, so that by hypothesis there shall be no other room like it in the world, then any definable part of the unique room, by virtue of the very fact that it is different from all the other parts of this same room, has its own unique individuality as opposed to any other fact in the universe.

Or again, let A be any fact. First suppose A to be merely an abstract universal, a general type. Then suppose A to be an individual. If A is as a whole merely a case of a type, so that there are other cases like it, then any part of A is in so far also only a case of a type, and is not unique. But if A is an individual, unique and elsewhere unexampled, then every fragment of A has its part in the individuality of the whole, just as a play of Shakespeare, as this particular expression of the individuality of the poet, has its own uniqueness by sharing in his.

Now, by hypothesis, the world exists only as such an expression of the meaning of the divine system of ideas, that no other life than this of the present world could express precisely this system. But suppose that you lay stress upon the facts of any finite life. You have a right to do s'o, for these facts exist for the Absolute precisely as much as for you. Then you have, in the first place, facts that exist only as an expression of a meaning. If you ask of what meaning they are the expression, the answer is, of the meaning of the very ideas and of the very will, that, in the finite consciousness, accompany these very facts.

Take, for instance, one of your own acts. In part, it expresses one of your own purposes. Now our theory