Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/485

466 one being we long since found to be impossible. For our present point of view, however, the realistic difficulty of the Many and the One has been wholly set aside. It is not indeed for us a question of how the many things could become one thing. For us the unity of the world is the unity of consciousness. The variety of the world is the internal, but none the less wealthy and genuine, variety of the purposes and embodiments of purpose present within this unity of the one divine consciousness. Now with regard to the ultimate unity and consequent harmony of all this variety, our Fourth Conception has given us indeed a general formula. The Many must, despite their variety, win harmony and perfection by their cooperation. But this principle, so far, gives us no limit either to the empirical variety of will, or of interest and of experience in the absolute, nor any limit to the relative independence which the uniqueness of the individual elements makes possible. What we see, however, is that every distinguishable portion of the divine life, in addition to all the universal ties which link it to the whole, expresses its own meaning. We see, too, that this meaning is unique, and that this meaning is precisely identical with what each one of us means by his own individual will, so far as that will is at any time determinate, uniquely selected, and empirically expressed. So much then for the general relations of Absolute and of Finite will.

Two expressions, familiar to common sense in speaking of finite will, receive herewith their sufficient and, I believe, their only possible justification. Common sense