Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/50

Rh conformity to what seem to be absolutely indifferent and independent outer facts. In the one case we have the embodiment of a conscious inner purpose, — a purpose which is won through the very act of the moment, and by virtue of the mere presence of a certain series of mental contents. In the other case we have a conformity to outer truth, — a conformity that no inner clearness, no well-wrought network of cunning ideal contrivance, can secure, unless the idea first submits to the authority of external existence.

And yet, sharp as is this apparent contrast, every student of philosophy knows how profound are also the motives that have led some philosophers to doubt whether such contrast can really be as ultimate as it seems. After all, the counting of the ships is valid or invalid not alone because of the supposed independent being of the ships, but also because of the conscious act whereby just this collection of ships was first consciously selected for counting. After all, then, no idea is true or is false except with reference to the object that this very idea first means to select as its own object. Apart from what the idea itself thus somehow assigns as its own task, even that independent being yonder, if you assume such being, cannot determine the success or failure of the idea. It is the idea then that first says: “I mean this or that object. That is for my object. Of that I am thinking. To that I want to conform.” And apart from such conscious selection, apart from such ideal predetermination of the object on the part of the idea, apart from such free voluntary submission of the idea to its self-imposed task, the object itself, the fact world, in its independence, can do