Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/503

484 that, and its inevitably infinite process in trying to unite them again, are two topics discussed, with the result, as Mr. Bradley states the case, that “Thought desires a consummation in which it is lost,” as “the river” runs “into the sea,” and "the self” loses itself “in love.” For every act of thought, in affirming its predicate of the subject, though all the while knowing that the quality or adjective is not the existent, explicitly faces its own Other, namely, precisely its object, the existent of which it thinks, the subject to which it applies its predicates. This existent, by virtue of its “sensuous infinitude,” or vaguely endless wealth of presented features, always defies our efforts exhaustively to define it in ideal terms (p. 176); and, by virtue of its “immediacy” (p. 177), possesses “the character of a single self-subsistent being,” — a character apparently inconsistent with the “sensuous infinitude.” Our thought, however, endeavoring to characterize this Other, seeks to make ideally explicit how, despite its endless wealth of presented features, it can be still a single individual, — a system of variety in unity. Attempting this task, thought is obliged to use the “relational form” in characterizing the subject; and this at once makes impossible the expression, in ideal terms, of either the self-dependence or the immediacy which the subject claims (p. 178). For, analyzing the subject, in order to define its wealth of content, thought, in the fashion before illustrated in the case of things, qualities, etc., is led to an infinite process, since every relation defined requires new relations to make it comprehensible. Both the internal and the external relations of the subject and of its contents, accordingly prove to be inexhaustible. Never, then, is thought’s ideal system of predicates adequate to the subject. The “sensuous infinitude” or undefined wealth that the subject at first presents, turns, while we think, into the explicitly infinite series of relational predicates. Moreover, even were thought's system ever completed, “that system would not be the subject.” For if it were, “it would wholly lose the relational form.”

The result is that thinking “desires to possess,” as its end