Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/513

494 ently ask, Does not thought here at least see in one instance, not only that identity and diversity are conjoined, but how they are this time connected, and how the one of them, here at least, expresses itself in the other?

May we not, then, for the moment, overlook our failures as to the understanding of the world external to thought, and turn to the consideration of our success in discovering something of the internal movement of thought. For, in our ignorance, our first interest is in observing not how little we know (since our ignorance itself is, indeed, brought home to us at every instant of our finitude), but in making a beginning at considering how much we can find out. We wanted to see how any unity could develope a plurality. We have already seen, if but dimly. Shall we not begin to use our insight?

I conclude, then, so far, that, if the argument of Mr. Bradley is sound, in the very sense in which I myself most accept its soundness, a “principle of diversity in unity,” in the case of the internal meaning of our ideas, is already, in several concrete cases, “self-evident.” It remains for us to become better acquainted with this principle. I must explicitly note that this union of One and Many in thought has to be a fact in the universe if it is self-evident, and has to be self-evident if Mr. Bradley’s argument is sound.

The principle in question can be made more manifest by a further reflection. The most important instances in Mr. Bradley’s argument are those wherein the “endless fission” appears; and what has led to this “endless fission” which so far forms our principal instance of the internal development of variety out of unity, appears, when reviewed, as in general, this: A certain “conjunction” was offered to us by sense. This “conjunction” thought undertook, by means of an hypothesis, to explain. The resulting process of “fission” had, however, wholly to do with the internal meaning of this