Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/515

496 reinstates, in a new instance, the situation which gave rise to the operation, and to which the operation was applied.

Now, quite apart from the special circumstances of the problem about A and B, the observation that reflection makes upon the general nature of any iterative or recurrent process of thinking, becomes at once of great interest for the comprehension of the question about the One and the Many. We want to find some case of an unity which developes its own differences out of itself. Well, what more simple and obvious instance could we hope for than is furnished by an operation of thought, such that, when applied to a given situation, this operation necessarily, and in a way that we can directly follow, reinstates, in a new case, the very kind of situation to which it was applied? For this operation is a fact in the world. It begins in unity. It developes diversity. Let us, then, wholly drop, for the time, the problem about A and B, in so far as they were taken as facts of sense or of externality. Their “conjunction,” presented “from without,” we may leave in its mystery, until we are ready to return to the matter later. We have found something more obvious, viz., an iterative operation of thought, one which, when applied, is actually observed to develope out of one purpose many results, by recreating its own occasion for application. Now let us proceed with our generalization. Let there be found any such operation of thought, say C. C is to be one ideal operation of our thought just in so far as C expresses a single purpose. But let C be applied on occasion to some material, — no matter what. Let the material be M. Hereupon, as we reflect, let us be supposed to observe that the logical necessary result of applying C to M, the result of expressing the purpose in question in this material, or of ideally weaving the material M into harmony with the purpose C, is the appearance of a new material for thought, viz., M’. Let us be supposed to observe, also, that M’, taken as a content to be thought about, gives the same occasion for the application of C that M gave. Let the application of C to M’ be next observed to lead to M’’, in such wise that in M’’ there lies once more the occasion for the applica-