Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/55

36 get behind the appearances, and supplement the abstractions), by the thesis that at bottom, the external meaning is only apparently external, and, in very truth, is but an aspect of the completely developed internal meaning. We are to assert that just what the internal meaning already imperfectly but consciously is, namely, purpose relatively fulfilled, just that, and nothing else, the apparently external meaning when truly comprehended also proves to be, namely, the entire expression of the very Will that is fragmentarily embodied in the life of the flying conscious idea, — the fulfilment of the very aim that is hinted in the instant. Or, in other words, we are to assert that, in the case mentioned, the artist who composed, the beloved who sang the melody, are in verity present, as truly implied aspects of meaning, and as fulfilling a purpose, in the completely developed internal meaning of the very idea that now, in its finitude, seems to view them merely as absent. I deliberately choose, in this way, a paradoxical illustration. The argument must hereafter justify the thesis. I can here only indicate what we hereafter propose to develope as our theory of the true relation of Idea and Being. It will also be a theory, as you see, of the unity of the whole very World Life itself.

In brief, by considerations of this type, we propose to answer the question: What is to be? by the assertion that: To be means simply to express, to embody the complete internal meaning of a certain absolute system of ideas, — a system, moreover, which is genuinely implied in the true internal meaning or purpose of every finite idea, however fragmentary.