Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/57

38 as they are related to the various so-called “fundamental series” of rational numbers, somewhat in that way is Being related to the various thinking processes that approach it, as it were, from without, and undertake to define it as at once their external meaning, and their unattainable goal. That which is, is for thought, at once the fulfilment and the limit of the thinking process. The thinking process itself is a process whereby at once meanings tend to become determinate, and external objects tend to become internal meanings. Let my process of determining my own internal meaning simply proceed to its own limit, and then I shall face Being. I shall not only imitate my object as another, and correspond to it from without: I shall become one with it, and so internally possess it. This is a very technical statement of our present thesis, and of our form of Idealism, — a statement which only our later study can justify. But in making that statement here, I merely call attention to the fact that the process of defining limits is one which mathematical science has not only developed, but in large measure, at the present time, prepared for philosophical adaptation, so that to view the concept of Being in this light is to approach it with an interest for which recent research has decidedly smoothed the way. We shall meet both with false ways of defining the limit, and with true ways.

My second remark is closely related to the first, but is somewhat less technical, and involves a return to the practical aspects of our intended theory. I have just said that the development of the conception of an idea