Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/588

Rh is, therefore, that self-representative System of which they are at once portions, imitations, and expressions.

(5) The Reality is such a self-represented and infinite system. And therein lies the basis of its very union, within itself of the One and the Many. For the one purpose of self-representation demands an infinite multiplicity to express it; while no multiplicity is reducible to unity except through processes involving self-representation.

(6) And, nevertheless, the Real is exclusive as well as inclusive. On the side of its thought the Absolute does conceive a barely possible infinity, other than the real infinity, — a possible world, whose characters, as universal characters, are present to the Absolute, and are known by virtue of the fact that the Absolute also thinks. But these possibilities are excluded by reason of their conflict with the Absolute Will.

(7) Yet, in meaning, the infinite Reality, as present, is richer than the infinity of bare possibilities that are excluded. But for that very reason the Reality presented, in the final and determinate experience of the Absolute, cannot be less than infinitely wealthy, both in its content and in its order. Its unity in its wholeness, and its infinite variety in expression, are both of an individual character. The constituent individuals are not “absorbed” or “transmuted” in the whole. The whole is One Self; but therefore is all its own constitution equally necessary to its Selfhood. Hence it is an Individual of Individuals.

With less of complexity and, if you please, with less of paradox, no theory of Being can be rendered coherent. Our present purpose is to bring these various aspects of the twofold nature of Being, as Infinite Being and as Determinate Being, to light and to definition.

We shall return, therefore, to the consideration of the main points made by our objectors, and, as we meet them shall even thereby justify, without needing formally to repeat, our various theses.