Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/66



our opening lecture the general plan of these discussions was sketched. Of this former lecture we now need recall but a single feature. We are to found our view of the Philosophy of Religion upon a treatment of the most fundamental problems of the Theory of Being. Without a further apology for our plan, and without further preliminary statement of its prospects and methods, we now proceed directly to our task itself.

We express in language, by means of verbs, adjectives, and equivalent expressions, what, as to their qualities, things are, what they do, and in what relation they stand. But in addition to such expressions, by which we qualify, describe, compare, and distinguish the various objects that we observe and think about, we have certain other expressions by means of which we assert that given objects are, or are real, rather than are not, or are unreal. Now, in technical phrase, we shall hereafter call the expressions of the latter type the ontological vocabulary of our language. Hard as it is to grasp or to render articulate the conception of Being, the vocabulary used, at least in the language of the Indo-European family, for the purpose of asserting that a thing is, is so rich, so living, so flexible