Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/77

58 and relationships involved, we call this conflict the effort of Thought to comprehend Being. By Thought we here mean the sum total of the ideas, this whole life of inner meanings, in so far as it is precisely the effort to comprehend and interpret the data, the brute facts of immediacy, in terms of the ideas themselves — the effort to win over facts to ideas, or to adjust ideas to facts. Were the facts wholly interpreted, they would fuse with the ideas; and the conflict of Thought and Being would cease. But now, — Thought it is which attempts to recognize the given facts. Thought it is which goes on when, our present ideas failing to light up sufficiently the chaos of immediacy, we look for other ideas, in terms of which to interpret our problems. Thought it is which we may regard as possessing the countless ideal weapons, the storehouse of what we call memories of our past, the arsenal of what we call general principles for the interpretation of fact, the vast collection of traditional ideas with which our whole education has supplied us. Thought possesses, — nay, thought rather is, this whole collection of ideas taken as in contrast with facts. The ideas are our resources in the warfare with immediacy, just as from moment to moment they come to mind.

So much then, at this stage, for Thought. But what do we mean by Being? The effort to give answer to this question brings to light several possible alternatives. These we are even now trying to define more exactly. Yet all the alternatives involve a common character. Being, in this warfare, that which is real, as opposed and contrasted to that which just now is merely suggested to us by our momentary ideas as they fly, and