Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/78

Rh which is not yet confirmed by facts, — Being, I say, always appears in the conflict and in the incompleteness of our human thinking, as that which we first regard as real in advance of more special definition, in so far as we call it Other than our merely transient and finite thinking of the moment. Our situation, as finite thinkers, is, as we just said, disquieting. We want some other situation in place of this one. Our ideas, while partial embodiments of meaning, are never complete embodiments. We are never quite at home with our world. The Other, then, which we seek, would involve, if completely found, a situation where thought and fact were no longer at war, as now they are, and where thought had finished its ideal task as now it is not finished. To define in advance this situation, we must then form some more or less precise notion as to the question: Wherein lies the defect of our present thoughts, both in themselves, and in their relation to facts?

It follows that, in defining this defect of our present situation, in predicting the character of the Other that we seek, of the needed supplement, whose presence, once observed, would end the now insistent conflict, — in thus defining and predicting, I say, we are limited, as to our choice of alternatives, by the exigencies of the finite conscious situation herewith summed up. We can define the Other, the true Being, as that which, if present to us in this moment, would end our conflict. In so far it seems something desirable and desired, — an object of longing. On the other hand, we may, and often do, regard Being as that in terms of which our ideas are to be controlled, set right, or, if necessary, wholly set aside as