Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/91

72 you are dealing when you consult its books. Herbart’s world has in it, in addition to its independent Reals, “Zufallige Ansichten” and forms of “Zusammen” without number. These are for our knowledge “wirklich,” but they have no realistic, that is, for Herbart, no ultimate, no simply independent being. I regard this series of episodes in the history of Realism as profoundly instructive. Any realistic world, if well thought out, contains objects that either are not real in the realist’s sense, or else are real, not only in that sense, but also in quite another sense. This is what a student easily overlooks. But it is a fact extremely ominous for Realism.

As to the historical and practical significance of realistic metaphysics in the history of life and of religion, one must say at once that, like all human conceptions, these various fundamental metaphysical conceptions also are, in one aspect, distinctly active and practical attitudes towards that Other which finite thought seeks. For Realism, the true meaning of our ideas is to be wholly external. Yet the internal meaning of the ideas stubbornly remains. The realist actually believes his doctrine because he finds it simple, or rational, or otherwise contenting to his inner interests. We never think without also acting, or tending to act. When we think we will. We have then internal meanings. So far as we have ideas really present to us, they embody purposes. Accordingly we shall find that all of our four various definitions of the ontological predicate are expressions of distinctly universal and human interests in life and the universe. Man confesses his practical ideals when he defines his philosophical notions.