Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/126

Rh individual form. For the various possible ways of defining series of facts are all equally justified. But to say this is to admit that they are all equally abstract and inadequate.

When you count eggs, it “makes no difference” in what order you count them. But when you are to enjoy a Symphony, a great deal depends on the precise order in which the notes are played. When the astronomer makes a catalogue of stars, the stars appear indifferent to the order in which their positions are set down. But when you undertake to perform any rational task, such as getting through your day’s duties, or serving your country, or growing in a sense of your relations to God, everything turns upon the order in which you do your work. Whatever expresses a single purpose has, as the expression of that purpose, an irreversible succession. One deed comes first, another next, and so on forever.

And now this holds true as to precisely the personal, the truly volitional aspect, of even those very processes of a descriptive sort (counting eggs, cataloguing stars, discriminating facts in their series), — such as I have here used to exemplify the apparent indifference of the serial systems of the world of description to the order in which you, or other observers, take note of their presence. The eggs and the stars appear unconcerned about the order in which you chance to take up your task of describing their serial variety. But in your life, that is, or ought to be, as orderly as the symphony or as serving God and your country, it makes a great difference to you, when you count the eggs, whether or no you count “six” after having counted “five,” or skip in counting one or more of your well-ordered number-