Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/130

Rh embodiment of Life, and not merely as the object of discrimination. It is a world with which we stand in Social Relations. Its life cooperates with ours.

And now, as to the true serial order of this world of Life, we have, from the outset of our exposition of our Fourth Concept, recognized that, whatever the world contains, it contains in the form of a Self-Conscious Being. In our Supplementary Essay we showed at length that a Self, as a real being, has a certain form of expression, which inevitably involves a serial structure, but that this serial structure, in its main outline, is most truly represented by the form of the series of whole numbers, rather than by the form of a series between any two of whose terms, further terms without end are interpolated. A series of the latter type is indeed describable. Nor is it in the least objectionable by reason of the infinite complexity of its conceived structure. For, as the Supplementary Essay showed us, the real world is certainly infinitely complex in structure, and there is no contradiction in conceiving an infinitely complex object as real. But, from our point of view, the world of a Self, whatever continuity of internal structure it may in some aspects possess, is in its principal form of expression embodied in a discrete series of acts, of individual expressions, of stages of self-representation and of self-revelation. We cannot here repeat the argument by which this result was reached in the Essay in question. But experience at any moment shows how I am conscious of my own deeds, of my progress, of my acts of attention, and of my approaches to selfhood in any way, in the form of a discrete series, in which one stage or act of life is followed by the next. The