Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/181

156 to make good the second of these aspects of our ignorance. The World of Appreciation we learn to recognize by coming to a better definition of what it is that our will even now seeks. For then we learn that our present will demands for its full expression, not merely contents or facts that are yet to be discriminated, but other wills than this present conscious will of ours, other purposes than we as yet observe within the limits of this instant’s consciousness. Our reaction in presence of the world can become definite and rational, and in accordance with the Ought, only when we acknowledge, not merely data other than those now consciously present, but lives, selves, other than our own finite selfhood. Hence the World of Description, taken by itself, is never the whole truth. It needs to be interpreted in terms of the World of Appreciation.

What the criticism of fundamental categories has enabled us to see in general, is concretely exemplified by our knowledge of the Physical World and of Human Society. We proceed accordingly to apply our general theory to these special cases. We shall find motives that lead us to interpret the physical world as a World of Description, where, as we then conceive, series of phenomena are linked according to rigidly invariable laws. These laws enable us indeed to see how the One and the Many are in certain ways related, but do not appear as expressions of Purpose. On the contrary, the Social World, the realm of our human fellow-beings, is for us all primarily a World of Appreciation, that is, a world where other wills than our own present conscious will seem to be expressing themselves, in accordance with their own choices. Hence our customary interpretation of the world as known to men is profoundly