Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/53

28 not now seeking to create; — in brief, that the fulfilment of my will through my present search logically depends upon my accepting a foundation on the basis of which I will, and an environment in which I work. Now what I thus presuppose as the hidden ground of my meaning, what I acknowledge either as the starting-point or as the goal of my seeking, what I thus recognize, not as my momentary creation, but as the condition of my activity, — this — the foundation of my present will — constitutes for me that concrete reality in which, at any moment, I believe as my special “world of facts.”

A fact, then, is at once that which my present will implies and presupposes, and that which, for this very reason, is in some aspect Other than what I find myself here and now producing, accomplishing, attaining. Because of that aspect of a fact which the word Other very properly emphasizes, we are prone to insist that it is of the essence of facts to be “stubborn,” to be “foreign to the will,” to be, as facts, “beyond our power,” “necessary,” “forced upon us.” But it is equally important, from our idealistic point of view, to remember that, in so far as I purpose, intend, pursue, or find myself accomplishing, it is of the very essence of my will to demand its own Other, to set its fulfilment beyond its present, and so to define its own very life as now in some sense also not its own, or as in some wise now foreign. Our rational purpose in living as we human beings now do, is essentially and always the wanderer’s purpose. We seek our home, our city out of sight, our lost truth. But in the very search itself lies the partial embodiment of what we ourselves will.