Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/58

Rh the fuller determination of my own will, viewed at once as mine and yet as superior to my present capricious and imperfect expression of my purpose, the theoretical Ought of our present discussion of the categories of Experience is similarly related to the theoretical aspect of my present conscious activity. The expression of my Internal Meaning, as I now embody my purpose, has contents and a structure, has characters and relations within itself, and so is not only a “mere Idea,” but also has the correlative character of being, as we have all along seen, a fragment of Reality. The fuller expression of my will, defined by the Ought, has, in the same way, its own correlative embodiment in the Real. This embodiment constitutes my world of recognized facts. In recognizing the Ought on its practical side, as that to which I should even now conform my deed, I inevitably recognize the embodiment of this Ought, in the world of my completed will, as a fact. The present deed should be, then, at once a conformity to the Ought, viewed as a mode of action, and an adjustment or response to the facts, as the Ought, which is embodied in them, requires me to recognize them. The facts, as real, are embodiments of my purpose, yet not of my purpose as just now it transiently seems, but as it ought to be viewed. In recognizing them, I limit my present expression of myself through deeds, by virtue of my reference to these facts themselves. That shall be now (namely, in my deed), which conforms to the whole system that I mean, viz. to the world of the facts. To view my present act thus is to recognize the facts as such.

The extremely manifold and subtle implications of this