Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/59

34 view of our consciousness of the realm of concrete facts can here only be indicated. Our later discussions of Nature and of Man must supply the details. It is plain, at once, that, according to our view, every concrete fact in the universe becomes for us, just in so far as it is acknowledged, the expression of a purpose, and so is never a mere datum of anybody’s present experience, and is never a mere constraining power, that from without simply forces our assent. A fact may be acknowledged while yet many aspects of it remain mysterious. In so far it remains a “foreign” fact. But it is also our thesis that no purpose in the universe either is, or can now be rationally viewed by me, as wholly foreign to my own; while facts, so far as I understand them, become ipso facto expressions of ideas, and so of purposes. All purposes seek the expression that even now I am consciously seeking. Thus I myself am real, and I regard nothing real as a me alienum.

But, on the other hand, facts unquestionably limit me, and now seem to possess, at this passing instant, their often overwhelmingly foreign aspect. Why? In so far as I remain in suffering unreasonableness, no answer is apparent to such a question. But then, suffering unreasonableness, — a merely fragmentary mood of finite life, — if taken by itself, asks no very definite questions. For definite questions are reasonable, and imply successful inner deeds. But the mood of the unreasoning sufferer is lost in its mere failure to act successfully. It expresses its purpose only in so far as it is now conscious of its suffering. The rest of the universe it finds merely as something negative. Its word is, “True Being is