Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/79

54 do not concretely acknowledge their reality, in the nebulous blur of what we call “the rest of the world.”

And so, what we seem to know, at any instant, consists of two regions, whose contrast is of more importance, in many ways, than is the one upon which we insisted at the opening of our former lecture. There we laid stress upon the difference between what is presented, at any instant of our consciousness, and what is then recognized or acknowledged as the expression of the theoretical Ought which controls our thinking. Here we draw the line of our classification at another place. We distinguish what either is presented or else is in some detail the object of belief, from what is acknowledged only as a whole and undifferentiated. Think of Asia, and think of some definite belief of yours regarding Asia, and what you think of is an object that, as you believe in it, is indeed not now presented to your observation. But it is present to your thought. The idea of it, as an Internal Meaning, is something of which you are definitely conscious. Yet, in addition to believing this or that about Asia, you unquestionably do recognize, however vaguely, even at the moment, that Asia is but a part of the universe whose reality you also acknowledge. Now this universe in its wholeness is real for you, at the moment, over and above Asia, because, as we have insisted, your idea of Asia is by itself unsatisfying, and so is inevitably viewed as something that cannot be expressed alone. It is felt to be essentially a fragment; and this feeling constantly tends to lead you to further thoughts, which still remain for your consciousness latent, — thoughts of the relation of Asia to the rest of the Eastern Continent, or