Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/82

Rh one Being. Just so, if the other objects besides Asia were wholly other than Asia itself, there would again be no community; and if Asia has Being, these other objects could have no Being. And so, in knowing Asia, I, in some sense, already know these other objects. And my knowledge, too, is in some sense one with the knowledge that more concretely possesses them. They are not, then, wholly absent objects. Even now, I, in some sense, mean them all.

Whoever denies this, after all, by implication, affirms it. For he asserts that there exist various objects, and various states of knowledge. He implies in his very assertion that his own present idea of these existences, his present meaning, is expressed in the existence of these same facts. This assertion, if true, implies a genuine unity, including, and by its nature differentiated into, the variety, not only of his sundered facts, but of these facts and his own knowledge of them.

And therefore, whoever knows any concrete object, knows in a sense all objects. In what sense is he then ignorant of any? This is for us the truly important problem.

We reply at once: The objects now concretely acknowledged are related to the objects not now concretely known, in precisely the same general sense as is that in which, at any instant of our conscious life, the objects which our attention focusses are related to what, although present, is lost in the background of consciousness. Ignorance always means inattention to details. In our momentary conscious life, such ignorance, so far as it relates to the presented contents of sense, is often