Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/97

72 tion of fact to law in the universe. It will free us from that bugbear of popular metaphysic, the superstition that whatever is, is somehow subject to an absolutely rigid Necessity. We shall see that necessity is only one aspect of the fact-world, and the more abstract one, which is a valid aspect only in so far as it serves to make possible Individuality and Freedom.

To my mind, as I may at once say, our best single word for expressing what is essential to a lawful order in the world of facts is the term Series. Facts are subject to law in so far as they are arranged in definable series, or in systems of interwoven serial orders. The relation of physical cause and effect, whose consideration we have so often postponed in our previous discussions, becomes a definite relation at all only when it is viewed as an instance (and by no means the most important instance) of the existence of series of facts in the universe. All comprehension of particular facts which goes beyond a bare abstract classification of them, and which still falls short of a satisfactory teleological view of their meaning, depends upon conceiving them as in the same series, or system of series, with other facts. This is the essential nature of the categories that have to do with Law. As we shall see, the general concept of Series is common to the World of Description and to the world of the actual life of the Will. Only the types of Series differ in these two worlds, the Well-Ordered Series being characteristic of the life of the Will just in so far as it is self-conscious, and consequently always knows what next to do, while the World of Description is characterized, in general, by another and less perfect type of serial order.