unique the individuals in question are, the more I may be limited, in my thinking, to this negative method of characterising them. In fact, the hypothesis contrary to fact might be called, logically, the judgment of differentiation, or of at least one aspect of definite individuation. For how can I better express at least one aspect of the contrast, the sundering, between individuals of the same species, than by showing that, if such and such discoverable characters of these individuals were varied so and so, the sundering of these individuals would tend to disappear, and their present individuality would tend to lapse into a merely specific resemblance? If “Dorothy Q.” had said No on a certain occasion, the poet would have been, at best, just such and such a fraction different from what he now is. But what he now is, his individuality, is involved in the world in which “Dorothy Q.” said Yes. If the Persians had won at Marathon, then, as far as we can see, Europe might have become politically less distinguishable from Asia. But the individuality of European civilisation involves, as one differentiating feature, the fact that the Greeks won at Marathon.
If, then, hypotheses contrary to fact can be present as expressions of concrete truth to an experience that faces truth, the presence of such hypotheses contrary to fact is not excluded from an Absolute Experience, even in so far as it is absolute. And now the presence of such hypotheses as elements of an Absolute Experience would, in the next place, reconcile our two conflicting views as to the relation of idea and content in such an Absolute Experience. Ideas must
