the true meaning and place of the concept of Individuality, in regard to which the present discussion carries out a little more fully considerations which appear, in a very different form of statement, in the Supplementary Essay, published at the close of The Conception of God. As for the term Thought, I now agree that the inclusive use which I gave to it in my first book is not wholly convenient; and in these lectures I use this term Thought as a name for the process by which we define or describe objects viewed as beyond or as other than the process whereby they are defined or described, while, in my Religious Aspect of Philosophy, the term, as applied to the Absolute, referred not only to finite processes of thinking, but also, and expressly, to the inclusive Whole of Insight, in which both truth and value are attained, not as objects beyond Thought’s ideas, but as appreciated and immanent fulfilment or expression of all the purposes of finite Thought. This usage seems to be less effective for purposes of exposition than that which I have tried to employ in this book. Besides, I now more emphasize the distinctions there already implied, while I surrender in no whit my assurance of the unity of God and the World.
As for the present discussion, it is useless to defend its methods to people who by nature or by training are opposed to all thoroughgoing philosophical inquiry. Such are nowadays accustomed to say that they are already well aware of the limits of human thinking, and that they confine themselves wholly to “the realm of experience.” It is useless to tell them that this book also is an inquiry regarding just this realm of experience. For such critics,
