Ideas as they come to us, in their finite imperfections, are at first indeterminate, and for that very reason vague, general, or, as technical language often expresses it, abstractly universal. That is precisely why they at once seek and attempt to define another than themselves, and do so in the form of Universal Judgments. For an universal, in the abstract sense of the term, is, as we have fully illustrated, known to us merely as that of which there might be another instance. Whoever seeks his meaning in another complex of facts than the one present to him, thereby makes explicit that what he possesses in his idea is merely a kind of fulfilment of his purpose, and not a whole fulfilment. Whoever thinks merely of man, of triangle, of life, has a general idea. So far as he imperfectly defines a purpose that essentially seeks other expression than the present. Whoever longs, loves, hopes, struggles, aspires; whoever experiments, watches for facts, makes hypotheses, — whoever is finite, possesses in his passing idea a general type of relative fulfilment, but seeks precisely to specify, to render more determinate, precisely this general idea. He first looks for specification in further experience. Finding is a more determinate experience of the very contents of one’s ideas themselves than is seeking. As more determinate, it takes the form of Particular Judgments.
Well, if every idea is as such a general type of empirical and fragmentary fulfilment of purpose, if in seeking its object, its Other, the idea seeks only its own greater determination, then, at the desired limit of determination, the idea, as already pointed out, would
