Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/411

certain well-known problem for which we are now at length fully prepared. The World and the Individual, — these are now upon our hands. Their Being we have defined, not only in general, but with an explicit reference to both of them. But what we have so far, for the greater part of our discussion, deliberately ignored, is an attempt to describe in any detail their precise mutual relations. It is just to these relations that we shall hence-forth devote ourselves, both in the brief remaining space of this first half of our series, and in all that is to constitute the second half of these lectures. What is, as we have already asserted, is the World. We have also asserted that it is the Individual. Both terms appear equivocal. The world is real, — ay, but what world? The world, so our Fourth Conception has answered, — the world that any idea views as its own wholly expressed meaning and object. “Yes,” you may say, “but are not our ideas many and various? Is it not one thing to think of mathematical truth, and quite another to think of physical truth? Is not the world of the mathematician a different object from the world of the moralist? Are these not then various worlds adapted to express various meanings? Do these worlds constitute one realm, — a single universe? And if so, how?” But we have also said that the individual is real. Here still more naturally you may ask, “What individual?” Our answer has been: The whole individual life that expresses and presents the meaning of any single idea. But you will still properly be dissatisfied. You will say: “Are not the individuals as various as are all our various ideas? And how are these individuals of which you have so far spoken