The World and the Individual, First Series/Lecture 10

by Josiah Royce

LECTURE X

INDIVIDUALITY AND FREEDOM

If we have been right in our foregoing discussions, the first principles of religious doctrine have a foundation as simple as the meaning of those principles is inexhaustible. So long as you first assume that the world of fact is merely given, independent of ideas, is found by us as such an independent reality, then indeed every effort to interpret the world quickly loses its way in the labyrinth of our experience. But remember, before you are thus lost, that the world is real only as the object of true ideas, and then your fundamental problem at once becomes that of the essential relation of idea and object. This relation is then the world-knot. Nor does that knot prove insoluble. At any moment, despite the mysteries of experience, you have in your hands the essential solution. For the relation of idea and object is essentially the relation of a partial meaning to a totally expressed rational meaning. And, as we have already seen, and in the present lecture shall further illustrate, the relation of partial and total meaning is, at the same time, the relation of any finite will to the expression of the complete intent of that same will. Without contradiction, therefore, you are unable to assert the real Being of any world, unless you conceive that world as the expressed will whose partial momentary embodiment you even now observe, whenever you get any rational idea before your mind.

This view of the nature of Being, as we have asserted, is no arbitrary hypothesis, but is what a close examination discovers to be involved in the very presuppositions of common sense. In some respects, in fact, the essence of this view may be brought home to our ordinary consciousness, if we remember how the forms of space and of time are from moment to moment conceived by everybody as limitless and as universal, and as predetermining the constitution of the whole natural universe, while this whole infinity of both space and time is viewed as homogeneous with the space and time present at the instant to our own consciousness. The well-known case of the principle of contradiction again illustrates how the consciousness of the moment regards itself as warranted in predetermining the essential constitution of all possible beings. Our study of the conception of Being has been intended simply to render explicit and definite what kind of relationship it is which thus links the instant of human consciousness to the eternal constitution of the whole. We have seen indeed that our fourth definition of Reality gives us no right capriciously to predetermine any of the empirical contents of the world not now present to ourselves. But, on the other hand, we have undertaken to assert that the general constitution of this universe is known to us not merely in so far as the principle of contradiction, or as the forms of time and space, give warrant for universal assertions about reality or about some portion of it; but also in so far as the fundamental structure of the universe is essentially both teleological and conscious. We have also endeavored to state, in concrete form, of what nature this teleological structure of Reality proves to be.

I

In the foregoing lecture the unity of the idealistic world engaged our attention. In the present lecture, we are to consider the other aspect, — the Individuality, the Variety of finite beings, and the relative Freedom of finite acts.

No accusation is more frequent than that an Idealism which has once learned to view the world as a rational whole, present in its actuality to the unity of a single consciousness, has then no room either for finite individuality, or for freedom of ethical action. It was for the sake of preparing the way for a fair treatment of this very problem that we from the beginning defined the nature of ideas in terms at once of experience and of will. As we later passed to the assertion of the unity of the world from the final point of view, we have never lost sight of the fact that this is the unity of a divine Will, or, if you please, of a divine Act, at the same time as it is the unity of the divine Insight. The word “Meaning” has for us, from the outset, itself possessed a twofold implication, — not because we preferred ambiguity, but because, once for all, the facts of consciousness warrant, and in fact demand, this twofold interpretation. Whoever is possessed of any meaning, whoever faces truth, whoever rationally knows, has before his consciousness at once, that which possesses the unity of a knowing process, and that which fulfils a purpose, or in other words, that which constitutes what we have from the outset called an act of will as well as an act of knowledge. It is essential to our entire understanding of our Fourth Conception of Being, that we should remember the truth in both of these aspects, not dividing the aspects themselves, nor confounding their significance.

A few words of purely psychological analysis may then be, at this point, useful, to clarify the precise relations between intellectual and voluntary processes in our ordinary consciousness.

Popular psychology long since far too sharply sundered the Intellect and the Will in the empirical processes of the finite human mind. Viewing the intellect as a passive reception of the truth, defining the will as the power to alter facts, the popular psychology was forced, almost from the outset, to make an effort to reunite the powers that it had thus falsely separated. For a very little consideration shows not only that we can will to know, but also that we are in general guided, in our intellectual processes, by the very interests which popular psychology refers to the will. On the other hand, our voluntary processes, if they are conscious, are themselves matters of knowledge. For our conscious volition implies that we know what we will. In consequence of these obvious considerations, a more modern psychology has been led to its well-known doctrine that all such psychological divisions are rather distinctions between different aspects of the same process, than means for telling us of naturally sundered or even of separable processes. If we regard the human subject, in the ordinary psychological way, as a being whose conscious life runs parallel with the highest physical processes of his organism, we get a view of the relation between the intellect and the will which is far more just, at once to the natural history of the mind, and to the deeper meaning of the inner life of our consciousness. View man as a natural being, and you find him adjusting himself to his environment, acting, as they say, in response to stimuli. The world influences his senses, only to awaken him to such functions as express his interest in this world. Now the whole life of the organism is precisely the life of adjustment. The physical activities accompanying consciousness so take place that the organism preserves itself, and expresses its natural bearing towards its world. And the whole life of consciousness, accompanying these adjustments, constitutes a more or less accurate knowledge of what the adjustments are. The life of our consciousness is therefore a life of watching our deeds, of estimating our deeds, of predicting our deeds, and of interpreting our whole world in terms of deeds. We observe no outer facts without at the same time more or less clearly observing our attitude towards those facts, our estimate of their value, our response to their presence, our intentions with respect to our future relations with these facts.

But, within the circle of this general unity of our consciousness, various distinctions indeed arise. Sometimes the outer fact, viewed more or less in abstraction from its value to ourselves, more completely fills the field of our consciousness, and then we are likely to talk of a state of relatively pure Knowledge. If our state is one in which an idea explicitly appears as attempting to correspond to the presupposed object of its own External Meaning, or to its own Other, we call the process one of Thought about External Reality. Sometimes, however, our acts themselves, viewed as efforts to alter the outside facts, come more clearly before us either for deliberate estimate, or for impulsive decision; and in such cases we find the narrow field of our consciousness more clearly taken up by what we call Will. But facts are never known except with reference to some value that they possess for our present or intended activities. And on the other hand, our voluntary activities are never known to us except as referring to facts to which we attribute in one way or another an intellectually significant Being, — a reality other than what is present to us at the moment.

It follows that when, for general purposes, we study, not the psychology, but, as at present, the total significance of our conscious life, we are much less interested in the separation between knowledge and will than in that unity which psychology already recognizes, and which philosophy finds of still more organic importance. Consequently, when, at the outset of these discussions, we pointed out the element of will in the constitution of ideas, we were dwelling upon precisely what for the psychologist appears as the intimate connection between the knowing process of the mind and the motor responses of the organism to its environment. When we know, we have in the first place present to our minds certain contents, certain data, certain facts, it may be of the outer senses, it may be of the memory and the imagination. But if rational knowledge takes place, these data are not merely present, but they also take on forms; they constitute ideal structures; they fulfil our own purposes. These purposes consciously correspond either to what an ordinary observer would call our visible responses to our environment, or to what a psychologist, who looks closer than an ordinary observer, would find also to involve memories, or hints, or fragments, of former adjustments. The result is, so far, that, when we know, the facts both of sense and of imagination unite in our minds, into the expression of a Plan of Action. And thus the knowing process is a process partially embodying our own will. Upon such an analysis of the nature of ideas all the foregoing discussion has been founded; and now we deliberately repeat and emphasize this interpretation in order to make way for a final statement of the place of the will in our doctrine of being.

From this point of view, then, the contrast between knowledge and will, within our own conscious field, is so far this; viz., that we speak of our conscious process as a Knowing, in so far as all the data are woven into one unity of consciousness; while we speak of this same process as Will, in so far as this unity of consciousness involves a fulfilment or embodiment of a purpose. The word “Meaning” very properly lays stress upon both of these aspects at once. For what we call a Meaning is at once something observed with clearness as an unity of many facts, and something also intended as the result which fulfils a purpose. But when we take account of External Meanings, we speak of Thought in so far as we seek correspondence to our presupposed Other, and of Will in so far as we seek to produce the Other that shall correspond to the Internal Meaning. Yet here the distinction, as we have already seen, is wholly relative to the point of view.

But now it next becomes us to take special note of this latter aspect of the will, — an aspect upon which the popular consciousness lays great stress. For the will is usually regarded as primarily the Cause of something which but for the will would not come into existence. We have already spoken of acts of will; and the popular view declares that we are conscious of an activity which causes states of consciousness to exist within ourselves, and acts to come into existence outside of ourselves, and which is therefore responsible for the actual production of new Being in the universe. But if, with reference to the scientific value of this popular view, we turn to psychology for advice, we find at the present time, in that science, decidedly opposed interpretations of the sense in which the human will can be regarded as a cause. According to one of these interpretations the word “act” is properly to be applied merely to the physical process by which our organism gets adjusted to its environment. The causes of precisely such physical acts are, from this psychological point of view, themselves physical causes. Our consciousness, according to this same view, is not itself a cause, either of the physical act whereby we express our will, or of the states of mind themselves which constitute our inner intent. Our will merely accompanies our adjustment to the environment, and constitutes our own consciousness of the meaning of a certain portion of this adjustment. Our will is not itself one of the forces or powers of nature.

On the other hand, a traditional doctrine, which has won for itself no small hearing in psychology, regards the volitional, or active, side of our consciousness, not merely as a fact in itself, but as a cause of other facts, both physical and mental. From this point of view, the distinction between intellect and will acquires a fresh importance, and declines to be reduced to that mere distinction of aspects which we have emphasized in the foregoing account. For, as is often said, man, in so far as he is a mere knower, accomplishes nothing; he merely observes. But as doer, as voluntary agent, he is the source of new being; he is an originator. Will, for this view, is nothing if not efficacious. A process that merely accompanies and reflects, without affecting, the adjustments of my organism to its environment, would be no true will. A sort of consciousness which merely observes that from moment to moment my inner life, for me, seems to have meaning, would, as this view asserts, in the end deprive my life of its most important meaning. For above all, as they say, what I mean to be is an originator of facts, and of facts that but for me would not exist. The true problem regarding the place of the will in the universe arises, according to this view, precisely at the point where one asks, Is the will the cause of any existence other than itself?

The two views about the will as cause thus brought into opposition have justly played a great part, both in the psychological and the metaphysical controversies of all periods, ever since the meaning of life began seriously to be considered. And the relation of this whole controversy to the deepest interest of metaphysics is as unquestionable as it is easy to misinterpret. For the word “cause” is a term of very various meaning. So ambiguous and obscure, in fact, is the idea of cause as customarily used, that I have deliberately preferred to avoid even defining the issue about the causality of the will until our concept of Being had first assumed in general a definite form. Moreover, even at the present stage of our inquiry, although we must indeed deal with one aspect of the issue upon its own substantial merits, we shall do best to avoid, on the present occasion, any thorough-going discussion of the varieties of meaning of the word “cause.” We shall do best merely to state the sense in which we ourselves regard the Being of facts as due to the will, be that will human or divine. We shall then postpone, until our second course of lectures, a more precise distinction of the various forms of causation, which we shall learn to recognize as present in nature and in mind. For the concept of cause, properly regarded, is rather a cosmological than a fundamentally metaphysical conception.

To metaphysics in general belongs, above all, the question that we have been considering, — the question what it is to be. To metaphysics also belongs the problem, What fundamentally different kinds of Being are there? And in this connection the relation between God and the individual is indeed of essential importance. From the metaphysician you may also expect the answer to the question, To what principles is the actual constitution of the world of conscious volition, and of ethically significant life, due? But it is within the realm of what we call Nature, — namely, within the realm of finite experience, with its various phenomenal distinctions of organic and inorganic, of apparently living and apparently lifeless beings, — it is, I say, in case of Nature, that the diversified processes, present to our ordinary experience, arouse questions as to the special kinds of causal linkage that, in any particular case, bind one fact to another. It is in this world, — the phenomenal or natural, the essentially fragmentary world, the realm which cannot contain its whole truth within itself, — it is in this realm, I say, that the special problems concerning physical and mental causation, concerning active and inactive beings, concerning the relation of physical organism and mental phenomena, most properly arise. And we shall do well to keep separate the study of the whole constitution of the universe (conceived in accordance with the general principles of our theory of Being), from a study of the special problems of the phenomenal world. It is not my present purpose, then, to exhaust the theory of the sense in which will is, and is not, an active cause in the natural world. What can at present be asked from us is a general statement of the sense in which what exists expresses, on the one hand, the will of God; and, on the other hand, that individual will which you find at any moment present in a fragmentary way in your own finite consciousness. I shall maintain that both God’s will and our own finite will get consciously expressed in the world, and that no contradiction results from this statement.

II

At any moment your ideas, in so far as they are rational, embody a purpose. That we have asserted from the outset. Our original example, that of the melody sung, for the sake of the mere delight in singing, remains for us typical of the entire life of what one may call consciously free and internally unrestricted finite ideas. Now what we in the first place have asserted in regard to such ideas, is that, precisely in so far as they are whole ideas, they stand before our consciousness as present fulfilments of purpose.

Any mere purpose, so far as it is still relatively fragmentary, or is, so to speak, disembodied, or is a mere striving, begins, in any such empirical case, the little drama that is acted within the momentary limits of a finite consciousness. In saying that this, at first disembodied purpose, becomes expressed, whenever any consciousness of such an act passes from its earlier to its later temporal stages, — I merely report what happens. I make as yet simply no assertion with regard to any psychological or physical causation. I assert as yet, in such a case, no effective force. I mention nothing of the nature of a physical or psychical tendency such that, by the mere necessity of its nature, it must work itself out. What my consciousness finds when I sing or speak is that a certain meaning actually gets expressed. My act of singing takes place. At once, then, there are data present, there are facts of consciousness, and there is this significance which these facts embody. Whether the facts could have come into existence in this way unless a given nervous organism or a given psychical entity, endowed with specific powers, subject to general laws, were already in existence, of all that my finite consciousness in the present moment tells me nothing. To assert any such thing is so far to assert a mere psychological or cosmological theory. The basis of such an assertion, if it has any basis, must be sought outside of any one moment’s experience. On the other hand, in vain would any psychologist, in vain would any realistic metaphysician, attempt to rob my finite consciousness of the significance which this my own moment of singing or speaking has, for me, embodied. This significance is a matter of my experience. Whatever your system of metaphysics, the singer can say: Here at least the world has meaning, for lo! I sing.

Now, as a metaphysical theory, our idealistic doctrine with regard to Being in its wholeness has simply maintained that, without any regard to a doctrine of causation, without regard in the least to any specific view as to the psychology of mental process, the whole universe, precisely in so far as it is, is the expression of a meaning, is the conscious fulfilment of significance in life, precisely as the melody present at a given moment to the singer is for his consciousness the momentary expression of a meaning. And so our theory of Being is not founded upon any prior doctrine of causation. Cause and effect, laws mechanical or laws psychological, fate or freedom, in so far as any of these have Being, are from our point of view subject to the prior conditions of the very concept of Being itself. If nothing can be except what embodies a meaning, we are not first required to explain how anything whatever comes into Being, or how anything whatever is caused. For the cause of Being would itself have Being, and could itself exist, if our analysis is correct, only as the actual expression of a meaning.

The unhappy slavery of the metaphysics of the past to the conception of causation has been responsible for some of the most fatal of the misfortunes of religion and of humanity. That the existence of God was to be proved only by the means of the concept of causation, was one of the most characteristic of the presuppositions of an earlier theology, and was often supposed to be maintained on the basis of the authority of Aristotle. As a fact, this method of dealing with the theory of Being was false to the deepest spirit of Aristotle himself. For Aristotle’s God is primarily the All-perfect Being, and is only secondarily the subject of which causation could be predicated in any form whatever. But however that may be, the theology which conceives the relation between God and the world, and between the world and the individual, as primarily a causal relation, subordinates the universal to the particular in theory, and the significant to the relatively insignificant in practical doctrine. The inevitable results of any such inversion of the rational order is a world where either fate reigns, or absolute mysteries are the final facts; or where both these unhappy results are combined. That just because the universe is through and through transparently significant, it may later prove to be worth while to regard my will as in this or that respect a cause of certain special results, is intelligible enough. But the genuine significance of my voluntary process is always an affair of my own consciousness regarding the present meaning of my life. You will in vain endeavor to deduce that meaning from the distinctly lower category of causal efficacy. That lower category of causation always implies a comment which somebody else, viewing my act in a relatively external way, may pass upon me from without.

It is indeed metaphysically just to assert that in certain aspects of my life I must needs be regarded as a cause, because I am already known to possess conscious significance, and because some aspects of this significance turn out to be causal. But you can never, on the other hand, discover wherein consists my significance by merely asserting that I am somehow or other a powerful cause. And precisely so it is in the case of God. You can indeed say that this or that fact in the world must be viewed as a result of laws whose source lies in the divine nature. But in asserting this you merely lay stress upon a result of that conscious significance which first of all attaches to the Being of all things, and to the life of God in its wholeness.

I cannot, then, too strenuously insist upon the thought that our own theory of Being places the very significance, both of the whole world and of the individual life, in the actual conscious fulfilment of meaning. Such fulfilment, from our own point of view, is the only reality. We therefore do not explain the existence of meaning in the world by looking, in the end, beyond any meaning for the cause which has brought the significant world to pass. To view the matter in that way would be of the very essence of Realism, and would involve all the contradictions which have already led us to reject the realistic interpretation of Being. Causation will find its place in our world, but as a mere result, — a partial aspect, — a mere item of the very significance of that world itself. For causal connections have a place only as expressing their own aspect of the meaning of things. On the other hand, the mere part, causation, will never appear in our account as the source of the whole; nor will this causation, which is but a very special form of Being, or a name for various special forms of Being, ever appear as that to which either the Being, or the wholeness of the meaning of the world, is due. And so much, then, for the mere causal efficacy, either of God or of man.

In consequence of these considerations, our primary question in regard to the finite human individual, in his relation to the divine life, is merely the question, In what sense does the finite Being retain, despite the unity of the whole divine life, any individual significance of his own, and what is the relation of this finite significance to the meaning and plan of the whole? But for the answer to this, our really important question, we may now be prepared, if we next lay new stress upon certain aspects of the Fourth Conception of Being, to which we have made repeated reference.

Ill

We have said that a meaning gets wholeness and individuality of expression precisely in so far as it gets, at the same time, conscious determination. An imperfect idea is vague. It is general. But it is so, in our own finite consciousness, in two senses. (1) Any finite idea, as we have seen, sends us to some other experience to furnish us yet further instances that are needed for its whole expression. This reference to another for the remainder of itself is characteristic of even the clearest and most precise of our finite ideas, just in so far as they are general. Thus, in counting, the single numbers refer us, further on in the number-series, for the rest of what the counting process implies. If one merely counts the first ten numbers, there are still other numbers to count. A complete consciousness of the whole meaning of the number-series would complete this process of seeking Another by presenting the whole individual meaning of the number concept in a finished form. We have, so far, altogether postponed the discussion of those difficulties about the quantitative Infinite which the conception of a completed knowledge of numbers seems to involve.^[1] We have asserted only that the arithmetical or mathematical Being of the number-series cannot be consistently expressed, either in realistic form or in the form of mere valid possibilities of experience. We have consequently asserted that even the realm of mathematical Being involves facts which only our Fourth Conception can adequately express. In what way the whole experience in question gets realized, we have pointed out only in the general fashion indicated in the foregoing lecture. The whole Being in question, as we have said, must be present to the final consciousness in its complete form, or in such wise that no other, beyond, remains to be sought. So much, then, for the first inadequacy of our finite general ideas.

(2) But our finite passing consciousness is incomplete or inadequate to its own purposes not merely by lack of contents adequate to express its wholeness, but by reason of vagueness with regard to its own momentarily conscious purposes. The principal source of actual error, in finite consciousness, we have already found to be the indetermination of our purposes at any stage in their realization. Now the presupposition of our whole view is that the final expression of purpose is not merely complete as to its contents, but absolutely determinate as to what meaning these contents fulfil. Now the finite process, whereby our own consciousness passes from an indeterminate to a relatively determinate state of purpose, of intention, of seeking for contents, is known to us in its psychological manifestations as a process of Selective Attention, growing more and more definite as it proceeds. Precisely in so far as we are conscious of a definite meaning at any instant, we are conscious of contents selected, as it were, from the background of our own finite consciousness, selected as the contents which are such that no other contents would definitely tend to express our will. Now it is the law of conscious growth in ourselves, that greater determination of purpose, and greater wealth of presented contents, are the correlative aspects of any gradual fulfilment of meaning. The more we know and the more richly we find our will fulfilled, the more exclusive and determinate becomes our purpose. The vague purpose is so far not at the instant clear as to whether this or that would better fulfil its meaning. The precise purpose selects this instead of that. Precise decision is exclusive as well as inclusive. And when I speak of this fact, I refer once more directly to our consciousness as my warrant. I presuppose nothing as to the causal basis, or as to the psychological or physical origin, of attention. I say that one who rationally finds a meaning fulfilled, discovers at once a wealth of contents, and a very sharply specific exclusiveness of interest fulfilled by these contents.

A satisfied will, a fully expressed meaning, would involve, then, the twofold consciousness that we may express by the two phrases, (1) I have all that I seek, and need no other; (2) I need precisely these contents, and so select them as to permit no other to take here and for this purpose their place. As a matter of fact, then, a will satisfied, a precisely determinate meaning expressed in facts, is as selective and exclusive on the one hand, as, on the other hand, it is possessed of an exhaustive wealth of contents which meet its selection.

Now it is this selective character of every rational conscious process, a character as manifest to consciousness as it is ultimately significant for the constitution of all Being, — it is this character, I say, which to my mind is responsible above all for the Individuality which we have already characterized as belonging to the whole of Being, and which we shall now find as equally characistic of every region of finite Being. Strange as it may at first seem, a closer examination of the nature of truth makes easily manifest that what is, quite apart from any causal theory, must be viewed by the consciousness that faces Being as a selection from abstractly possible contents. The nature of these contents in general is recognized, and is so far present, at the very moment when the realization of this nature in the single shape selected from amongst all possible shapes is, at the same time, experienced.

This general view, that what is, is a selection from possibilities, is in another form as characteristic of Realism, and even in a sense of Mysticism, as it is of our own view of Being.

The discovery that the affirmation of reality is logically based upon the exclusion of the barely possible, is constantly made by common sense, is constantly illustrated by daily experience, and is popularly exemplified by that well-known destruction of possibilities which characterizes the passing of youth, the course of history, the reproduction of every species through relatively chance union of the members of that species, and by countless other instances. The Darwinian theory of the genesis of species by natural selection, is only a single instance of the application of this general concept that the real is a selection from amongst possibilities.

In elementary logic, as we earlier showed, it becomes manifest that all universal judgments are at once, as they say, negatively existential, and involve a destruction of logically possible classes of objects. Thus, let there be what the logicians call an Universe of Discourse, that is, a world of possible beings of which you are discoursing. Into that world let two classes of objects, A and B, be introduced. Then in your universe of discourse it becomes logically possible that there should be four subclasses of beings, namely, the things which are both A and B, the things which are A but not B, the things which are not A but which are B, and finally the things which are neither A nor B. Thus, for example, if your universe of discourse is to contain righteous men and happy men, there are possible the four sub-classes of men who are righteous and happy, who are righteous and unhappy, who are unrighteous but happy, and who are neither righteous nor happy. Now begin to make universal assertions about the relations amongst these classes. Assert that all the righteous are happy. At once, as we saw in our seventh lecture, this assertion appears as a negative existential assertion, and as the destruction of a possibility. For you can express it by saying that in your universe the sub-class, otherwise possible, of righteous men who are unhappy, has vanished from existence. Your universe has now reduced its realized possibilities to the existence of three sub-classes. The example is trivial. It is but one of a countless number. To know facts is to destroy mere possibilities. To know that there is even a single righteous man in your universe of discourse, is to destroy so far the abstractly possible alternative that that individual man is unrighteous. This result so far holds with absolute generality, and without regard to your special definition of the concept of Being. Accordingly every realist regards the real as the selection from the possible. And in this we too agree with him.

Spinoza, in his curious compromise between realistic and mystical motives, undertook indeed to deny this selective function of reality; and asserted that from the divine point of view all that is possible is real. In vain, however, would one attempt to carry out this doctrine, except by expressly substituting for all other conceptions of being the Third Conception, viz., that of the real as the valid. But even this conception itself is obliged to distinguish between the relatively determinate genuine possibilities of experience, and the absolutely unrestricted products of any passing fancy. For one who developes even his most general ideas so that they have any relative wholeness of meaning, some possibilities seem to be at once excluded. Thus we already saw that in the mathematician's realm numerous abstract possibilities are excluded whenever a specific theorem is demonstrated. Our rejection, however, of the Third Conception of Being as inadequate was due in the end to a recognition of the fact that, so long as you define mere universals, mere general natures of things, you define neither the Being of objects nor the truth of ideas.

But now, as a fact, our whole experience with the con- cept of Being has shown us that this exclusion of bare or abstract possibilities by the presence of determinate facts does not tend to impoverish, but rather to enrich, our consciousness of what is real; for it is by exclusion of vain possibilities that we become able at once to define a conscious purpose and to get it fulfilled in a precise way. The life in which anything whatever can consistently happen, and in which any purpose can be fulfilled in any way, has in so far no character as a life. So far the experience of such a life is the experience of nothing in particular, — of no meaning. It is indeed true that an object which we regard as possible in the sense that it is still lacking, but is needed for a specific purpose, is precisely the object which our finite experience seeks, longs to possess, regards as beyond itself, calls therefore the desired Other. The absence of such an object is indeed a lack, a relative defeat of the finite purpose. And from our own point of view, the Fourth Conception of Being does indeed involve the thesis that there are no valid possibilities which are to remain in the end, and for God, merely possible and unfulfilled in this sense, namely in the sense that while they are needed for a specific purpose, they are still regarded as absent or as non-existent. But, on the other hand, we have also found that what a given finite purpose desires includes its own specific definition, as this one purpose rather than another, as this specific way of selecting facts. Now the more determinate the consciousness of such a purpose becomes, the more does such consciousness involve a selection of some facts rather than others, or an exclusion from Being of what is now regarded as merely and vainly or abstractly possible.

If you ask what manner of partial Being, from the point of view of our Fourth Conception, such abstractly conceived but concretely excluded facts possess, I answer, precisely the fragmentary sort of Being which the consciousness of a specific purpose, that is the consciousness of a particular attentive selection, consciously assigns to them. They are known as the excluded facts. They are defined by consciousness only in relatively general terms. As mere kinds of experience, the facts which attention thus excludes are themselves part of the very consciousness which forbids them to have any richer and more concrete Being than this character of remaining mere aspects of the whole. In this sense, but in this only, are they facts whose nature is experienced. And once more, in saying this, I refer to consciousness and to nothing else as my warrant for the meaning that I intend to convey. When one attends, when one chooses, when one finds a meaning at once specific and fulfilled, one actually observes, as an aspect of one’s experience, that which one defines as the exclusion of a generally conceived possibility. One’s experience of the general nature of this possibility is itself a part of the contents of one's whole present consciousness. The realization of the whole present meaning is known by virtue of this very consciousness that one is excluding from complete expression facts whose general nature one still experiences.

Now what I assert is that our Fourth Conception of Being, in conceiving the real as the present fulfilment of meaning, experienced as such fulfilment from the absolute point of view, still expressly recognizes that every such fulfilment involves conscious selection and exclusion. The facts which fulfil the meaning are at once such that no other beyond is still needed to supply a lack, while, on the other hand, no other facts could take their place without precisely a failure to fulfil the purpose. And in this twofold sense is the world of the fulfilled meaning an individual world, a world whose place no other could take. A consciousness which faced a collection of mere possibilities, without selection, would face neither wholeness nor determination of life. The very perfection of experience involves then, as an element, the exclusion of another, whose general nature is indeed a part of the very experience in question. Just as formal logic and traditional Realism have already recognized that to be real involves the exclusion of bare possibilities, so our own conception also expressly recognizes that the life which is, in its wholeness, is exclusive as well as inclusive; and that in this sense, once more, the realm of Being has the character of the complete, but for this very reason of the determinate, Individual. So much then for Exclusion and Selection as aspects of will both in God and in man. We next pass on toward more special comparisons between Absolute and Finite Individuality. For Individuality, as we now begin to see, is, in one aspect, the expression of Selective Interest. Yet for a moment we must still treat of Individuality in general.

IV

The concept of the logical Individual, viewed apart from the question as to the distinctions of the various grades of individuality, finite or infinite, is a problem that frequently has received far too indefinite a treatment in logical discussions. What shall the word “individual” in general mean? As we have often already indicated, the technical answer to this question runs: By an individual being, whatever one’s metaphysical doctrine, one means an unique being, that is, a being which is alone of its own type, or is such that no other of its class exists. Now, as we saw in an earlier lecture, our human knowledge begins with immediate data, and with vague ideas. But mere colors and sounds, as such, may indeed indicate individual beings; but they are not yet known as individuals; while our early ideas, in their twofold vagueness, both as ideas needing further determination in order to define their purpose, and as ideas needing further embodiment to complete their expression, are far from being consciously adequate ideas of individual entities. A very little examination of our popular conceptions shows how very general all such conceptions are. A very little study of concrete science reveals how hard it is for any man to get a clear idea of what his science regards as the constitution of any of its individual objects. It is far easier to know something about the circulation of the blood, than to have any adequate knowledge of the medical aspects of the case of an individual man whose circulation is in any way deranged by disease. It is precisely the individual case that constitutes the goal of the physician's knowledge. In general a real knowledge of individual facts is the ideal aim of science, rather than the beginning of any form of human insight; and this one can observe to be true, quite apart from any metaphysical conception of what constitutes individuality.

Yet it is indeed perfectly true that, long before we have any scientific approach to a knowledge of the individual facts of the natural world, we all of us somehow believe that the world contains individual beings. And the historical prominence of the thesis that whatever is, is individual, the prominence, I say, of this thesis in the metaphysics of all ages, is due to deep reasons which seldom come to the clear consciousness of those who are accustomed to talk glibly about individuality. Only our Fourth Conception of Being is able to make the conception at once rational and explicit. It is, so we have asserted, precisely as the final and satisfactory expression of the whole will of an idea that any object can be regarded as unique. But what makes the presupposition that objects are individual precisely in so far as they are real appear so early in human thought, and exercise such a controlling influence over the development of science, is precisely that demand of the finite idea for wholeness of expression, which we have just analyzed in both of its contrasted aspects. Long before we can ever say, with even a shadow of plausibility, that we ourselves have known and experienced the unique presence of any single fact, as such, our restless finite will itself has demanded that the real world wherein our will seeks, and logically speaking, ultimately finds, its fulfilment, shall be altogether determinate, both in so far as nothing further is needed to complete it, and in so far as nothing else would meet the needs which constitute finite ideas.

But owing to our finitude, will, in our own case, far anticipates its own fulfilment. The individual, therefore, as a conceived object of inquiry, of desire, and of knowledge, appears in our finite human thought as something that we early define much more in terms of selective exclusion than of empirically observed completeness. We presuppose the individual in both the foregoing senses; viz., as selected and as complete. But, if you look closely at that region of our consciousness where first we come nearest to facing what we take to be an experience of individuality, you find, I think, that it is our selective attention, especially as embodied in what one may call our exclusive affections, which first brings home to us what we mortals require an individual being to be. How in fact should a finite being, whose experience constantly passes from one partial fulfilment to another, from one vague general idea to another instance of the same generality, — how should such a being, I say, come to be so sure as most of us are that he has actually stood in the presence of individuals, and has faced beings that are unique? Yet every man supposes, to take perfectly ordinary instances, that his own father and mother are real individuals, and that other men, too, even where their individuality has been far less closely scrutinized, are still in themselves somehow individuals. Every man also early believes that the world as a whole, whether he regards it as one or as many, is at all events an individual collection of individuals. Yet to make this assertion is in any case far to transcend any man’s actual experience, regarded merely as that experience comes to us. For what we find in our finite wanderings are always cases of types, instances of imperfectly fulfilled meanings. In observing my father, what I each time experience must necessarily be merely the presence to my mind of a certain kind of experience. That the object of this experience is unique, that in all the universe there is no other like it, how should I myself ever experience this fact? That this theorem about individuality is itself true, is precisely what our Fourth Conception of Being has now asserted. For whatever the relation between the finite idea and the whole world may be, this we already know from our Fourth Conception, namely that the world in its unity is an individual whole, such that no other could take its place as an expression of this one purpose.

Our idea of individuality comes to our finite consciousness, therefore, rather on the selective side of this consciousness than upon the side of its present fulfilment. It is not so much what I already know about an individual as what my affections determine to regard as unique in the value of my object, that first brings home to me, in the case of my father or my mother or my home or my personal possessions, or my own life, and later only in the case of indifferent beings, the uniqueness of the object in question. Affection first says in presence of an object, imperfectly presented in experience, not only that there shall be further experience completing and fulfilling this meaning, but also that there shall be in this further experience such unity as constitutes an unique object. Affection first declares that there shall be no other object capable of fulfilling this meaning, beyond the single object whose Being I now presuppose. It is thus, for instance, that the lover says, There shall be none like my beloved. It is thus, too, that the mother says, There shall be no child like my child. It is thus that the loyal friend says, There shall be no friend like my friend. It is thus that the finite Self says, No life shall have precisely the meaning that my life has. It is thus also that the ethical consciousness says, My duty shall be that which nobody but myself can conceivably do. In brief, in our finite life, the sense of the determinate selection of the single object that we shall regard as the fulfilment of our meaning, comes earlier to our consciousness than any specific hope that, in our finite capacity, we shall ever live to see this specific meaning wholly fulfilled.

Now this disposition of our finite will, this tendency to a selection of our objects as unique, is precisely the character which our Fourth Conception regards as also belonging to that Absolute Will which faces the final meaning and fulfilment of the world. For the world as a whole is, from our point of view, an individual fact, not merely by virtue of the completeness of the contents of the Absolute Experience, but by reason of the definiteness of the selection of that object which shall be permitted to fulfil the final meaning. No significant purpose, no element of meaning that finite ideas demand as necessary for their own fulfilment, could indeed be, according to our thesis, wholly ignored from the absolute point of view. But, on the other hand, the very perfection of the fulfilment would logically require of the divine will the sort of determination of purpose of which we too are conscious when we deal with the objects of the exclusive affection. It is will, then, in God and in man, that logically determines the consciousness of individuality. The individual is, primarily, the object and expression of an exclusive interest, of a determinate selection.

From this point of view, the world in its wholeness might indeed be regarded as, so to speak, an only begotten son of the central purpose, — an unique expression, — unique not merely by reason of its wealth, but of its exclusiveness. And thus the category of individuality would be fulfilled in the whole precisely in the sense in which our finite affection presupposes its fulfilment in individual cases.

V

We have thus gradually prepared ourselves to define the relation between the Finite and the Absolute Will. We have studied as aspects of will, both selective attention and the nature of individuality. We have indicated, too, the sense in which, for our Fourth Conception, the world is the fulfilment of purpose. And now, to sum up so far, we do not say that any purpose, divine or human, first existing as a merely separate power, thereupon causes its own fulfilment. On the contrary, we say as to God, that from the absolute point of view, the genuine knowledge of the absolute purpose, as an empirical fact, is its own fulfilment. For, according to our central thesis, except as consciously fulfilling a purpose, nothing can, logically speaking, exist at all. In the second place we have also maintained that the fulfilment of the divine purpose is twofold, involving at once wealth of experience conforming to the one meaning, and selection both of the facts which express the meaning, and of the precise and individual determination of the meaning itself. The world that thus expresses meaning appears, from the absolute point of view, as an unique whole, but as also an unique selected whole, such that neither for the whole nor for any of the parts could any other fact be substituted, without failure in the realization of precisely this totality of determinate meaning. And consequently, quite apart from any causal theory, that selective aspect which common sense already regards as essential to the will does indeed appear in our account as a real and logically required character of the divine or absolute will. In the third place, however, we find a similarly selective character belonging to our own will, and an experience of such selection we find in that sort of exclusive interest whereby, even in advance of knowledge, we undertake to define the individuality which we presuppose in all the objects of our more exclusive affection.

If you ask, from this point of view, in what sense the world is to be called rather the expression of the Divine Will, and in what sense it is rather the expression of the Divine Knowledge, I reply that while we have by no means separated these two aspects of the universe, we can now easily see the convenience from many points of view of distinguishing them. The Divine or Absolute Knowledge this world expresses, by virtue of the unity of consciousness in which all its facts are linked, and by virtue too of that universality of meaning which joins all various ideas, in such wise that every finite idea, in so far as it merely refers to another, or has external reference, is general, while the whole expression of these ideas is unique and individual. In this same sense we can also speak of the world, quite accurately, as the expression, or embodiment, or fulfilment, of the Divine Thought. Will, on the other hand, this world expresses, not as if the Divine Will were an external power causing the world, but in so far as the unity of the whole is teleological, is such as ideas intend; or again, in so far as the world attains wholeness, and needs no fact beyond it for its completion; and finally, in so far as this wholeness and uniqueness of the world is the expression of an ideal selection, whose nature is well exemplified by our own exclusive interests, and whose type of fulfilment we all observe whenever we win a rational ideal goal.

Now all these considerations might seem once more to deprive any finite portion, or aspect, of this conscious universe, of any distinguishable private significance. On the contrary, however, precisely the opposite is the true result. For consider. If the whole world is at once the complete expression of a plan, and also the unique expression of such plan, then every fact in it, precisely in so far as we distinguish that fact from other facts, and consider its internal meaning, is also inevitably unique, sharing in so far the uniqueness of the whole. For, to illustrate, if in the ordinary empirical world of space, this room is unique, so that by hypothesis there shall be no other room like it in the world, then any definable part of the unique room, by virtue of the very fact that it is different from all the other parts of this same room, has its own unique individuality as opposed to any other fact in the universe.

Or again, let A be any fact. First suppose A to be merely an abstract universal, a general type. Then suppose A to be an individual. If A is as a whole merely a case of a type, so that there are other cases like it, then any part of A is in so far also only a case of a type, and is not unique. But if A is an individual, unique and elsewhere unexampled, then every fragment of A has its part in the individuality of the whole, just as a play of Shakespeare, as this particular expression of the individuality of the poet, has its own uniqueness by sharing in his.

Now, by hypothesis, the world exists only as such an expression of the meaning of the divine system of ideas, that no other life than this of the present world could express precisely this system. But suppose that you lay stress upon the facts of any finite life. You have a right to do s'o, for these facts exist for the Absolute precisely as much as for you. Then you have, in the first place, facts that exist only as an expression of a meaning. If you ask of what meaning they are the expression, the answer is, of the meaning of the very ideas and of the very will, that, in the finite consciousness, accompany these very facts.

Take, for instance, one of your own acts. In part, it expresses one of your own purposes. Now our theory does indeed unite both your act and the idea that your act expresses, along with all other acts and ideas, in the single unity of the absolute consciousness. But this single unity of the absolute consciousness, as we already saw at the last time, is nothing that merely absorbs your individuality, in such wise that you vanish from amongst the facts of the world. You remain from the absolute point of view precisely what you now know yourself to be, namely, the possessor of just this ideal purpose, whose internal meaning is embodied in just so much of conscious life as is yours. Our very theory insists that your internal meanings, your ideas viewed as internally significant, your selections and expressions, are typical instances of facts, and of precisely the facts of whose unity the world consists. Now if the whole world is, as whole, the unique expression of the divine purpose, it follows that every finite purpose, precisely in so far as it is, is a partial expression and attainment of the divine will; and also that every finite fulfilment of purpose, precisely as we finite beings find it, is a partial fulfilment of the divine meaning. For from our point of view, while all finite ideas, in so far as concerns their external meaning, are indeed general, still no fact exists merely as a case of a type, or merely as an instance of an universal. The very simplest view of any finite fact already makes it a positive part of the unique divine experience, and therefore, as this part, itself unique. A still deeper view recognizes any finite will, say your own present will, as a stage or case of the expression of the divine purpose at a given point of time; but this expression, too, is once more unique. And this expression is also in one aspect no other than what you find it to be, to wit, your own conscious will and meaning.

Thus the individuality of the whole in such wise dwells in the parts, the individuality of the unique divine purpose is in such wise present in each finite purpose, that no finite purpose, viewed merely as an internal meaning, could have its place taken by another without a genuine alteration of the whole; while, on the other hand, it is equally true that the whole would not be what it is were not precisely this finite purpose left in its own uniqueness to speak precisely its own word — a word which no other purpose can speak in the language of the divine will. In brief, then, our view leaves all the unique meaning of your finite individual life just as rich as you find it to be. You are in God; but you are not lost in God. If every finite pulsation of life, despite its aspect of mere generality, its external meaning, has something unique about it, and if this unique aspect of the finite life expresses an internal meaning, then the meaning of every such fact itself is unique. Or to apply the matter once more to yourself: if every instance of your life expresses a will that is to be found expressed in precisely this way nowhere else in all the world, and if this will is the will of which you are now conscious, then we can say that the verdict of your own consciousness when it regards your life as the expression of your individual will is in no wise refuted, but is only confirmed by our Fourth Conception of Being.

Thus it is then that we deal, in case of the finite will and the divine will, with the problem of the One and the Many. A realistic union of the many different beings in one being we long since found to be impossible. For our present point of view, however, the realistic difficulty of the Many and the One has been wholly set aside. It is not indeed for us a question of how the many things could become one thing. For us the unity of the world is the unity of consciousness. The variety of the world is the internal, but none the less wealthy and genuine, variety of the purposes and embodiments of purpose present within this unity of the one divine consciousness. Now with regard to the ultimate unity and consequent harmony of all this variety, our Fourth Conception has given us indeed a general formula. The Many must, despite their variety, win harmony and perfection by their cooperation. But this principle, so far, gives us no limit either to the empirical variety of will, or of interest and of experience in the absolute, nor any limit to the relative independence which the uniqueness of the individual elements makes possible. What we see, however, is that every distinguishable portion of the divine life, in addition to all the universal ties which link it to the whole, expresses its own meaning. We see, too, that this meaning is unique, and that this meaning is precisely identical with what each one of us means by his own individual will, so far as that will is at any time determinate, uniquely selected, and empirically expressed. So much then for the general relations of Absolute and of Finite will.

VI

Two expressions, familiar to common sense in speaking of finite will, receive herewith their sufficient and, I believe, their only possible justification. Common sense first asserts that, when my will gets expressed, I individually am active. Common sense also, in the second place, asserts that when my will gets inwardly expressed in my choice, I individually am free. Now into the endless discussions as to the causal relations of this or that aspect of the human will we have declined in this discussion to go. We have declined, because we have said that all causation, whatever it is, is but a special instance of Being, and never can explain any of the ultimate problems about Being. But when we have asserted, as we have now done, that every moment of every finite consciousness has some unique character, and when we have asserted, as we have also done, that in our rational life our momentary will and its finite expression belong to this very unique aspect of our finite life, we have indeed found, in our finite will, an aspect which no causation could ever by any possibility explain. For whatever else causation may be, it implies the explanation of facts by their general character, and by their connections with other facts. Whatever is unique, is as such not causally explicable. The individual as such is never the mere result of law. In consequence, the causal explanation of an object never defines its individual and unique characters as such, but always its general characters. Consequently, if the will and the expression of that will in any moment of our finite life possess characters, namely, precisely these individual and uniquely significant characters which no causal explanation can predetermine, then such acts of will, as significant expressions of purpose in our life, constitute precisely what ethical common sense has always meant by free acts. If your finite purpose is now different from that of any other finite being, and if your finite purpose now in any sense uniquely expresses, however inadequately, its own determinate meaning, in its own way, then, you can indeed assert: I alone, amongst all the different beings of the universe, will this act. That it is true that God here also wills in me, is indeed the unquestionable result of the unity of the divine consciousness. But it is equally true that this divine unity is here and now realized by me, and by me only, through my unique act. My act, too, is a part of the divine life that, however fragmentary, is not elsewhere repeated in the divine consciousness. When I thus consciously and uniquely will, it is I then who just here am God’s will, or who just here consciously act for the whole. I then am so far free.

The other popular conception, in addition to the conception of freedom, which belongs in this connection, is that very conception of Activity which I have just employed. By the term “activity” I regard our ethical common sense as meaning precisely the very fact that our present will, as the will of an individual, is unique. By our activity, then, I mean just the unique significance of the present expression of our will. If a general law, — a merely universal type, — if our characters or temperaments, or some other such universal nature of things, are expressed in our present experience, then, in so far, we are indeed mere cases of types. In so far we do not act. But if this my present expression of my meaning is in such wise unique that, but for this meaning, this expression would have no place in the whole realm of Being, then indeed I may call my present expression of meaning my act. As my act this my present will is as unique as is the whole divine life, as free as is the whole meaning of which the whole world is an expression. Not by virtue then of any supposed causal efficacy is the divine will as a power the producer of the world. And just so, not by virtue of its potency as a physical agent is our human action a free cause.

To our later series of lectures must be altogether left the discussion of any sort of causation in its real, but in its extremely subordinate, place in the constitution of reality. But what we at present say to the finite being is: You are at once an expression of the divine will, and by virtue of that very fact the expression here and now, in your life, of your own will, precisely in so far as you find yourself acting with a definite intent, and gaining through your act a definite empirical expression. We do not say, Your individuality causes your act. We do not say, Your free will creates your life. For Being is everywhere deeper than causation. What you are is deeper than your mere power as a physical agent. Nothing whatever besides yourself determines either causally or otherwise just what constitutes your individuality, for you are just this unique and elsewhere unexampled expression of the divine meaning. And here and now your individuality in your act is your freedom. This your freedom is your unique possession. Nowhere else in the universe is there what here expresses itself in your conscious being. And this is true of you, not in spite of the unity of the divine consciousness, but just because of the very uniqueness of the whole divine life. For all is divine, all expresses meaning. All meaning is uniquely expressed. Nothing is vainly repeated; you too, then, as individual are unique. And (here is the central fact) just in so far as you consciously will and choose, you then and there in so far know what this unique meaning of yours is. Therefore are you in action Free and Individual, just because the unity of the divine life, when taken together with the uniqueness of this life, implies in every finite being just such essential originality of meaning as that of which you are conscious. Arise then, freeman, stand forth in thy world. It is God’s world. It is also thine.

Notes

1. See the Supplementary Essay to the present volume.