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THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

category dawns upon us. In other words, whereas, in the preceding Part of this paper, we discussed the category of Will until we were led to say that the Will individuates, so now we shall discuss the meaning of Individuality until we are led to the assertion that individuation implies Will, but Will in precisely the sense in which our theoretical study of the unity of the world led us to the assumption of that category. Thus the circle being completed, the harmony of theoretical and ethical considerations may be in general rendered explicable; and we shall then be prepared to proceed, in the Fourth Part of our paper, directly to the discussion of the Self-conscious Individual.

As said above, the customary way of dealing with the individual in logic has been to assume that the individual is the beginning of knowledge. But it is useless thus to try to escape from an essential difficulty by becoming dogmatic, and by declaring that individuals are the immediately known realities with which science begins. For in fact, on the contrary, the far-off goal of science is the knowledge of the individual. We do not really begin our science with the individual. We hope and strive some day to get into the presence of the individual truth. All universality is, in one sense, a mere scaffolding and means to this end. That this is true is precisely what this discussion will undertake to indicate before I am done.