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THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

partly Milesian. So it is that Schroeder states, although in his own more exact and symbolic language, the substance of the classic definition, not of the empirical individual, viewed merely as an object segmented from other objects, but of the logical individual, viewed as something different from a universal object.

Well, let us take this second or formal method of defining what we mean by “individual,” and let us return with it to that world of empirical objects that we left behind us a moment ago, when we resolved to try this second method. We have begun by saying: The empirical world is, as a fact, segmented into discrete masses of contents. There are you and I, there are Socrates and Plato, there are the separate stones and the legions of angels; there, above all, is God. Now, these segmented facts are what we mean by individuals. But our definition was, so far, incomplete. The world of pure ideas is full of segmentation and of contrast; yet good and evil, beauty and ugliness, man in general and angel in general, although segmented, are not individuals. We need further to know, how the individual is contrasted with the universal. Now we get an answer. The logical individual, as contrasted with logical universal, is the object incapable of logical division; incapable, then, as predicate, of being predicated of two subjects; incapable, as subject, of being classified into subordinate classes; incapable, in fine, of being exemplified by, or in, more than one case. In brief: The logical individual is a type or kind of being which, by definition, is incapable of being realised