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THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

feels thus. This is a reflex of his nature. This is the fashion of his passion. The lost toy is now, for his consciousness, a class with one member and no more. Why? Because that one member is theoretically observed to have definably incommunicable, barely presented, unique characteristics? No. Because this broken toy is here in space while that one is yonder? Impossible. Because the child mourns the mere fact of the breaking, and cannot be comforted by the later presentation of an unbroken toy? No. For if you mend this soldier that is now broken, he will forget at once the whole trouble. He wants, then, to see again an unbroken toy. Why then does he not accept the new one? Because his exclusive interest, as such, is instinctively so set that it declines to recognise, in any unity of consciousness, the presence of two or more equally acceptable cases of the type defined by this love. It is not the object as presented, nor the object as thought, but it is the object as loved, which is such that there can be no other object consciously recognised as a fit representative of this type. The child does not observe that there is presented in this object the marks of individuality. He feels that there ought to be, that there shall be, no rival object of this love. The rival being consciously excluded, one stands in presence of an object concerning which one simply feels that there shall be no other of this particular value. This practical, this passionate, this loving, this at first thoughtless dogma of love, “There shall be no other,” is, I insist, the basis of what later becomes the individuating principle for knowledge.