to arouse just this interest? One has to admit, that, theoretically speaking, there might be such an object. But we are sure of one thing, namely, that we could not be contemporaneously conscious of A and B as appealing to this same interest, however like they might seem to be. For the interest is itself, as instinctive emotion, exclusive, and demands an exclusive or unique object. Were an A and a B to present themselves as alike worthy of the interest, one would insist, however alike A and B seemed: “One of you or both of you must be false. For there can be, and shall be, for me but one beloved A, one example of this type, one exclusively interesting object of just this exclusive interest.” Hereby one becomes conscious of A, not as an observed nor yet as a directly intelligible individual, but as an object that appears to represent a class which, according to the exclusive interest, can and shall possess but a single member.
Yet one may indeed say, not all love is thus exclusive. I fully admit the fact. Not all love is individuating. There is much love of unindividuated types. But — and herein lies the ethical significance of the category of Individuality — the ethically organising interests of life are individuating, and they all involve an exclusive element. Ethical love, organising interest, is precisely the sort of interest that cannot consciously serve two masters, and that accordingly individuates, first its master, and then countless other individuals with respect to that master, — viz., individual means to the one end, individual objects of the one science, individual acts
