VII
THE REALITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
We turn from the world of our knowledge once more to the world of reality. The only observer who could actually and finally verify individuality would be a being who knew his ideal types to be realised in a single world of fact, because whatever he loved was his own, and because what was presented to him fulfilled his love; while his love, in order to be organised and not vaguely infinite, in order to be definite and not confusedly various, in order to be self-possessed and not powerlessly dependent upon chance facts, was an exclusive love, — a love that only one world, one Whole, could fulfil. Such a being would say: “There shall be but this one world.” And for him this world would be fact. The oneness would be the mere outcome and expression of his will. This would then be an individual world, that is, the sole instance of its universal idea or type. In this individual world, every finite fact, by virtue of its relations to the whole, would be in its own measure individual. And individuality, in such a world, would neither be absorbed in one indistinct whole, nor yet be opaque fact. For the exclusive love of the Absolute for this world would render the individuality of the fact secondarily intelligible, as being the fulfilment of the very exclusiveness of the love.
Turning back to the finite world itself, my last observation here as to the general metaphysics of
