Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/58

whose internal meaning is fully completed, and whose relation to Being is even thereby defined, will involve a discussion of the way in which our internal, our fragmentary finite meanings, as they appear in our flying moments, are to attain a determined character or are to become, as Hegel would say, bestimmt, so as to pass from vagueness to precision. Our theory, as you already see, will identify finite ignorance of Reality with finite vagueness of meaning, will assert that the very Absolute, in all its fulness of life, is even now the object that you really mean by your fragmentary passing ideas, and that the defect of your present human form of momentary consciousness lies in the fact that you just now do not know precisely what you mean. Increase of knowledge, therefore, would really involve increase of determination in your present meaning. The universe you have always with you, as your true internal meaning. Only this, your meaning, you now, in view of the defect of your momentary form of consciousness, realize vaguely, abstractly, without determination. And, as we have further asserted, this indetermination of your ideas also involves a hesitant indeterminateness of your momentary will, a vagueness of conscious ideal as well as of idea, a failure not only to possess, but wholly to know what you want. To pass to your real and completed meaning, to the meaning implied in this very moment’s vagueness, would be a passage to absolute determinateness. So to pass would therefore be to know with full determination truths of an often desired type, truths such as: What you yourself are; and, who you are, as this individual; what this individual physical fact now before you is.