object appears, as in our present sense, between the two others, then we have the first beginning of a single series of distinctions. And the rule of our discriminating intelligence is that, while the problem of the One and the Many is hopelessly baffling if we deal merely with two terms, and while it is equally hopeless so long as we deal with an indefinite number of objects not arranged in series, we begin to see the light so soon as we get one of our objects between the two others, and so begin to form a series possessing a definite character and direction. And by "direction" we here mean, not spatial or temporal direction, but direction of logical dependence.
And now why does this getting of one object between two others help us? I point out that the generalized definition of the relation between, which we owe to Mr. Kempe, suggests at once the answer to this question. I can comprehend the relation of One and Many just in so far, and only in so far, as I observe the unity of my own purpose demanding, itself of itself, a variety of expression.[1] Now, when I discriminate, I at first find the fact
- ↑ As our Supplementary Essay showed at length, the precise understanding of the relations of One and Many which we get in case of the Number-Series, or of any “self-representative system,” is due to the fact that there our own purpose in creating the system is just such a consciously self-differentiating Unity. Hence, as I there said, the order of the number-system is the original type of all order in heaven and upon earth. But we are here following out a process that leads us to a conception of order-systems very different from the number-system. For in the latter, each term has a next following term. In the system that we shall now be led to conceive, no term has a next term. Yet we reach these other systems by means of the first form of order, since, as we shall see, the recurrent character of our discriminations is the source of these derived order-systems.
