''Η ΣΥΛΛΗΨΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑΣ'' - JOSIAH ROYCE

THE CONCEPTION OF
IMMORTALITY




MAY as well begin this discus
sion by pointing out where, to my
mind, lies the most central pro
blem concerning man s immortality. In
the real world in which our common-sense
metaphysic believes, some things are obvi
ously transient, and others, as, for instance,
matter and the laws of nature, are more
enduring, and perhaps (so common sense
would nowadays tell us), are absolutely
permanent. But permanence is of two
sorts. A type may be permanent, a law,
a relationship. Thus the Binomial Theo
rem remains always true ; and water con
tinues to run down hill just as it did dur
ing the earliest geological periods. Or



2 The Conception of Immortality

that may be permanent which we usually
call an individual being. This particle of
matter, as, for instance, an individual atom,
or again, the individual whole called the
entire mass of matter of the universe, may
be permanent. Nowjwhen we asjt^abaut
the Immortality ^^^^L^^^S^S^
nence of the Individual _Man jconcermng
which we mean to inquire, and not pri
marily the permanence of the human type,
as such, nor the permanence of any other
system of laws or relationships. So far
then, as to the mere statement of our
issue, I suppose that we are all agreed.

But in philosophy we who study any of
these fundamental problems are unwilling
to assert anything about a given subject,
unless we first understand what we mean
by that subject. Philosophy turns alto
gether upon trying to find out what our
various fundamental ideas mean. Thus,
when in practical life, you act dutifully, you
may not be wholly clear as to just what you
mean by your duty ; but when you study



The Conception of Immortality 3

Moral Philosophy, your primal question is,
What does the very Idea of Duty mean ?
Now precisely so, in case :_of_thje Jmmpr-
tafity of the Individual Man, the question
arises, What do we mean when we talk of
an individual man at all ? But this ques
tion, to my mind, is not a mere preliminary
to an inquiry concerning immortality, but
it includes by far the larger part of just
that inquiry itself. For unless we know
what an individual man is, we have no busi
ness even to raise the question whether he
is immortal. But, on the other hand, if
we can discover what we mean by an indi
vidual man, the very answer to that ques
tion will take us so far into the heart of
things, and will imply so much as to our
views about God, the World, and Man s
place in the world, that the question about
the immortality of man will become, in
great measure, a mere incident in the
course of this deeper discussion.

Accordingly, I shall here raise, and for
the larger part of this lecture shall pursue,



4 The Conception of Immortality

anjnquiry concerning what we mean by an
Individual Man. Only towards the end of
this discussion shall we come clearly to see
that m defininerKHvidual n we



have indeed been defining his Immortality.
The question as to the nature of an indi
vidual man is at once a problem of logic
and an issue of life. I shall have to con
sider the matter in both aspects. In the
first aspect our question becomes identical
with the problem, What is it that makes
any real being an individual ? This ques
tion is a very ancient, and if you choose
commonplace one, which has been studied
from time to time ever since Aristotle. I
can give you small insight, in my brief
time, into its complications ; and what I
needs must say about it may appear very
formal and dreary. But like all the cen
tral problems of Logic, this one really
pulsates with all the mystery of life ; and
before I am done, I shall hope to give you a
glimpse of the sense in which this is true.
Such a glimpse will become possible as



The Conception of Immortality 5

soon as I apply the logical question about
individuals to the case of the individual
man. That all men including yourself are
more or less mysterious beings to you, you
are already aware. What I want to show
you is that the chief mystery about any
man is precisely the mystery of his indi
vidual nature, i. e., of the nature whereby
he is this man and no other man. I want
to show you that the only solution of this
mystery lies in conceiving every man as so
related to the world and to the very life of
God, that in order to be an individual at
all a man has to be very much nearer to
the Eternal than in our present life we are
accustomed to observe. So much then for
an outline of our enterprise. And now for
its inevitably complicated details. 1




II



]E all naturally believe that the real
world about us contains individ
ual things. And if you ask what
we naturally mean by believing this, I
first reply, apart from any more formal
definition of individuality, by saying that
we believe our world to consist of facts,
of realities, which are all ultimately dif
ferent from one another, and unlike one
another, by virtue of precisely what con
stitutes their very existence as facts or as
realities. Things may resemble one an
other as much as you will. But deeper
than their resemblance has to be, accord
ing to our common-sense view, the fact
that they are still somehow individually
or numerically different beings. Yonder
lights, for instance, are in your present
opinion all of them different from one an-



The Conception of Immortality 7

other, despite their resemblances as lumi
nous objects. You and your neighbors
are different beings. And such individual
difference, as you hold, enters very deeply
into your inmost constitution, or into the
constitution of any person or thing in the
universe. No matter how much two peo
ple, say twins, look alike, talk alike, think
alike, or feel alike, we still hold that they
are different beings ; and we naturally hold
that this difference lies somehow deeper
than do all their resemblances, inner or
outer. For that each one of them is, or
that he is this being, depends upon and
implies the fact that he is nobody else ;
and just as neither of the twins could have
any appearance, or voice, or thoughts, or
feelings at all unless he first existed ; just
so, too, neither of them, as the individual
that he is, could exist at all unless he were
this person, and not the other. So that to
exist implies, as we usually hold, to be dif
ferent from the rest of the world of exist
ences. And since I must exist if I am to



8 The Conception of Immortality

have any qualities whereby I can resemble
another being, and must differ from all
other beings if I am to exist, it naturally
seems that my difference from all the rest
of the world is, in a sense, the deepest
truth about me. However little I may
know about myself, common sense there
fore supposes me to be at least very sure
that I am nobody else, and so am different
from anybody else.

By an individual, then, we mean an
essentially unique being, or a being such
that there exists, and can exist, but one
of the type constituted by this individual
being.

An easy task it is then, although indeed
a very dry and abstract task, to tell what in
general constitutes individuality, if we take
the term simply as an abstract noun. For
the beings of the world are made individ
uals by whatever truly serves to distinguish
each of them from all the rest, to keep
them, as it were, seemingly apart in their
Being. But now, if we leave this barely



The Conception of Immortality 9

abstract statement, and come closer to the
facts of life, I may next point out that, if
individuality in general is easily defined,
this individual, precisely in so far as it is
an unique being, is from the nature of
the case peculiarly hard to characterize, or
to explain, or to conceive, or to define,
or to observe, or in any other way to know.
In fact, when we look closer we soon see
that our human thought is able to define
only types of beings, and never individuals,
so that this individual is always for us in
definable. On the other hand our human
sense experience shows us only kinds of
sensory impressions, and never unique ob
jects as unique.

For now there comes to our attention
a very commonplace, but important fact,
regarding the process of our knowledge.
We have so far accepted the natural view
that the differences of various existent
things lie at the basis, so to speak, of all
resemblances. But whenever we know
anything, we are dependent upon taking



I o n* Conception of Immortality

account at once, and in one act, of both
likenesses and differences. These two
aspects of facts are somewhat differently
related to our consciousness ; but we never
really come to know a difference without
in some wise either reducing to or con
sciously relating it to a likeness. One of
the lights that you see differs, to your
mind, from another light in size, in bright
ness, or in place. Yet just because you
see them thus differing, all of them for
that very reason are seen as in the same
larger place, viz., in this room, or as alike
in all being bright, or as alike in all hav
ing size. Thus, whenever you clearly see
wherein they are different, say in bright
ness, size, place, you also see how, in just
this same respect in which they differ,
they also have some resemblances to one
.-.-.-. _: 1" - .". :: : :.: y ~ -".y- -
likenesses and differences at once, or in
one act, makes it impossible to sift out
in your knowledge all the resemblances of
your world, and to put them in one place



The Conception of Immortality / /

by themselves, in your mind, while you
put all the differences in another place.
For the likenesses stick to the differences,
and always come away with them, when
you try to analyze your world, even in the
most abstract thinking process. Just as
some of the miner s gold washes away in
the tailings, and just as some of the ac
companying substances that a chemist tries
to remove by a particular process of dis
tillation may distill over with whatever
was to be separated from them, so too,
when, in your discriminating observation,
or in your abstract thinking, you try, for
the purposes of your analysis, to wash the
resemblances out of the facts, and to keep
the differences, or to distill off the indi
viduality of the different things, you find
that always resemblance stubbornly clings
to difference, and vice versa. Nor do our
figures of the tailings and the distillations
give quite an adequate idea of the actual
hopelessness of trying to separate in our
consciousness, for purposes of analysis, the



12 The Conception of Immortality

like and the different aspects of our ob
served world. For, in our knowledge, the
consciousness of likeness and the con
sciousness of difference help each other ;
and therefore in a measure, it is true that
the more we get of one of them, before our
knowledge, the more we get of the other.
So they decline altogether to be known
separately. Thus, only pretty closely sim
ilar objects can seem to us to stand, from
our point of view, in an observably sharp
contrast to one another. We can see the
contrast only when we also see the close
similarity. For instance, it is much easier
to be aware of a definite difference or con
trast between two poets than it is to be
conscious of the difference or contrast be
tween a poet and a blackberry or a para
bola. Whenever we clearly see what a
difference is, there we also observe a like
ness, and the difference and the likeness,
as seen, always relate to the same aspects
of the objects.

This being the fashion of our know-



The Conception of Immortality 13

ledge, one sees at once how hard it must
be for knowledge either to find in the im
pressions of sense, or to define by thought,
just wherein one thing ultimately differs
from all other things. An individual being,
as we have seen, is thought by our common
sense to be, first of all, different from any
other being. We try either to say or to
see wherein it thus differs, or what consti
tutes its individuality. Forthwith we only
the more clearly see and state and conceive
points wherein it not only differs from all
other objects, but also, and at the same
time, resembles them. This is the fate of
our knowing process, and therefore, when
ever we observe closely, all individuality
seems to be conceived and observed by us
as merely relative. Individuality is known
to us only as an aspect inseparable from
what is not individuality. But just because
a thing, according to our natural view, is to
be an individual to the very heart and core
of its existence, it seems that, if we are to be
able to see or to express this individuality,



14 The Conception of Immortality

we ought somewhere to be able to find or
to conceive the individuality of each thing
as a fact by itself, as a difference, deeper
than all resemblances, ideally separable
from them, and not merely bound up in
this inseparable way with them, or depend
ent upon them. Hence we always fail
when we try to describe any individual
exhaustively.

Moreover, still another aspect of our
difficulty often occurs to our minds, and is
especially baffling. Anything is an indi
vidual in so far as it genuinely differs not
only from any other existent being, but
from any other being that is genuinely
possible or that is rightly conceivable.
You, for instance, if you are a real individ
ual, are such that nobody else, whether
actual or possible, could ever share your
individual nature, or be rightly confounded
with you. Now, however closely we ob
serve, and no matter how carefully we con
ceive, a thing, we at best only observe or
conceive actual likenesses and differences



The Conception of Immortality 75

between this thing and other present or
remembered things. We can never either
see or abstractly think just how or why
it is that no other possible thing could
possess the characters, whatever they
are, which we have once noticed or have
actually found this thing to possess. Sup
pose, for instance, that I see the color of
an object. So far I in no sense see why
other objects might not possess just that
color. In general other objects do. So
colors are not purely individual characteris
tics of things. Suppose, however, that I
see a hundred autumn leaves, and sorting
them, find indeed that no two of them are
precisely alike in shading and in detail of
coloring. In that case I at first seem to
be finding what is individual in each leaf.
But no. For so far I have only seen ac
tual likenesses and differences ; and so far
only my present autumn leaves are indeed
seen to be different. But I have not seen
why there might not be in the world, un
seen as yet by me, other autumn leaves



1 6 The Conception of Immortality

precisely like any particular one of these
leaves in every detail of coloring that I
have noticed. Hence I have not yet taken
note, in any leaf, of a coloring such as
could not possibly be repeated somewhere
else in the forest ; and therefore I have
not yet actually observed what it is that
constitutes the truly individual existence
of any one of the leaves. For whatever is
a truly individual character of any existent
thing is a character that simply could not
be shared by another thing ; and whatever
makes you an existent individual being
forbids anybody else, whether actual or
possible, to be possessed of precisely your
individual characteristics.

Historians and biographers try to tell us
about individuals. Do they ever actually
succeed in getting before us the adequate
description of any one individual as such ?
No. Man you can define ; but the true
essence of any man, say, for instance, of
Abraham Lincoln, remains the endlessly
elusive and mysterious object of the bio-



The Conception of Immortality 77

grapher s interest, of the historian s com
ments, of popular legend, and of patriotic
devotion. There is no adequate definition
or description of Abraham Lincoln just in
so far as he was the unique individual.

And why, I once more ask, is this so ?
Why can you not tell all that constitutes
the individual what he is ? One answer, I
insist, lies just here. Suppose that you
had overcome all the other limitations that
hinder the biographer or the historian
from knowing the facts about his hero.
Suppose that you had a description or
definition say of Abraham Lincoln, and
suppose you assumed this definition or
description to be an exact and exhaustive
one. The definition would mention, per
haps, the physical appearance and bearing
of Lincoln, the traits of his character, the
secrets of his success, and whatever else
you may choose to regard as characteristic
of him. Well, suppose the definition fin
ished. The question might be raised, at
once, Is it possible, is it conceivable,



1 8 The Conception of Immortality

that the world should contain another man
who embodied just that now defined type,
- who looked, spoke, thought, felt, com
manded, and succeeded as Lincoln the
War President did ? If you answer,
" No ;" then we may at once retort, How
can you know that only one man of this or
of any once defined type can exist ? Have
you the secret of creation ? Is every man s
mould shattered (to use the familiar meta
phor) when the man is made ? And if so,
how come you to be aware of the fact ?
But if you answer, " Yes ; more than one
man of this defined type is at least possi
ble, or conceivable ; " then equally well
we may point out that hereby you merely
admit that you have not yet defined what
makes Abraham Lincoln different from
any and from all other men, actual or pos
sible. For if the possible men, fashioned
after the likeness that your definition has
expounded, were to come into existence,
no one of these other men would be, in
your opinion, Abraham Lincoln himself, or



The Conception of Immortality 19

be entitled to his honors or his merits.
They would differ from him by precisely
the whole breadth of their individuality.
They would have no right to his property,
no share in his individual fame, and no
hope, so to speak, of becoming worthy to
take his place upon the Judgment Day.
Yet, by hypothesis, they would conform to
whatever definition of him you had once
given as an adequate characterization of.
his type.

You may here interpose, if you will, by
saying that all such idle suppositions about
the possible reduplications of the type of
Abraham Lincoln are worthless, since the
practically interesting question is whether
men whose identity runs any risk of being
confounded with that of the great Presi
dent exist or are to be found ; and this
question, according to our common view,
is easily to be answered in the negative.
But my present interest, in mentioning
the possible cases of other representatives
of Lincoln s once denned type, lies merely



20 The Conception of Immortality
in showing that whatever the individual
ity of anything really is, we men never
adequately come to know wherein it con
sists, and so I here point out that while
you are doubtless somehow quite sure of
Lincoln s individuality, of his unexampled
uniqueness, you have not positively de
nned wherein that uniqueness and indivi
duality consists, until your definition has
actually expressed why, or at least how it
is that there can be no other man of his
type. So long as you merely appeal then
to human experience to show that there is
no other such man to be found, our present
argument remains untouched.

But even if we passed back again to
experience to help us, we should still find
once more, as we found in case of the au
tumn leaves, that no experience can show
us the unique. The facts of sense are
essentially sorts of experience, charac
ters, types, fashions of feelings. Unique
ness as such is thus precisely what I can
never directly find present to my senses,



The Conception of Immortality 21

When you first learn from the logic text
books or from Aristotle that the individual
is the indefinable, you are indeed fain with
Aristotle to turn back to experience, as we
just attempted to do in case of Abraham
Lincoln. You are disposed to say that
the individual is the proper object of sense.
But Aristotle himself knew better than to
rest content in this view. As he already
saw, sense also, in its own way, brings to
our consciousness only the more or less
vaguely general, or at best the typical,
not the unique. 2

The very young children trust their
senses for guidance, in the use of their
earliest language at the time when they
name every object by its vaguely observed
type. So, perhaps, they name all men
alike "papa," or for a while they call all
animals " dogs," or identify cows as "cats,"
or use any other of the delightful confu
sions that characterize the first year of
speech. Sense and feeling, taken as di
rectly present experience, supply us only



22 The Conception of Immortality

with general types, and, apart from other
motives, guide us only to general ideas,
never to a direct knowledge of individuals.
You see then, in sum, that our human
type of knowledge never shows us exist
ent individuals as being truly individual.
Sense, taken by itself, shows us merely
sense qualities, - - colors, sounds, odors,
tastes. These are general characters.
Abstract thinking defines for us types.
A discriminating comparison of many pre
sent objects of experience, such as autumn
leaves, or human faces, or handwritings,
shows us manifold differences, but always
along with and subject to the presence of
likenesses, so that we never find what com
mon sense assumes to exist, namely, such
a difference between any individual and all
the rest of the world as lies deeper than
every resemblance. And even if by com
parisons and discriminations we had found
how one being appears to differ from all
other now existent beings, we should not
yet have seen what it is that distinguishes



The Conception of Immortality 23

each individual being from all possible
beings. Yet such a difference from all
possible beings is presupposed when you
talk, for instance, of your own individual
ity.




Ill



ET us now, however, pass to a new
aspect of the matter. If indeed
it is true that you do not define
in your thought, or empirically observe
through any direct experience of your
senses, that the world consists of unique
individual beings, then we are next dis
posed to say that the dogma of common
sense upon this subject is the result of
some very recondite interpretation of your
experience. But if we ask whence we
came by this interpretation, I must call
your attention to that region of your life
where you are indeed surest of the indi
viduality of the facts, and most familiar
with its meaning. This region is that of
your intimate human relationships. Your
family and your nearest friends are in
deed for your human faith and loyalty



The Conception of Immortality 25

through and through individuals. You are
sure of their uniqueness. You resist most
decidedly the hypothesis that what for you
constitutes the essence of their individual
ity could conceivably be shared, like the
characters of a mere type, by other beings
in the world. "There is no other child
quite like my child, no other love quite
like my love, no other friend wholly like
this friend, no other home the precise
possible substitute for this home" -how
familiar and human such assertions are.
Now this affirmation of the uniqueness
of our own, and of those to whom our
hearts belong, has something about it that
obviously goes beyond both sense and
abstract thinking. It expresses itself
in quite absolute terms. Meanwhile it
is much warmer and more vital than the
before-mentioned colorless assumption that
all the real beings in the world are in some
wise unique beings, or that the universe is
made up of individuals. Yet this present
and more vital assertion seems to express



26 The Conception of Immortality

the very inmost spirit of intimacy of per
sonal loyalty. And meanwhile it is, in its
implications, quite as metaphysical as is
the most general theory of any philosopher.
For I must still insist, not even in case
of our most trusted friends, not even
after years of closest intimacy, no, not
even in the instance of Being that lies
nearest to each one of us, not even in
the consciousness that each one of us has
of his own Self, can we men as we now
are either define in thought or find directly
presented in our experience the individual
beings whom we most of all love and trust,
or most of all presuppose and regard, as
somehow certainly real. For even within
the circle of your closest intimacies our
former rule holds true, that, if you attempt
to define by your thought the unique, it
transforms itself into an unsatisfactory ab
straction, a type and not a person, a
mere fashion of possible existence, that
might as well be shared by a legion as con
fined to the case of a single being. And



Tl)e Conception of Immortality 27

just so, too, the other previous result ob
tains, namely, that when you try to find the
certainly unique even in your own house
hold, it eludes your direct observation, for it
is a form of Being that belongs to a far higher
sphere than that of any merely immediate
experience. It is just for this reason that
the individual object of your oldest friend
ship is not merely a psychological problem
to you, but also a metaphysical mystery.
The real presence of your friend you may
indeed love with, an exclusive affection that
forbids you to believe that any -other could
take his unique place anywhere in the
whole realm of Being ; but you meet this
real presence of an individual never at any
time as a fact of sense. Your doctrine
about this real presence of your friend re
mains in common life a dogma just as truly
as if it were a dogma of a supernatural
faith. It is with the individual of daily
life as with the lady of Browning s lyric,
for whom the lover searches through
"room after room" of the house they
" inhabit together : "



28 The Conception of Immortality

" Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door ;
I try the fresh fortune

Range the wide house from the wing to the centre
Still the same chance ! She goes out as I enter ! "

And now, if you ask why this lady is thus
elusive, I answer, because she is an indi
vidual. And an individual is a being that
no finite search can find.

As for yourself, you notoriously are such
that the Self is, and is a real individual.
But who amongst us defines by his abstract
statement of his own type, or finds by
dwelling upon his familiar masses of mere
organic sensation, what his own unique
Self may be ? Or who amongst us con
ceives himself in his uniqueness except as
the remote goal of some ideal process of
coming to himself and of awakening to the
truth about his own life ? Only an infinite
process can show me who I am.

On the other hand, when we dwell upon
these cases that lie nearest to our vital in
terests, we do indeed begin to find out the



The Conception of Immortality 29

deeper meaning of something that in the
instances formerly mentioned seemed to
be a matter for cold and curious logical
inquiry. We begin to find out, namely,
the deeper meaning of this our so fixed,
and yet at first sight so arbitrary assump
tion that our real world, despite the imper
fections of our conception and the vague
generality of our direct experience, does
consist of individuals. For in case of the
objects of our nearer and of our more con
sciously exclusive affections, we are often
well aware how arbitrary our mere speech
about the experienced or defined unique
ness of these objects of affection must
seem to any external observer. We rec
ognize this apparent arbitrariness of our
description of the unique object ; but we
even glory therein. We confess that we can
not tell wherein our friend is so individual.
We emphasize the confession. We make it
a deliberate topic of portrayal in art. And
what we feel, as we do this, is that this ar
bitrary speech of ours is a sign that we are



^o The Conception of Immortality

pursuing a very precious secret, which no
body else has the right to share. Herein we
find a hint also of a certain ideal view of the
innermost nature of Being, a view which
simply cannot be translated into the lan
guage of abstract description, or adequately
embodied in the materials of present sensa
tion ; but a view which is all the truer for
that very reason. For this view the Real
is indeed something beyond our present
human sense and our descriptive science.
The individuals are, as we are sure, the
most real facts of our world. But yet there
is for us, as for Browning s lover, something
endlessly fascinating about our hopeless
human inability to show to anybody else,
or to verify by even our own immediate ex
perience, just in what way they are thus so
individual. This our finite situation has
its own perplexing and beautiful irony.
We rise above our helplessness even as we
confess it ; for this helplessness hints to us
that our real world is behind the veil.
The inner nature, the true Being of



The Conception of Immortality 31

these beloved individuals about us and of
our own individuality within, thus consti
tutes, so to speak, the genuinely and whole
somely occult aspect of our most common
place life. That we are really in the most
intimate relations with this so familiar, and
precious, and yet so occult world, where in
truth our most intimate friends and our
actual selves even now dwell, we are sure.
But that the gates seem barred whenever
we try to penetrate or to reveal the truth
of this very world, this is something so
baffling, so stimulating, and yet in a way
so absurd, that in our lighter moments we
find our own incapacity to make our world
manifest to our human vision endlessly
amusing. And the play with these myste
ries constitutes a great part of the poetic
arts. It is, I must insist, merely a concrete
instance of the fundamental logical and
metaphysical problem as to how the world
can consist of individuals.

To mention a familiar instance. All the
world loves a lover, and, in a sense, loves



52 The Conception of Immortality

in sympathy with him. Yet nearly all the
faithful lovers are certain profoundly to
disagree with him as to the most central
article of his faith. For he loves an indi
vidual, unique, without a peer, one who
is most lovable just because she occupies
a place that no other could take. They,
the other faithful lovers, each one of
them also loves a peerless individual. And
therefore they all have to use indeed very
nearly the same formulas whenever they
try to tell why they love. But they all
disagree, just because they apply their
creeds to different objects. They all de
scribe essentially the same type, namely,
the perfect woman. They differ about her
identity. Or if they do not thus disagree
then, to be sure, a tragedy is in the mak
ing. In the endless disagreement of the
lovers lies their only hope of harmony.

Now the problem as to the worthy ob
ject of love is precisely, and, as I myself
maintain, philosophically, identical with
the logical problem as to what constitutes



The Conception of Immortality 33

an individual being. 3 Whom shall one
love ? The unique object. There shall
be no other like the beloved. But for
what characters shall one choose the be
loved ? For mere uniqueness, for mere oddi
ties as such ? No. For perfections, for ex
cellencies, for ideally valuable qualities, is
the beloved rightly chosen, and not other
wise. Be it so, then. The lover, if justi
fied in his love, believes not only that his
beloved is different from all other beings,
but also that she is in some wise more ex
cellent than all others. This great faith,
if sincere, longs for expression. One must
praise the beloved ; or if one is no poet,
one must look abroad to find the already
written words with which to praise her.
But in what language shall the praise be
expressed ? In human speech of general
meaning, known and understood by all
men. But the qualities that the lover finds
in his own unique beloved, when once ex
pressed in this common speech of men,
become in large measure identical with



34 The Conception of Immortality

the qualities that all the beloved women
of the world have been said, by the poets
and the lovers, to possess. Of course there
are those well known differences in types
of recognized perfection, which have to do
with color of eyes, and with other features,
but on the whole, the lover in expressing,
in denning, if you will, the perfections of
his love, has merely described with minor
variations one type, and, thank Heaven,
an extremely general and universally well
known type, the type of all the beloved
women. In other words, he has set forth
every real or apparent noble quality of his
beloved except precisely what makes her
unique. Yet his loyalty still, earnestly in
sists that he loves her for nothing so much
as for that she is unique, and is even
thereby quite unlike all the other beloved
women.

Hereupon the logician must become a
little suspicious of the lover. The lover
says that he loves but One. Yet when
he tells about her he describes a type.



The Conception of Immortality 35

Does he then really love only the type ?
For, alas, his poetic accounts are but gen
eral. Just when he describes his love
" So careful of the type he seems, so
careless of the single life." But no, this
thought is an insult to loyal love. True
love is indeed essentially careful of the sin
gle life. Yet is it then truly the unique
being that one loves ? Alas ! if this is true,
why then does the lover s halting speech,
when it praises, describe absolutely nothing
whatever but the type ? The beloved, if
logically disposed, may even notice this, the
pathetic irony of our human loyalty. " You
might have said all this," she may retort,
" you might have said all this to any
other woman who merely happened to please
you."

Now in vain would the lover attempt
adequately to reply that the beloved is in
deed, as a matter of mere experience, suffi
ciently different in face and carriage from
all the other observable people to be capa
ble of what we usually call identification,



$6 The Conception of Immortality

so that, for instance, the postman or the
teller at the bank also no doubt recognizes
her face when he sees it, and practically
confuses her with nobody else. For the
ground of loyal love is not meant to be sim
ply the same as this practical ground that
we use for purposes of ordinary identifica
tion. The lover does not mean that his
beloved is merely capable of being identi
fied. It is true that these facts of experi
ence, these observed differences of face and
manner, become, from the first, lighted up
for the lover s appreciation with all the
beauty of devotion, and so blend in his
experience of affection with his sense of
loyalty. That is so far as it should be. He
loves indeed also the face and the voice,
but for the sake of their unique owner.
Yet the very question that before seemed
to us a very formal matter of logic would
become, if once raised, a very practical
question for love. I do not advise anybody
to raise it in any particular case. But, as
a mere matter now of theory : If there were



The Conception of Immortality 37

found in the world another with just such
a face, voice, bearing, and other outward
seeming and inward sentiment as the be
loved, would the lover not merely by chance
confuse the two, through his mortal igno
rance, but actually and knowingly love both
of them at once and equally ? If he must
answer, " Yes," then indeed, whatever his
protestations, he loves not the real individ
ual. There is then no true loyalty in his
love. He is fond of a mere type.

But if he loves the individual, then in
deed he could bear the easy test that, in
the Hindu poem of Nala and Damayanti,
the gods apply to the princess of the story.
For when, in that story, the princess, by
virtue of the privilege belonging to her
rank, is about to choose her lover from
amongst the suitors, assembled upon a
solemn occasion to hear her decision, four
of the gods, to please their high caprice,
stand beside the real lover, whom the prin
cess has already in her heart chosen.
Each god assumes precisely the real lov-



$8 The Conception of Immortality

er s guise and seeming. The princess finds
then before her five men, all absolutely
alike, and all fashioned exactly as is the
man of her heart. In her perplexity she
wonders a brief moment ; but then, per
ceiving in her mind the heavenly wiles,
she lifts up her voice in humble prayer
that those of the group who are not the
right one may be pleased to behave a little
more like gods, that she may see more
clearly to choose her own. The gods re
lent, and obey. But the princess, as she
thus finds her mortal lover, hereby shows
us also somewhat more clearly what our
loyal consciousness of the nature of an in
dividual means. It means that for our
Will, however sense deceives, and however
ill thought defines, there shall be none pre
cisely like the beloved. And just herein,
namely, in this voluntary choice, in this ac
tive postulate, lies our essential conscious
ness of the true nature of individuality.
Individuality is something that we demand
of our world, but that, in this present realm



The Conception of Immortality 39

of experience, we never find. It is the ob
ject of our purposes, but not now of our
attainment ; of our intentions, but not of
their present fulfillment ; of our will, but
not of our sense nor yet of our abstract
thought ; of our rational appreciation, but
not of our description ; of our love, but not
of our verbal confession. We pursue it
with the instruments of a thought and of
an art that can define only types, and of a
form of experience that can show us only
instances and generalities. The unique
eludes us ; yet we remain faithful to the
ideal of it ; and in spite of sense and of our
merely abstract thinking, it becomes for
us the most real thing in the actual world,
although for us it is the elusive goal of an
infinite quest. 4

And therefore it is that the lovers join
in reporting the same things of all whom
they love ; yet in meaning, nevertheless,
wholly different beings by their speech.
Therefore it is that the soldiers in Bay
ard Taylor s Sebastopol lyric, as they sing



4O The Conception of Immortality

in the trenches, before they storm the fort,
try to confess each the tearful secret of
his own heart, as he thinks of home, but
they do so in words that are the same for
all of them :

" Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang Annie Laurie."

The true individuals are thus not seen by
us, not described by us. But in our more
intimate life we love individuals, we will to
pursue them and to be loyal to them.
Love and loyalty never directly find their
unique objects, but remain faithful to them
although unseen.




IV



E have so far dealt both with vari
ous negative aspects of this idea
of individuality and also with its
positive significance for life. We must
now ask, Is there any truth in this idea of
individuality ? Are we in any sense right
in regarding our world as one where there
are these unique individuals whom we
mortals can define only in terms of our
will to seek them, and can conceive only
as the goal of an essentially ideal process ?
The adequate answer to this question as
to the real Being of an individual would
involve, as I have confessed from the very
outset, an entire system of philosophy.
Shall I venture here merely to hint the
grounds upon which I think that we have
a right at least to attempt just such primal
problems ? This idea of the individuality



42 The Conception of Immortality

of all things is, in my own opinion, an idea
not merely of the emotional interest now
illustrated. It is also an idea without
which, in the end, all serious science is im
possible. For science too, although not
sentimental, is itself a loyal expression of
an essentially practical interest in final, i. e.,
in individual truth. Science, if unable to
describe or to find the unique, everywhere
postulates its existence as the goal of a
process of inquiry. And this idea of the
individual is an idea that directs all con
duct of our intellect in the presence of our
experience. To believe anywhere in genu
ine reality is to believe in individuality.
In every special science that deals with
either nature or man, you will find, then,
if you look closer, that in some form the
concept and the problem of the individual
enters in a fashion less sentimental indeed
than is the lover s problem, but quite as
insistent, quite as baffling, both for our
empirical search and for our abstract defi
nitions, and quite as suggestive that if our



The Conception of Immortality 43

world has reality, this reality is one which
no finite process of finding and defining
can exhaust. Quite impossible is it, how
ever, to decline to face this problem upon
the supposed grounds that the ultimate
nature of real things is once for all un
knowable. The conception of reality itself
is precisely as much an expression of our
human needs and purposes, as is the con
ception of a steam engine or of a political
party ; and if the conception so far baffles
us, that is because we have not yet looked
deeply enough into the life out of which
this very conception of the real world of
individuals springs. Let us then inquire
a little more searchingly. To be sure, for
this inquiry there is here no adequate space.
I can give only a bare hint of an idealistic
interpretation of the real world. Else
where I have tried to state in explicit form
the argument now to be barely indicated.
Regard what follows, if you will, not as
any attempt at proof, but as a mere sum
mary.



44 The Conception of Immortality

We have up to this point spoken of the
relation of the concept of the individual to
the direct experience of sense, and to the
abstract definitions of the intellect. We
have found that neither of these could fur
nish to us an adequate expression of the
nature of an individual. We have also
seen, in speaking of the more vital aspects
of our problem, that an individual, if not
describable, is still sincerely intended or
willed as the object of a devotion that, in
us, can only express itself as the endless
pursuit of a goal. The natural statement
of our problem becomes then this : Do
these endless pursuits of ideal goals, in
terms of which we define our relation to
the undefinable individual beings whom we
love, or whom in science we seek to know,
do these ideal pursuits, I say, correspond
to a truth anywhere expressed beyond us ?
Is reality in its wholeness a realm of Pur
pose, rather than merely of observable
finite facts and of abstractly definable char
acters ?



The Conception of Immortality 45

As to the most general answer to this
question, I must indeed first respond that,
for the reasons now illustrated, I hold the
concept of individuality to be not merely
from our human point of view, but in itself,
essentially and altogether, a teleological
concept, a concept implying that the
facts of any world where there really are
individuals express will and purpose. Sup
pose a being not now a man, but a being
as far above our mere poverty of conscious
life as you please, yet a being whose whole
life consists merely of sense contents, or
of mere facts of immediate feeling,
colors, forms, tastes, touches, pleasures,
and pains. Such a being could indeed ob
serve. But he would never observe indi
viduals as individuals. On the other hand,
suppose any purely intelligent being, whose
mind was full of mere ideas, i. e., of pat
terns, types, schemes, class conceptions,
definitions. Such a being, however wise
in his own way, could never know individ
ual facts as such. He might know laws,



46 The Conception of Immortality

orders of truth, systems of necessary valid
ity ; but if his world contained individual
facts, he would never know this to be true.
He would be, for instance, by our hypo
thesis, himself an individual, for we have
just spoken of him as such ; but he would
never be able to know himself as this indi
vidual. With the proverbial absent-mind
edness of the abstractly wise, this supposed
pure intelligence would be quite unaware
that he himself, or that anybody else, pos
sessed individuality. He would be loyal
to no individual objects. His world would
be for him a collection of disembodied
theorems, and of mere possibilities.

And now, even if you suppose the being
of mere experience with whom we just be
gan, to acquire all the wisdom of the other
being, the supposed abstract thinker ; still,
even this resulting being, who would be an
observer of ideal laws and of immediate
experiences, in this combination would
nevertheless not yet find true individuality
in his world. His world would now be one



The Conception of Immortality 47

where there were types and feelings ; but
still not one where unique beings were
observed to be real.

But next suppose a being whose world
not merely shows him contents of feeling
and types of law, but also expresses his
will, and not merely expresses this will, but
satisfies it. Suppose that this being finds
in his world, namely, all that his love and
all that his wisdom seek. This being will
observe his world as embodiment of his
plans, as an exhaustive presentation of
his will and purpose. Now this being can
indeed say : " This world and no other is
my world, for these facts and no others are
what I want, just because in these facts
my purposes are satisfied." For the satis
fied will is precisely the will that seeks no
other embodiment. Now such a being,
and such a being only, would be aware of
the uniqueness of his facts, and so would
know individuals as individuals.

The very conception, then, of an individ
ual as a real being, precisely because it is



48 The Conception of Immortality

no abstract conception, but is rather the
conception of a unique being, is one that
no pure thought or experience can express,
but is a conception expressible only ii?
terms of a satisfied will. An individual is
a being that adequately expresses a pur
pose. Or again, an individual so expresses
a purpose that no other being can take the
place of this individual as an expression of
this purpose. And the sole test of this
sort of uniqueness lies in the fact that in
this individual being, just in so far as its
type gets expression at all, the will or pur
pose which it expresses rests content with
it, desires no other, will have no other.

I conclude then, so far, that if this world
contains real individuals at all, it is a teleo-
logical world, and a world that not only
expresses purpose, but completely and ade
quately expresses a purpose precisely in so
far as it contains real individuals.

Nor need this result be interpreted
merely with reference to the more senti
mental illustrations used a moment since.



The Conception of Immortality 49

The purposes which various individuals ex
press may be those of science, or those of
human love, those of our warmer pas
sions, or those of our calmer reason,
those of man, or those of God. Any of
these various purposes, or all of them at
once, may win a place in Being. My whole
case so far is that whether you talk of
angels or atoms, your individual beings, if
real at all, are real only as unique embodi
ments of purpose. And their uniqueness
can only depend upon the fact that in each
of them some will is so satisfied that it
seeks and will have no other. Therefore
it is indeed that loyal human love is in us
the best example of an individuating prin
ciple. The love that will have no other
than this beloved is our best hint of the
sense in which purpose must be fulfilled in
the world, if individuals are to be real at all.
Our question then becomes this: Does
the real world fulfill purposes ? Does it
express will ? Does it embody ideals in
unique and satisfactory fulfillment ? But



50 The Conception of Immortality

this question at once raises the most cen
tral issue of philosophy. In what sense is
there any real world ? What are its ulti
mate facts ? What is Reality ? 5

The answer to these questions must be,
like the questions, founded upon a desire
to deal with first principles for their own
sake. For the issue upon which depends
every philosophical problem about the gen
eral order of the world is raised when one
asks the question, What is a fact ? We
have said that the most significant facts,
even of the world of common sense and of
science, have aspects that transcend the
limits of our direct human consciousness.
But we have not said that such facts have
no relation whatever to our own expe
rience, but only that our human type of
experience is very inadequate to exhaust
their meaning, or to present them in their
wholeness. In truth, our whole search
after facts, our whole belief in the reality
of the world, depends upon a recognition
that our experience is inadequate to ex-



The Conception of Immortality 57

press the conscious purposes that we have
in mind even when we scrutinize this our
experience itself, to see what .it contains.
And our own philosophical argument will
hold that in consequence you must define
the whole Reality of things in terms of
Purpose.

At any thinking moment of your human
life, you inquire, you find yourself ignorant,
you doubt, you wonder, or you investigate.
Now as you do this you have present to
your consciousness what are called, in the
narrower sense of that term, ideas, that
is, ideas of objects not now present to you,
and of objects that, if present, would an
swer your questions, settle your doubts,
accomplish the end of your investigations.
Now your ideas, as such, mean precisely
certain thoughtful processes that are more
or less consciously present in your momen
tary state of mind as you inquire. But the
objects concerning which you inquire are,
by hypothesis, not wholly present to you at
the instant of your doubt or wonder. For



52 Tbe Conception of Immortality

were they present, your inquiries would be
answered. They are viewed as absent ; and
you also call them, taken, as it were, in
themselves, you call them, I say, the
facts in the case. You conceive them,
usually, as in large measure independent of
your ideas. And yet the facts and your
ideas cannot be in truth wholly independ
ent of each other as ordinary Realism as
sumes ; for were they without any mutual
dependence whatever, how could the ideas
really have the facts as their objects ? Or
how could it make any difference to the
ideas, as conscious processes, with an in
tent or purpose of their own, whether
the wholly independent facts agreed with
them, or not ? Or yet again, to put the
same consideration in another form, the
ideas, if they have any bearing upon facts
at all, even if they simply express igno
rance of the facts, or doubt about the facts,
or error regarding facts, or blunder, or
delusion, yet still doubt, or error, or de
lusion about facts, which are really their



The Conception of Immortality 53

objects, the ideas, I say, must in any
such case stand in that seemingly so mys
terious relation to the facts beyond them
which is implied when we say, The ideas
are such as genuinely to mean the facts.
Even in your conscious ignorance, in doubt,
in error, in delusion, if you really doubt,
or err, or are deluded, your ideas, however
fragmentary, are thus linked by the tie of
objectively genuine meaning to the outer
facts, however lofty or remote, concerning
which you think and are therefore in one
Whole of Meaning with those facts.

Now what does this genuine tie, called
the meaning of an idea, this link by which
the idea is bound to its seemingly external
object, called the outer fact, what, I ask,
does this link imply ? What is the true
union between any idea and its object ?
The question as stated is absolutely gen
eral, is involved in every inquiry, in any
sort of fact, and is therefore at issue when
ever you consider the relation of any of
your ideas, and so of yourself as the person



54 The Conception of Immortality

having these ideas, to facts whether phy
sical or spiritual, to facts whether in a
laboratory or in the eternal world, to facts
whether in this room or in the remotest
ages of time, to facts about your next
friend, or to facts of God s mind or of im
mortality. If, for instance, I now have a
genuine idea of your minds while I speak
to you, or if you have any idea really re
ferring to my own mind, then our minds
are actually and metaphysically linked by
the ties of mutual meaning. In other
words, we are then not wholly sundered
beings. We are somehow more whole of
meaning. And if you now think of Sirius,
or of the universe, then your idea, if it
really means anything whatever that is
objective, is in the same whole of meaning
with your object. But what constitutes
this whole of meaning ?

The question has its especial difficulty
in the fact that, in speaking of an idea and
its object, just in so far as you sunder the
two, and view them as mutually independ-



The Conception of Immortality 55

ent entities, you fail to see how the con
scious idea can make any real reference to
that entity yonder, beyond it, and different
from it. For how should anybody, or how
should anybody s ideas, consciously refer
to an object that is still in no sense a part
of the consciousness which possesses the
idea? On the other hand, if the object to
which our ideas refer is simply itself one
of our own ideas, or is simply a fact pre
sent to our experience, if, in other words,
idea and object are in my own unity of
consciousness together, then how should
an idea be able to err, as we constantly
find our own ideas erring, regarding their
objects ? How, in brief, should ignorance
and error be at all possible ?

To bring our whole problem then to a
single focus : When I think of outer exist
ence, I think of something as not wholly
and just now consciously present to me ;
and yet I think of myself as meaning this
something. My object is somehow here,
in my consciousness, genuinely here ;



56 The Conception of Immortality

and yet somehow not here, since I inquire
and perhaps err about it. Now how can I
thus mean to refer to more than my object
now present to my consciousness, while
still, in order thus to refer at all, I must
fix my attention upon some fact now pre
sent in my mind ?

To all these fundamental questions phi
losophy, as I hold, must answer : I can refer
to any object beyond me solely by observ
ing the inadequacy of my present and
passing conscious idea to its own conscious
purpose. I cannot directly look beyond
my own consciousness ; but I pass beyond
my present solely by virtue of my will, my
intent, my dissatisfaction. But this very
will and dissatisfaction have my own pre
sent imperfection and inadequacy as their
direct object. And consequently, by the
object itself, by my real world, I can mean
nothing but that which in the end, despite
all my ignorance or error or finite misfor
tune, somehow adequately fulfills my whole
will. Thus the very idea of a real being



The Conception of Immortality 57

is the idea of something that fulfills a pur
pose. What is thus thought of is indeed
conceived as the outer object of an idea,
and so as a fact beyond the idea, and
yet meant by the idea. This relation of
being beyond an idea, and yet meant by
that idea, is, however, a possible relation, a
relation that has any sense whatever only
in so far, first, as the idea is an inadequate
expression in our present human conscious
ness of its own purpose, and in so far,
secondly, as the object meant stands re
lated to the idea as that which fulfills the
whole intent which is now partially ex
pressed in the idea. And so we can indeed
say, as Schopenhauer said, although not
wholly in his sense, The real world is my
Will.

In other words, to be, to exist, to be a
fact, to be real, any one of these expres
sions simply means, to express in wholeness
the meaning that imperfect conscious
ideas, such as we mortals have, now only
partially express. To be, or to be a fact,



5# The Conception of Immortality

means then, not to be independent of finite
ideas, but to accomplish fully and finally
what they only intend, to present in whole
ness what they only find in fragment, to
be one with their purpose, but free from
their inadequacy, to fulfill what they only
propose, to attain what they only will. In
saying this I in no sense mean that reality
meets all your momentary wishes and ca
prices. For your momentary wishes and
caprices are simply unconscious of their
own whole meaning ; and therefore they
very generally have to be transformed in
order to be satisfied. But what my doc
trine does mean is that a world of onto-
logical fragments, of facts that are not in
one whole of meaning together, is never
to be found. There are no ideas sundered
from their objects. Ontologically speak
ing, where the idea is, there is the object
also. Only the momentary human idea is
the object imperfectly brought to a finite
consciousness. The apparent sundering of
idea and fact is therefore simply an illusion



The Conception of Immortality 59

of our own finitude. Nor do the ideas
mysteriously refer to objects that first exist
beyond them and then are somehow the
topics of this reference. No, the true
relation of idea and object is not mysteri
ous. It is merely the very relation so
familiar to any of us, the relation which
you have now in mind when you observe
that you have not fully present to your
momentary self the fulfillment of your own
present conscious purposes, nor yet a full
consciousness even of what those purposes
themselves mean. In fact, just in so far
as you lack anything, or in so far as you
know not wholly what you mean, or have
not now what you all the while consciously
seek, just in so far you define your object
as beyond you. The incompleteness of
your present self-expression of your own
meaning is then the sole warrant that you
have for asserting that there is a world
beyond you. And this incompleteness, so
far as you are conscious of it, gives in its
turn the only possible meaning to the ex-



60 The Conception of Immortality

ternality ascribed to the complete expres
sion of your present meaning. Thus
while you indeed expect reality to defeat
your caprices, and to refute your errors,
you still rightly demand that reality should
adequately express your whole true mean
ing.

In consequence, merely by reading this
result in the reverse order you have at
once a definition of the deepest essence of
the existent world. What is real is simply,
in its wholeness, that which consciously
completes or finally expresses the very
meaning that, in you, is at this instant of
your human experience consciously in
complete. That meaning of yours, viz.,
the world, the reality, the whole, yes the
absolute, is now in its very being really
although inadequately present to you pass
ing consciousness ; but your finite defect
is that you know not consciously, just now,
the whole of what you even now genuinely
mean. Or again : you have not now at
once both wholly and consciously present



The Conception of Immortality 61

the complete expression of your own will.
But this complete expression, with you
and in essence in you really, even now, but
not consciously present to you now, this
whole will and life of yours is the world.
That complete expression, as the Hindoos
said, that is the Reality, that is the
Soul, that art Thou. The real world then
is teleological. It does express a purpose.
It does express this purpose rationally,
wholly, finally. And this purpose is the
very purpose now hinted in your own pass
ing thrill of hope and of longing.




UT now, after listening to this mere
sketch of the general idealistic
theory of the ultimate reality, after
hearing this interpretation of the essential
nature of the world order in its wholeness,
you may well ask how, in case there is this
essential relation of every finite idea to the
whole meaning of the world, there is any
room left for finite individuality as any dis
tinguishable fact. The doctrine that I have
just sketched is indeed obviously a version
of a doctrine about God as an Absolute
Being, and about his relation to every finite
conscious life just in so far as that life,
seeing its own imperfections, is seeking
for truth beyond itself. No one can seek
for a truth beyond his present self, unless
the seeker is already in his inmost purpose
one with the Absolute Life in which all



The Conception of Immortality 63

truth is expressed. But on the other hand,
this oneness of divine and of finite purpose
is in some sense sure to exist in case of
every finite life ; for all life is an expres
sion of the one universal Will, and in its
turn is in the most intimate relation to
that one will. Ignorance and error as well
as evil are, when viewed as such, and in
their separation from the whole, imperfect
self-expressions of the Absolute that can
only appear within the limits of a finite
fragment of the whole, such as any one of
us now is. No finite idea can fail, even in
the lowest depths of its finitude, to intend
this oneness with the Absolute upon which,
according to our account, all knowledge
and all truth depend. But on the other
hand, if all reality is one and for One, and
is the expression of a single purpose, so
that God is immanent, is everywhere nigh
to the finite life, and is everywhere meant
by us all, then we seem indeed to have
found that the world expresses one absolute
purpose, and is real only as accomplishing



64 The Conception of Immortality

that purpose. And we seem to have found
also that at any instant what we consciously
intend, in all our finite strivings, is oneness
with God. But what, you may ask, has
become of our individuality, in so far as
we were to be just ourselves, and nobody
else ?

I reply, first, that in referring to reality
in these idealistic terms, as the final fulfill
ment of a united purpose, as the com
plete carrying out of what all finite purposes
more or less blindly intend, we have at
least pointed out where there is attained
something which no abstract description
of finite facts could show us, namely, the
uniqueness of the Divine Life, and of the
real world in which this life is expressed.
A will satisfied has in God s whole life
found its goal, and seeks no other. I do
not indeed conceive the Absolute as find
ing his goal at any one point in what we
call time. Now we wait and suffer and
seek. And all life, all striving, and all
science are efforts to win ultimately this



The Conception of Immortality 65

absolute meaning, which is our own will
completely expressed. But it is the whole
world of past, present, and future, it is that
totality of life and of experience which our
every moment of conscious life implies and
seeks, which is fulfilled in the Absolute. 6
Now neither abstract thought nor immedi
ate experience, taken merely as we men
find or define them, can describe or discover
the unique. Only the complete fulfillment
of purpose can leave no other fact beyond
to be sought ; and primarily, for this very
reason, only the Absolute Life can be an
entirely whole individual. God, then, is
indeed the primary individual. His world,
his life, his expression taken in its whole
ness, is that individual fact which you and
I are at all times trying to find, to win, to
see, to describe, to attain. As finite beings
we fail at every moment. It is our failure
that we try to correct by our science or by
our prudence. By no mystic vision can
we win our union with him. We must
toil. But he is our whole true life, in whom



66 The Conception of Immortality

we live and move and have our being, and
in him we triumph and attain, not now,
not here in time and amidst the blind
strivings of this instant, but in that which
our strivings always intend, and pursue,
and love. For " restless are our souls,"
as Augustine in the familiar passage said,
"until they rest, O God, in thee."

But now, on the other hand, consider
the consequences of all this for ourselves.
The two deepest facts about the real world
are, from this idealistic point of view, that
it is everywhere the expression, more or
less partial and fragmentary, of meaning
and of purpose. Therefore it makes our
science and our practical work possible,
and demands them of us. But if viewed
as a whole it is an unique fulfillment of pur
pose, the only begotten son of the Divine
Will. It is such then, in its wholeness as
a God s world, that nothing else could take
its place consistently with the will which
the whole freely expresses, carries out, and
fulfills. But now of an unique whole, every



The Conception of Immortality 67

fragment and aspect, just by virtue of its
relation to the whole, is inevitably unique.
Were the world essentially unfinished, and
were it not the expression of a purpose,
then the uniqueness or individuality of
any of its parts or aspects would remain a
fact nowhere present to anybody s insight.
But if the absolute knowledge sees the
whole as a complete fulfillment of purpose,
then every fact in the world occupies its
unique place in the world. Were just that
fact changed, the meaning of the whole
would be just in so far altered, and another
world would take the place of the present
one. Just as, in case a given cathedral is
unique, and has not its equal in all the
world of being, then every stone and every
arch and every carving in that cathedral is
unique, by having its one place in that
whole, just so too, in the universe, if the
whole is the expression of the single and
absolute will, every fragment of life therein
has its unique place in the divine life, a
place that no other fragment of life could
fill. 7



68 The Conception of Immortality

And so, although you can never see,
and can never abstractly define, your own
unique or individual place in the world, or
your character as this individual, you are
unique and therefore individual in your life
and meaning, just because you have your
place in the divine life, and that life is one.
And therefore it is true that in this same
realm of the single divine life which loves
and chooses this world as the fulfillment of
its own purpose, and will have no other,
your friend s life glows with just that
unique portion of the divine will that no
other life in all the world expresses. We
finite beings then are unique and individ
ual in our differences, from one another
and from all possible beings, just because
we share in the very uniqueness of God s
individuality and purpose. We borrow our
variety from our various relations to his
unity.

And thus the claims of Knowledge and
of Will are from the absolute point of
view reconciled. For knowledge recog-



The Conception of Immortality 69

nizes no diversity except upon the ground
of an identity. And this is true of us all,
namely, that our very variety is based
upon the fact that the absolute life and its
world form one whole and are in their one
ness unique. For just because the satis
fied divine purpose permits no other to
take the place of this world, in its whole
ness, just so each one of us has his own
distinct place in this unique whole. But
on the other hand Will primarily seeks
that which is different from all other ob
jects, namely, the individual, the finality,
the single fulfillment of striving. And just
such a fact is the whole world, and there
fore is every part thereof unique in its own
kind and degree of being.




VI




O far, then, as we live and strive
at all, our lives are various, are
needed for the whole, and are
unique. No one of these lives can be
substituted for another. No one of us
finite beings can take another s place.
And all this is true just because the Uni
verse is one significant whole.

That follows from our general doctrine
concerning our unique relation, as various
finite expressions taking place within the
single whole of the divine life. But now,
with this result in mind, let us return again
to the finite realms, and descend from our
glimpse of the divine life to the dim shad
ows and to the wilderness of this world,
and ask afresh : But what is the unique
meaning of my life just now ? What place
do I fill in God s world that nobody else
either fills or can fill ?



The Conception of Immortality 77

How disheartening in one sense is still
the inevitable answer. I state that answer
again in all its negative harshness. I reply
simply : For myself, I do not now know in
any concrete human terms wherein my
individuality consists. In my present
human form of consciousness I simply can
not tell. If I look, to see what I ever did
that, for all I now know, some other man
might not have done, I am utterly unable
to discover the certainly unique deed.
When I was a child I learned by imitation
as the rest did. I have gone on copying
models in my poor way ever since. I
never felt a feeling that I knew or could
know to be unlike the feelings of other
people. I never consciously thought, ex
cept after patterns that the world or my
fellows set for me. Of myself, I seem in
this life to be nothing but a mere meeting-
place in this stream of time where a mass
of the driftwood from the ages has col
lected. I only know that I have always
tried to be myself and nobody else. This



72 The Conception of Immortality

mere aim I indeed have observed, but that
is all. As for you, my beloved friend, I
loyally believe in your uniqueness ; but
whenever I try to tell you wherein it con
sists, I helplessly describe only a type.
That type may be uncommon. But it is
not you. For as soon as described, it
might have other examples. But you are
alone. Yet I never tell what you are.
And if your face lights up my world as no
other can well, this feeling too, when
viewed as the mere psychologist has to view
it, appears to be simply what all the other
friends report about their friends. It is an
old story, this life of ours. There is no
thing new under our sun. Nothing new,
that is, for us, as we now feel and think.
When we imagine that we have seen or
defined uniqueness and novelty, we soon
feel a little later the illusion. We live
thus, in one sense, so lonesomely here.
For we love individuals ; we trust in them ;
we honor and pursue them ; we glorify
them and hope to know them. But after



The Conception of Immortality 73
we have once become keenly critical and
worldly wise, we know, if we are sufficiently
thoughtful, that we men can never either
find them with our eyes, or define them in
our minds ; and that hopelessness of finding
what we most love makes some of us cyni
cal, and turns others of us into lovers of
barren abstractions, and renders still others
of us slaves to monotonous affairs that
have lost for us the true individual mean-
ing and novelty that we had hoped to find
in them. Ah, one of the deepest tragedies
of this human existence of ours lies in this
very loneliness of the awakened critics of
life. We seek true individuality and the
true individuals. But we find them not.
For lo, we mortals see what our poor
eyes can see ; and they, the true individ
uals, they belong not to this world of
our merely human sense and thought.

They belong not to this world, in so far
as our sense and our thought now show us
this world ! Ah, therein, just therein lies
the very proof that they even now belong



74 The Conception of Immortality
to a higher and to a richer realm than ours.
Herein lies the very sign of their true im
mortality. For they are indeed real, these
individuals. We know this, first, because
we mean them and seek them. We know
this, secondly, because, in this very longing
of ours, God too longs ; and because the
Absolute life itself, which dwells in our
life, and inspires these very longings, pos
sesses the true world, and is that world.
For the Absolute, as we now know, all life
is individual, but is individual as expressing
a meaning. Precisely what is unexpressed
here, then, in our world of mortal glimpses
of truth, precisely what is sought and longed
for, but never won in this our human form
of consciousness, just that is interpreted,
is developed into its true wholeness, is won
in its fitting form, and is expressed, in all
the rich variety of individual meaning that
love here seeks, but cannot find, and is
expressed too as a portion, unique, con
scious, and individual, of an Absolute Life
that even now pulsates in every one of our



The Conception of Immortality 75

desires for the ideal and for the individual.
We all even now really dwell in this realm
of a reality that is not visible to human
eyes. We dwell there as individuals. The
oneness of the Absolute Will lives in and
through all this variety of life and love and
longing that now is ours, but cannot live
in and through all without working out to
the full precisely that individuality of pur
pose, that will to choose and to love the
unique, which is in all of us the deepest
expression of the ideal. Just because, then,
God is One, all our lives have various and
unique places in the harmony of the divine
life. And just because God attains and
wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives
win in our union with him the individu
ality which is essential to their true mean
ing. And just because individuals whose
lives have uniqueness of meaning are here
only objects of pursuit, the attainment of
this very individuality, since it is indeed
real, occurs not in our present form of con
sciousness, but in a life that now we see



7<5 The Conception of Immortality

not, yet in a life whose genuine meaning
is continuous with our own human life,
however far from our present flickering
form of disappointed human consciousness
that life of the final individuality may be.
Of this our true individual life, our present
life is a glimpse, a fragment, a hint, and
in its best moments a visible beginning.
That this individual life of all of us is not
something limited in its temporal expres
sion to the life that now we experience, fol
lows from the very fact that here nothing
final or individual is found expressed.



VII




HAVE had time thus only to hint
at what to my mind is the true
basis of a rational conception of
Immortality. I do not wish to have the
concrete definiteness of the prophecies
which can be based upon this conception
in the least overrated. Individuality we
mean and seek. That, in God, we win
and consciously win, and in a life that is
not this present mortal life. But we also
seek pleasure, riches, joys. Those, so far
as they are mere types of facts, we as indi
viduals have no right to expect to win,
either here or elsewhere, in the form in
which we now seek them. How, when,
where, in what particular higher form of
finite consciousness our various individual
meanings get their final and unique expres
sion, I also in no wise pretend to know or



7# The Conception of Immortality

to guess. The confidence of the student
of philosophy when he speaks of the Abso
lute, arouses a curiously false impression
in some minds that he supposes himself
able to pierce further into all the other
mysteries of the world than others do. But
that is a mistake. I have had no time here
to give even to my argument for my con
ception of the Absolute any sort of exact
statement or defense. I well know how
vague my hints of general idealism have
been. I can only say that for that aspect
of my argument I have tried to give, in a
proper place, a fitting defense.

The case, however, for the present appli
cation of my argument to the problem of
Human Immortality lies simply in these
plain considerations : (i) The world is a
rational whole, a life, wherein the divine
Will is uniquely expressed. (2) Every as
pect of the Absolute Life must therefore
be unique with the uniqueness of the
whole, and must mean something that can
only get an individual expression. (3) But



The Conception of Immortality 79

in this present life, while we constantly
intend and mean to be and to love and
know individuals, there are, for our pre
sent form of consciousness, no true indivi
duals to be found or expressed with the
conscious materials now at our disposal.
(4) Yet our life, by virtue of its unity with
the Divine Life, must receive in the end a
genuinely individual and significant expres
sion. (5) We men, therefore, to ourselves,
as we feel our own strivings within us, and
to one another as we strive to find one
another, and to express ourselves to one
another, are hints of a real and various
individuality that is not now revealed to
us, and that cannot be revealed in any life
which merely assumes our present form of
consciousness, or which is limited by what
we observe between our birth and death.
(6) And so, finally, the various and genu
ine individuality which we are now loyally
meaning to express gets, from the Abso
lute point of view, its final and conscious
expression in a life that, like all life such
as Idealism recognizes, is conscious, and



8o The Conception of Immortality

that in its meaning, although not at all
necessarily in time or in space, is contin
uous with the fragmentary and flickering
existence wherein we now see through a
glass darkly our relations to God and to
the final truth.

I know not in the least, I pretend not to
guess, by what processes this individuality
of our human life is further expressed,
whether through many tribulations as here,
or whether by a more direct road to indi
vidual fulfillment and peace. I know only
that our various meanings, through what
ever vicissitudes of fortune, consciously
come to what we individually, and God in
whom alone we are individuals, shall to
gether regard as the attainment of our
unique place, and of our true relationships
both to other individuals and to the all in
clusive Individual, God himself. Further
into the occult it is not the business of
philosophy to go. My nearest friends are
already, as we have seen, occult enough for
me. I wait until this mortal shall put on
Individuality.



NOTES



NOTE i, Page 5.

THE discussion of the problem of individuality in
this lecture summarizes views that I have attempted
to state and to defend at length in two places, viz.,
in the volume called The Conception of God (a
discussion in which I took part with Prof. George
H. Howison, Prof. Joseph LeConte, and Prof. Sid
ney E. Mezes : New York, The Macmillan Com
pany, 1897 ; in particular, in the Supplementary
Essay, op. cit., pp. 217-326); and in the First
Series of my Gifford Lectures before the Univer
sity of Aberdeen (The World and the Individual.
First Series : The Four Conceptions of Being;
especially in lectures VII and X). The last men
tioned volume is published by the Macmillan Com
pany (1900).

NOTE 2, Page 21.

See Aristotle s Physics, I, I. Aristotle mentions
in this passage the language of children as illus
trating his view.



82 Notes

NOTE 3, Page 33.

The technical justification for this assertion is
only hinted later in the course of the present dis
course, but is set forth at length in the discussions
cited in Note i. The individual is essentially the
object of an exclusive interest : this is the thesis of
the Supplementary Essay in The Conception of God.
All completely real Being is individual by virtue
of the fact that it is a finally determinate expres
sion of a purpose : this is the doctrine defended in
the Gifford Lectures (loc. tit.}. The problem of
the lover is, therefore, to my mind, as technically
metaphysical a problem as is that of any theologian.
His u exclusive interest " is a typical instance of the
true principle of individuation.

NOTE 4, Page 39.

In this and in one or two other passages of the
lecture the relation of the problem of the indi
vidual to the concept of the actual or completed
Infinite is indicated. This aspect of the problem,
involving as it does both mathematical and meta
physical issues, has received a somewhat detailed
discussion in a Supplementary Essay published
along with the first series of the Gifford Lectures,
and entitled The One, the Many, and the Infinite.

It is in this connection that my own way of



Notes 83

stating the problem of individuality brings me into
decided opposition to some well-known views, both
of Fichte and of Hegel, regarding the nature of
individuality and regarding the concept of the
Infinite. An "elusive goal" the individual indeed
is for any temporal search. Yet that in itself it is
(in one sense, and that the most real sense) a com
pleted whole, and not a merely unfinished process,
is a central thesis of my whole argument. On the
other hand, my concept of the completed Infinite
is not that of Hegel, but rather that of Dedekind
and Cantor.

NOTE 5, Page 50.

The more general statement of Idealism which
follows, apart from its application to the case of
the individual, is identical in substance with the
argument set forth in my Religious Aspect of Phi
losophy (Boston, Riverside Press, 1885), and in my
Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Id. 1892). In the
Gifford Lectures the relation of the concept of
Reality, as defined by Idealism, to the conceptions
of Will and of Purpose, is more carefully consid
ered than in the earlier discussions, and an attempt
is made to show the precise grounds for the fail
ure of the opposing conceptions of Being, e. g.,
Realism.



84 Notes

NOTE 6, Page 65.

The text here implies a doctrine about the mean
ing of that much-abused term, Eternity. In the
forthcoming second course of Gifford Lectures,
already delivered but not yet printed, I have found
the opportunity to state at length this doctrine,
which is not new, but which has been far too much
neglected in philosophical discussion. The gist of
the matter may here be summed up in a few words.
Whoever listens appreciatively to a melody, or to
a sequence of chords of music, or even to a mere
rhythm of drum-taps, or to the words of a speaker,
has a twofold consciousness as to the way in which
the facts to which he listens are present to him.
(i) Each tone, or chord, or drum-tap, or spoken
word, is present, as this member of its series, in so
far as it follows some sounds and precedes others,
so that when, or in so far as, in this sense, it is
present, the preceding notes of the melody or taps
of the rhythm are no longer or are past, while
the succeeding notes are not yet or are future. In
this sense of the term present, the present excludes
past and future from its own temporal place in the
sequence. (2) But now the appreciative listener
also grasps at once (or, as a totum simul, to use
the phrase of St. Thomas) the whole of a brief but
still considerable sequence of tones or of taps or



Notes 85

of words. In this. second sense he may be said to
find present to him the whole sequence. How
much he can thus grasp at once depends upon his
interest, his temperament, and his training, but
above all upon the characteristic time-span of
human consciousness, or upon the length of what
Professor James has, with others, called the " spe
cious present." This length is, for us men, an
arbitrary fact, varying more or less, but within close
limits. It determines one aspect of what I have
called the peculiar " form " of our human conscious
ness. What happens in periods too long or too
short for this time-span of our consciousness es
capes our direct observation. There is, however,
no conceptual difficulty in the way of imagining a
"form of consciousness" whose "specious pre
sent" should be limited in span to the time of
vibration of a hydrogen molecule, or, on the other
hand, should be extended to include in one glance,
or at once, the events of a billion years. Such
other forms of consciousness would be in no more
arbitrary relations to time than our own conscious
ness now is. How we come to be able to grasp at
once the events of say two or three seconds, we can
not now say. That we can do so is evidenced by
every case in which we catch, as a presented fact,
the interest of a whole musical or rhythmic or
spoken phrase. Other forms of consciousness
might have vastly different span.



86 Notes

But in so far as we grasp at once a whole series
of facts, however long or however short, this series
is present, in the second sense of the term present,
to the consciousness that observes it as in any way
a whole. Yet the temporal facts which make up
the whole sequence follow each one after its pre
decessors. Let the sequence be a, b, c. Then, in
our first sense of the term present, when b is present,
a is no longer, and c is not yet. And this fact makes
the temporal sequence what it is. But in the second
sense of the term present, a, b, and c, despite this
perfectly genuine but relative difference of no
longer and not yet, or of past and future, are all
present as a totum simul to the consciousness
that grasps the entire sequence. These two senses
of the term present are perfectly distinguishable,
and they involve no contradiction.

Since, however, the length of a " specious pre
sent " is an arbitrary fact, there is no sort of con
tradiction in supposing a " form of consciousness "
for which the events of the Archaean and of the Silu
rian and of later geological periods should be pre
sent at once, together with the facts of to-day s his
tory. Such a consciousness would merely exceed,
by many millions of years, our time-span ; but what
is for us no longer would be, to such a conscious
ness, in our second sense of the term present, a fact
of its own present consciousness. (On the time-



Notes 87

span, see also my discussion in my Studies of Good
and Evil, published by Appleton and Company in
1898, in the essay entitled Self -Consciousness,
Social Consciousness and Nature}.

If all limitations of time-span are to be conceived
as arbitrary, the question whether a consciousness
is possible which should have present to it at once
(in our second sense of the term present} the whole
of time, or the whole of what, from this moment
outwards, we now view as antecedent or as sequent
to this moment, becomes simply the question, In
what sense can the totality of temporal events be
regarded as any determinate whole at all ? This
question involves, to be sure, the further questions :
In what sense is the temporal sequence of the
world s events an endless sequence or an infinite
series ? and, In what sense can this temporal se
ries, even if infinite, be defined as a determinate or
as a really complete whole ? These questions lie
far beyond the limits of this note. But, as a fact,
in the above-cited essay, at the conclusion of the
Gifford Lectures, on The One, the Many, and the
Infinite, I have endeavored to show that an infinite
series can be a perfectly determinate and individ
ual whole, every member of which could conceiv
ably be known at once by a single consciousness.
For reasons that will be explained more fully in
the second series of the Gifford Lectures, but that



88 Notes

are already indicated in the first series, I also hold
that the temporal series of the world s events con
stitutes such a whole, infinite, and yet present at
once to the Absolute (in our second sense of the
term present).

But a consciousness whose span embraces the
whole of time is precisely what I mean by the term
Eternal Consciousness. And what is present at
once to such a consciousness, viz., the whole of
what happens in time, taken together with all the
distinctions of past and of future that hold within
the series of temporal events, this whole, I say,
constitutes Eternity. It is in these senses that I
here use these two terms.

The type of an eternal consciousness we ourselves
empirically possess precisely in so far as we grasp
at once the sequent events of any melody or rhythm
or series of words. This our possession of what
may be called the eternal type of consciousness is
limited by the arbitrary span of our human form of
consciousness. To conceive this limitation abso
lutely removed, without any confusion resulting,
implies, to be sure, the conception of the determi-
nately infinite whole ; but this conception, although
abstruse, is (as I have tried to show in the essay
cited) a conception quite free from contradiction.
If once we form this conception, then it becomes
easy to see that to suppose the whole of time



Notes 89

present at once to an eternal consciousness is in
no wise a meaningless supposition. Nor does this
supposition conflict with the temporal truth that we
also express when we say that, from the point of
view of any one present event in time (if the term
present is taken in our first sense), all future events
are not yet , and all past events are no longer. The
two propositions express different aspects of the
world, but are mutually consistent.

It is in view of these considerations that the
text speaks of the Absolute as possessing, in its
conscious fulfillment, "the whole world of past and
future." If one retorts, " How can the future now^
i. <?., at the present moment, be present fact to the
Absolute when the future is not yet ? " then I simply
insist upon distinguishing the two foregoing mean
ings of the word " present." It is as if one asked,
" How can the listener grasp at once as present the
whole of his brief musical sequence, if the tones
or chords so follow in time that all but one are
either past or future, and are not present when
that one sounds?" Whoever listens to music
with appreciation answers the latter question. The
answer to the former involves no new principle, if
once you grant the definable reality of an infinite
time.

The usual confusion of ideas as to this twofold
way in which the facts of a sequence can be called



90 Notes

present is responsible for the familiar problem as
to the divine " foreknowledge " and its relation to
freedom. " If God has the future present to him,
then he must now (viz., to-day, or at this temporal
instant) foreknow the future." So a frequently
urged argument presupposes. The only fair com
ment is : God, viewed in his wholeness, does not now
foreknow anything, if by now you mean merely to
day or at this moment. For whoever now looks
forward to the future merely as not yet, is a finite
being, temporally determined, and not yet come to
his own fulfillment in God. Divine knowledge of
what to us is future is no mere foreknowledge. It
is eternal knowledge.

NOTE 7, Page 67.

I am well aware of the difficulty that this pas
sage leaves wholly untouched regarding the sense
in which there can be any freedom, any individual
initiative, any ethical spontaneity, belonging to the
individuals whose variety and uniqueness, despite,
or even because of, their unity with and in God, is
here asserted. The problem of individual freedom
I have treated in the Conception of God (pp. 289-
315), and in Lecture X of the first series of Gifford
Lectures. See also The Spirit of Modern Philo
sophy , pp. 428-434. Fuller discussions of the
same problem, already prepared in manuscript, will



Notes 9*

appear in the second series of Gifford Lectures. I
can only say that the figure of the cathedral is used
in the text with a full consciousness of its inade
quacy. The world is no cathedral, but a life of
many lives. Nor are the true individuals mere
stones or carvings in an edifice, nor yet mere parts
in a quantitative whole. In God their lives inter
penetrate without losing their contrasts, and are
free despite their oneness. Their freedom involves
the fact that the future temporal processes of the
world have a certain measure of causal indetermi-
nateness, despite that other, or ontological deter-
minateness, that, as individual events, they possess ,
and that every temporal instant brings its own
novelties with it. The completeness of their lives
is a fact only from the eternal point of view. But
a lecture on immortality is limited to the mere
aspect of life and truth suggested by its title. It
cannot justly express a system of metaphysics.
It can only hint the nature of such a system.