Possible world

“ As applied to matters of experience, it is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed primâ facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is. ”

“ “If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? ”

“ "If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? ”

“ The world is but an assembly of present, past, and possible sensations; the affair of science is to analyse and co-ordinate them by separating their accidental from their constant relations. ”

“ By this idealistic theory all the apparent universe of known external realities—sun, moon, stars, rocks, clouds, earth, and human history and tradition—is resolved or reduced into mere present thinkings of your mind or my mind, a mere complex phantasmagory of the present human spirit; and therefore it is through this present human spirit that one has to seek the all-explaining bond of connection between the real world of finite nature and the real and infinite supernatural world. ”

“ Thus, then, we are tossed back and forth between the possibilities suggested by our hypothesis. “The world is the manifestation of infinite reason;” good, then, but how? “The world is a rational growth from lower to higher.” ”

“ Awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, the will finds itself an individual, in an endless and boundless world, among innumerable individuals, all striving, suffering, erring; and as if through a troubled dream it hurries back to its old unconsciousness. Yet till then its desires are limitless, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives rise to a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to still its longings, set a goal to its infinite cravings, and fill the bottomless abyss of its heart. ”

“ And this truth ever presupposes, what human experience, in the long run, proves to be a fact,—that the different kinds, spheres, and levels of man’s apprehension, and of the total reality thus apprehended by him, are already immanently planned each for the other, within a great, largely dormant system of the world. ”

“ The next hypothesis concerning the matter is, that this world (our globe) is, and must, and will for all eternity be, the abiding place and scene of activity of all mankind, who ever have been or will be born on it, through all the past and all the future ages. ”

“ There is left us, I reply, just this world of our daily experience, with precisely its stars and milky ways, with its human life and its linkages — this world, only given already a deeper meaning by this very study. For now we already begin to see, as from afar, the realm of truth that is not independent of, but the very heart and life of this fragmentary finite experience of ours. ”

“ This Fourth Conception of Being asserts that what is, expresses, in a complete life of concrete experience, the whole meaning of the ideas that refer to any object. Now, when any one of us rationally speaks of the universe, of the whole of Being, he has an idea, and this idea means precisely the entire world itself. Whatever life pulsates anywhere, whatever meaning is at any time fragmentarily seen embodied in flying moments, — all such lives and meanings form the object of our metaphysical inquiry. ”

“ Thus his great empirical services in calling attention to the fundamental importance of considerations of time for problems of life and mind get compromised with a mystic, non-empirical "Intuition"; and we find him preoccupied with solving, by means of his new idea of ultimate reality, the traditional problems of realities-in-themselves and phenomena, matter and mind, free-will and determinism, God and the world. ”

“ In this frame of mind let us now examine our surroundings.
We are living in a world of continuous and multitudinous changes; in fact, without change, we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living. ”

“ In assuming, now, that some such connection as this has validity beyond us, in a realm external to ourselves, we have begun by defining this outer realm, not as a realm that primarily resists or thwarts our Will, but as a realm that first of all embodies one of our own deepest and most rational purposes. If the external world, said to be material, is, as this view holds, above all causal, and is such as to explain the particular facts which are found in our experience, then, that world is above all a real embodiment of the very purpose which, in us, appears as our purpose of explanation. ”

“ The universe created, the principles which determined the creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind. Two ideas and their connexion explain the intelligence of God; two laws in their counterpoise explain the material universe. The law of expansion is the movement of unity to variety; the law of attraction, the return of variety to unity.
In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The study of consciousness is psychology. ”

“ There is, indeed, a sense, in which, according to our view, any rational idea in the whole universe seeks and in its complete development finds, as the expression of its ultimate meaning, the whole of the universe. ”

“ The second series I intend first to devote to the application of our fundamental conceptions to the more special problems of the nature of the human Ego, the meaning of the finite realm called the Physical World, and the interpretation of Evolution. ”

“ Let us now consider some of the more distant worlds, and examine their claims to be regarded as possible homes for beings in any degree resembling ourselves. There are many of these worlds with regard to which we may at once decide in the negative. ”

“ Now, what, then, is that world which is to exist absolutely, and which, therefore, is the absolute expression of the final end, and after the realization of which the final end will have been altogether achieved and made visible? Evidently that world which exists for its own sake, and not for the sake of another world. ”

“ Not purpose, but the unchangeable laws of the Reality, not the inner life, but the Universe, thus at first seems from without to assign to the idea whatever external meaning it is to obtain. Subject and Object are here supposed to meet, — to meet in this fact that ideas have their external meaning, — but to meet as foreign powers. ”

“ But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem so common-place and natural—in nine months. ”

“ As to the particular—there is something external and internal in every one; body and soul in every one; this is his present and future world. As to the common signification—there is an external and an internal world, that is, the material world is the present, and the future is the internal world. ”

“ In dealing with the concept of Nature, we shall see what significant use may be made of the hypothesis that there exists or may exist, finite consciousness for which the series of events that we regard as no longer distinguishable from merely elementary and indivisible happenings, are distinguished so minutely as to furnish content as rich as those which, from our point of view, occupy icons of the world’s history. Our right to such hypotheses is incontestable, provided only that they help us to conceive the true unity of experience. ”

“ Our rational nature asks not only for the immediate causes of events in the cosmic order, but also for the very ground of that order itself and of the forces which appear in the visible and tangible conscious world. ”

“ That suggested the idea of a subtly winding parallel, a ‘rapport’ in every detail, between the human mind and the world without it, laws of nature being so many transformed ideas. Conversely, the ideas of the human mind would be only transformed laws. ”

“ Here, then, is another view of the universe—not an unchanging, relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive ”

“ Abstract considerations about the soul and the reality of a moral order will not do in a year what the glimpse into a world of new phenomenal possibilities enveloping those of the present life, afforded by an extension of our insight into the order of nature, would do in an instant. ”

“ They exist and are combined independently of the existence, and even of the possibility, of the sensible world; and they would also exist in a world of pure intelligences, even if the sensible universe were nothing but an illusion or an absurd chimera. ”

“ The world to come is quite another thing; it is called that world, by way of emphasis and eminency. Note, There are more worlds than one; a present visible world, and a future invisible world; and it is the concern of every one of us to compare worlds, this world and that world, and give the preference in our thoughts and cares to that which deserves them. ”

“ And, as we have already seen, and in the present lecture shall further illustrate, the relation of partial and total meaning is, at the same time, the relation of any finite will to the expression of the complete intent of that same will. Without contradiction, therefore, you are unable to assert the real Being of any world, unless you conceive that world as the expressed will whose partial momentary embodiment you even now observe, whenever you get any rational idea before your mind. ”

“ Present Being of two sorts, namely in nature and in minds, Past and Future Being, these four types of reality we have now enumerated as types recognized by common sense and natural science. Our study of the Third Conception of Being, some time since, made us familiar with the still different sort of reality ordinarily attributed to the realm of moral and of mathematical truth. This realm of eternal validity common sense as well as science recognizes ”

“ I said deliberately "from the creation of the world," and not "from the creation of mankind," because inanimate creation itself appears to me to bear witness to a purpose, from the first, that this visible world should help its future tenants to imagine things invisible. ”

“ Whilst we are attending to one, or at most to two or three objects, all the others lapse, and the most we feel of them is that they still linger on the outskirts and can be caught again by turning in a certain way. Nevertheless throughout all this confusion we conceive of a world spread out in a perfectly fixed and orderly fashion, and we believe in its existence. The question is: How do this conception and this belief arise? ”

“ So far as our knowledge of nature goes, the whole momentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that the unseen world, as the objective term is a relation of fundamental importance that has coexisted with the whole career of mankind, has a real existence. ”

“ If every finite pulsation of life, despite its aspect of mere generality, its external meaning, has something unique about it, and if this unique aspect of the finite life expresses an internal meaning, then the meaning of every such fact itself is unique. ”

“ That is, although "the works were finished from the foundation of the world," and second causes are now largely operative in nature all around us, still there is everywhere manifest an active energy, a presence, an Intelligence, "in Whom we live, and move, and have our being." ”

“ We have already spoken of acts of will; and the popular view declares that we are conscious of an activity which causes states of consciousness to exist within ourselves, and acts to come into existence outside of ourselves, and which is therefore responsible for the actual production of new Being in the universe. ”

“ Now it is true that the existential predicate, the word is used to assert the real Being of any object, is often viewed as something of an absolutely simple, ultimate, and indescribable meaning. Yet even if this view were sound, the ultimate and the simple are, in philosophy, as truly and as much topics for reflective study as are the most complex and derived ideas of our minds. ”

“ Neither by our empirical science nor by our art do we then directly discover anything but this: Namely, that our human Internal Meanings do indeed possess some reference to a vast finite realm beyond ourselves, within which we men find our place. Out of this realm we ourselves have proceeded through the processes of evolution. Into this realm, at death, we seem to return. This realm is called Nature. ”

“ I have defined in general the problem of the relation of the World as Idea to the World as Fact, and have stated our issue as precisely this relation between Ideas and Reality. In order to assist in clarifying our undertaking, I have also given a general definition of what an idea is, and have stated the logical contrast between the consciously internal and the apparently external meaning of any finite idea. ”

“ Now, inasmuch as all being or existence must come under one of these forms, either its phenomena, the means by which they are produced, or the cause which, through the means, has produced the phenomena, there can be but these three departments of conscious perception: the physical or intellectual, the moral or relational, and the divine or absolute, which perceives the absolute of all being. ”

“ How in the concrete it takes place, in what special ways our consciousness is at once transcended, and included in a wider experience, it is the purpose of our whole present series of discussions to make clearer; and not until the end of the undertaking can one judge the degree of our success.
We proceed next to the characterization of certain more special principles that consciously determine us, at any moment, to acknowledge as real one rather than another fact or system of concrete facts, such as the existence of our fellows, or of Nature, or our own past lives. ”