Principium individuationis

“ The principium individuationis, the form of the phenomenon, no longer holds him so tightly in its grasp, but the suffering which he sees in others touches him almost as closely as his own. He therefore tries to strike a balance between them, denies himself pleasures, practises renunciation, in order to mitigate the sufferings of others. ”

“ But it is just this inner nature which lies at the foundation of our own consciousness as its kernel, and hence indeed is more immediate than this itself, and, as thing in itself, free from the principium individuationis, is really the same and identical in all individuals, whether they exist together or after each other. ”

“ Now, by the vast majority of men the ideality of the principium individuationis is undoubtedly either not consciously realised at all, or else but dimly perceived under the form of allegories and mythologies. Yet, if this theory be true, if individuation be only a phaenomenon depending on the subjectivity of Time and Space, then Compassion, and its external expression, the ajaTTij that is greater than Faith and Hope, receive their final explanation. ”

“ Just as a sailor sits in a boat trusting to his frail barque in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising and falling with the howling mountainous waves; so in the midst of a world of sorrows the individual man sits quietly, supported by and trusting to the principium individuationis, or the way in which the individual knows things as phenomena. ”

“ But it appears as this blind and unconscious striving in the whole of unorganised nature, in all those original forces of which it is the work of physics and chemistry to discover and to study the laws, and each of which manifests itself to us in millions of phenomena which are exactly similar and regular, and show no trace of individual character, but are mere multiplicity through space and time, i.e., through the principium individuationis, as a picture is multiplied through the facets of a glass. ”

“ It is no doubt true that against the hypothesis of the inward immediacy of the Idea, and against the method of setting it forth in definitions and axioms, as also against absolute substance, the demand that ideas should be represented as results, and the claims of individuality and self-consciousness, assert their rights to recognition. ”

“ Why not view the Individual Whole as a whole of many related but not therefore mutually determined individuals? Why is not that at least possible? Do you say that one system of Thought, one ideal unity of universal Ideas, or Laws, is by our hypothesis to be fulfilled, and that therefore the individual fulfilment can only be such that it realises the very system of laws in this system of facts, where the Whole is contingent, but the parts are predetermined by the unity of the system? ”

“ If we finally pass to the world of the individuals below the human level, namely, to animals and to inanimate objects, we reach the realm where matter, as the true principle of individuation, becomes at last paramount. To be sure, even here, matter of itself causes no individuality, since form is everywhere the final cause, and since every individual is a composite of form and matter, in which the matter exists for the sake of the form. Only matter, as the materia signata, or matter of “determinate dimensions,” is the conditio sine qua non of individuation. ”

“ For the universal, as such, to exercise specific volition, concentrating itself upon the details of a specific case, would be for it to pass into individualisation, and to cease to be the Absolute and Infinite ”

“ The conception of individuality is, as we have shown, a Reciprocal Conception, that is, a conception which can be thought only in relation to another thinking, and which in its form is conditioned by this other thinking, and moreover by the same thinking of it. This conception is possible in every rational being only in so far as it is posited as completed through another individual. ”

“ The vast majority, therefore, of those who reject the Thomistic doctrine on individuation, support the view that what individuates any nature or substance is simply the whole reality, the total entity, of the individual. ”

“ In their stead we have craftily devised conventions, such as that becoming shall mean being, and that for our purposes relative identity may, under the proper precautions, serve as well as absolute. But we stand unalterably committed to the postulate that identity there shall be, though everywhere we have to make it and by force to fit it on the facts. ”

“ And essential to any method of analysis is the recognition of the individuality of the individual. Constitutional differences of a radical nature may be concealed beneath apparent identity of external form. ”

“ Of Individualism, or the principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, the same is true as of the sovereignty of the moment, that no reasoning can overthrow it; if the individual recognizes no end but his own life, there is no logical way of transition to another standpoint. A change of aim can take place only through such a change in the central feelings which determine the standard of the individual that a wider circle of conceptions enter into his reflections. ”

“ The law of identity, if it is to be of any efficacy and value, must be applicable to a multiplicity in which the movement of thought is developed; if it be divested of such a content, it ceases to be conceivable. ”

“ Hence the conception of a being, which, from a certain point of view, is to be independent of the representation, must, after all, be derived from the representation, since it is to be, only through it; and these men would, therefore, be more in harmony with the Science of Knowledge than they believed. ”

“ And what the new pluralistic idealism says, is that the assemblage of individual minds—intelligence being essentially personal and individual, and never merely universal and collective—is the true total Cause of all, and that every mind thus belongs to the order of First Causes; nevertheless, that part, and the most significant part, of the nature of every mind, essential to its personality and its reason, is its recognition of other minds in the very act of its own self-definition. ”

“ Suppose that it should then further appear that the category of Individuality, as already indicated, demands and secures differentiation of individuals within the unity of the whole consciousness which we have defined as the Absolute. It might well prove, that, since by hypothesis the individuals would then exist not merely as brute facts but as differentiated expressions and cases of significant Will, their significant separation as ethical beings would not, when it existed, involve their mutual isolation as brute facts. ”

“ Now, by taking note in thought of this supposed uniqueness, you can, of course, in general, define, as a sort of problem to be solved by real Beings, the ideal and abstract nature of individuality itself. But then, you do not, in that case, tell what constitutes any one individual such as he is. ”

“ Those who assure us, that they cannot abstract from their individuality in the conception of the Ego are quite correct if they speak of their Ego as they find it in common consciousness; for in ordinary consciousness, in perception, the identity, which they do not cast their eye upon, and the individuality, which they exclusively attend to, are inseparably united. But if they have not even the general faculty to abstract from actual consciousness and its facts, then the Science of Knowledge has no claims upon them. ”

“ And so my present remark hereupon is that, in following our enterprise of defining Being, we shall not be looking for mere abstract principles, but we shall be seeking for the most concrete objects in the world, namely for Individual Beings, and for the system that links them in one Individual Whole, — for Individuals viewed as the limits towards which all ideas of universal meanings tend, and for the Absolute as himself simply the highest fulfilment of the very category of Individuality, the Individual of Individuals. ”

“ The law of Identity expresses, therefore, not entire sameness, with which the cessation of all thought would be reached, but simple consistency. It affords us, thus, the means of recognizing the Untrue in that which is not what it is called, hence also the means of recognizing the True. The law of Excluded Middle contains an extension or doubling of the law of Identity, in that the identity here appears, not in the form of consistency, but in that of contradiction ”

“ Will not the newly created man, by virtue of his identical material organization, possess the mind and character, the knowledge and feelings, the past, in a word, the personal identity of the other? I have made this extreme supposition in order that no doubt may be entertained as to the shape in which I hold the doctrine that for every fact of mind there is a corresponding fact of matter, and that, given the material fact, whether produced by repeated experiences in the life history of the individual, or inherited from parents, the corresponding mental fact will be the same. ”

“ This universal life from which thought derives its perceptions, from which understanding derives its [Pg 433] enlightenment, does not only exist as a general thing, but also in the form of infinitely varied individualities. And generalization, the relation of things, their number and extension, are no more, and no less, infinite than individualization and specialization. Every tree in the forest, every grain of a pile of sand, are individual, separate, distinct. ”

“ Indeterminism signifies pure chance; what place could responsibility have in such a scheme? It would make morality uncertain. Determinism is the postulate of morality as well as of science. We may call a volition free that conforms to all the tendencies of one's nature, one that systematizes or co-ordinates our desires and acts. Such freedom lies at the basis of responsibility. Personality, liberty, finality, systematization, responsibility, define the same general fact: the co-ordination, the teleological unity of psychical elements. ”

“ But if ideas, as internal meanings opposed to external objects, cannot express the nature of the individuality of the world or of any one Being in it, whence, then, do we ever get this belief that Being is, in fact, individual? Does perhaps our external experience present to us individuals? ”

“ But the individual must be deduced from the absolute ego. To that task my philosophy will proceed in the "Natural Law." A finite being—it may be deductively shown—can only think itself as a sense-being in a sphere of sense-beings,—on one part of which (that which has no power of origination) it has causality, while with the other part (to which it attributes a subjectivity like its own) it stands in reciprocal relations. In such circumstances it is called an individual, and the conditions of individuality are called rights. ”

“ We also remark the difference between our system and every kind of speculative Individualism, but especially idealistic Individualism. Every philosophical system intends to explain consciousness; which is perfectly right. ”

“ The distinction of species and individual is only relative. The individual in the abstract does not exist; nor does society in the abstract. That which does exist is the individual associated, and society individualized. ”

“ Is it not that, in the philosophical contemplation of man, we are constrained to reject the idea of personality, of individuality, and to adopt that of a cycle of progress; to abandon all contemplation of his mere substantial form, and consider his abstract relation? All organic forms, if compared together and examined from one common point of view, are found to be constructed upon an identical scheme. ”

“ Because diversity of any kind seems, in these familiar cases, to be inconsistent with absolute identity, we draw hastily the universal conclusion, that it is inconsistent with absolute identity in any case. ”

“ The facts have not been fabricated to fit the theory, but the theory has been built up by careful observation of the facts; and since it has been shown both by theory and practice that such is the law of the relation between subjective and objective mind, we find ourselves face to face with a very momentous question. Is there any reason why the laws which hold good of the individual subjective mind should not hold good of the Universal Mind also? ”

“ I now come to the relative considerations, which are individual, because they aim at rectifying the type of the species which is defectively presented and at correcting any deviation from it existing in the person of the chooser himself, and in this way lead back to a pure presentation of the type. Hence each man loves what he himself is deficient in. The choice that is based on relative considerations—that is, has in view the constitution of the individual—is much more certain, decided, and exclusive than the choice that is made after merely absolute considerations ”

“ The logical, psychological, and metaphysical problems of universality, of law and of truth and knowledge in their more universal aspects, have otherwise received a much more detailed study than has been given to the correlative problems of individuality. In part, however, this very neglect has been meant as a sort of indirect tribute to the significance of the individual. Individuality has been so little subjected to critical scrutiny, because the existence and importance of the individual have been tacitly assumed as obvious. ”

“ But the highest law of man and of all reasonable beings, the law of perfect internal harmony, of absolute identity, in so far as this law becomes positive and material by means of special individual applications, demands that all the faculties of the individual shall be uniformly developed, all his capacities cultivated to the highest possible perfection ”

“ For to be a complete individual would be, as we have seen, to be a whole system absolutely self-contained and explicable solely by reference to internal structure. Whatever requires, for the full understanding of its systematic character, reference to existence outside itself, we have seen, must also, so long as it is considered apart from the rest of existence, be internally wanting in complete systematic harmony, and thus must fall doubly short of the ideal of individuality. ”