Universality

“ Hence the familiar idea of the universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the physiological is universal—as universal, to repeat, as it is indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the lawful or the lawless is universal. ”

“ The Ideal is consequently the reality selected out of the mass of chance particulars, in so far as the inner core in this external totality thus raised in opposition to universality is itself manifested as living individuality. ”

“ Because the substance is the absolute unity of individuality and universality of freedom, it follows that the actuality and action of each individual to keep and to take care of his own being, while it is on one hand conditioned by the pre-supposed total in whose complex alone he exists, is on the other a transition into a universal product.—The social disposition of the individuals is their sense of the substance, and of the identity of all their interests with the total ”

“ This it thereupon, in the first instance, expands to the measure of the universality of such significances, whose determination such objective real existence contains only under more restricted conditions, adding this wider range in order that it may create a form from Spirit, which is to make that universality visible to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is set forth clearly before perception. ”

“ It is inevitable that consciousness, volition, and thought should make an effort to rise above this condition and seek for the universality, unity, and satisfaction which it eventually finds in the infinite substance of Spirit and its Truth. This unity and satisfaction, to which mind is carried forward by the impulse of its own ideal activity, transmuting the raw material of its finite conditions, constitutes the first revelation of that which the world of appearances is under a more notional grasp of it. ”

“ Now if, with this fact in mind, I look back on the world which I attempted thus to describe, I find that the limitation which experience often seems to set to my postulates about the discrimination of facts, may well be founded in the deepest nature of things. The true world, the World of Values or of Appreciation, as rightly viewed by an absolute insight, would be a world of Selves, forming in the unity of their systems One Self. ”

“ For in conceiving of all that is as a single whole, as the life, the meaning, and the consciousness of a single Self, we are not limited to merely universal considerations. Human thought has long been conscious of some aspects of the unity of Being. The world of ordinary experience, of common sense, and of science, has already its provisional unity, which our own idealism must view as a genuine, if fragmentary, hint of the final unity. ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ We must, however, thirdly, conceive the universal, which supplies the content of human emotion and action as self-subsistent, intrinsically complete where it is, and constituting as such in itself a definitive and exclusive world. ”

“ The outer universal which I have been taught to will as my will, and which I have grown to find myself in, is now presented by me inwardly to myself as the universal which is my true being, and which by my will I must realize, if need be, against my will as this or that man. So this inner universal has the same content as the outer universal, for it is the outer universal in another sphere; it is the inside of the outside. There was the whole system as an objective will, including my station, and realizing itself here and now in my function. ”

“ The analysis of the external world and of man's body and mind, the discovery of natural laws, the history of the internal and external careers of the human race—this is the affair of science and philosophy; rules of conduct, individual and communal, grow up through men's association with one another in society, their basis being certain primary instincts of self-assertion and sympathy; art is the product of the universal sense of beauty. All these lines of growth stand side by side and coalesce in unitary human life. ”

“ Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power, or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world. ”

“ A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this—to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability. ”

“ For the universal as present in the particular, which itself is only the particular aspects of the universal itself is present in no particular absolutely, but rather in that very particular reaffirms once more its essential unity as universal. ”

“ All varieties of individual expression are thus subordinate to the unity of the whole. All differences amongst various ideas result from and are secondary to the very presence of one universal type of ideal meaning in all the realm of life. All appearance of isolation in finite beings, all the fragmentariness of their finitude, these are indeed but aspects of the whole truth. The One is in all, and all are in the One. All meanings, if completely developed, unite in one meaning, and this it is which the real world expresses. Every idea, if fully developed, is of universal application. ”

“ Let us now proceed to determine the second fundamental form of the manifestation of life—the individual form—by applying the same principle.
I. The contemplation of the one and universal power exists in the individuals as such. The totality of the power, or nature, is contemplated through them as the focus of knowledge; and by each of them, of course, in the same manner, for in regard to the contents of that contemplation they are not individual, but are the one and universal life itself. ”

“ In general, however, we may affirm that the universal is visibly known in immediate union with the actual objects of sense, and it is merely now and again that universal conceptions are embodied in the particular image. ”

“ This Art of ordering the whole relations of Mankind according to that Reason which has been already consciously apprehended, (for in this higher sense we shall always use the word Art when we employ it without explanatory remark) —this Art must be universally applied to all the relations of Mankind, and realized therein,— until the Race become a perfect image of its everlasting archetype in Reason;—and then shall the purpose of this Earthly Life be attained, its end become apparent, and Mankind enter upon the higher spheres of Eternity. ”

“ Absolute equality might be better, but so far as we can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; and variety in condition is the essential of what we call progress—it is, in fact, life. ”

“ It is, therefore, the power of humanising nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation. Colour, form, motion, sound, are the elements which it combines, and it stamps them into unity in the mould of a moral idea. ”

“ For it is precisely the wholeness, and not the mere fragmentariness, the presence, and not the mere absence of unity in our consciousness, the relative attainment, and not the mere postponement of our meanings, which, from this point of view, guides us towards a positive view of how the unity of Being is, in the midst of all the varieties, attained. ”

“ Our very theory insists that your internal meanings, your ideas viewed as internally significant, your selections and expressions, are typical instances of facts, and of precisely the facts of whose unity the world consists. ”

“ And my practical experience of the way in which my own most clearly defined and conscious purposes depend for their fulfilment upon connection with the interests and purposes of a wider social whole possessed of an organic unity, should help me to understand how the totality of interests and purposes determining the selective attention of different percipients can form, as we have held that it must, the harmonious and systematic unity of the absolute experience. ”

“ And every unity, every identity, every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily believing in it. ”

“ This rule runs through all human nature. The universal is the logical condition of the generic, the special, and the particular. So the love of God, the universal object of the human spirit, is the logical condition of all manly life. ”

“ It is as 'all' that the universal is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal: for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance of the individual. ”

“ Such an idea runs counter to natural philosophy. That desire which, according to certain philosophers, has alone created the world and alone preserves it, works in them as in all living beings, only with more range and diversity. ”

“ He is quite right in maintaining that universals are in particular things, for particular things could not be without universals; universals give to them their fixity, even for a day, and their unity. ”

“ Between these two extremes of a purely formal generality and this natural expression of unpolished peculiarities we have the true universal, which is throughout neither formal nor destitute of individuality, but finds its concrete realization in a twofold way from the defined content of character and the objective presence of opinions and aims. ”

“ We have still to ask how in particular we can most truly conceive the systematic unity which is formed by the whole multiplicity of apparently more or less independent subjects of experience, what degree of permanence and individuality, so far as we can judge, belongs to ourselves as members of that system, and what light is thrown by our ethical, religious, and æsthetic aspirations and ideals on the concrete character of the whole system and on our own place in it. ”

“ Unite now all created spirits and persons to this externation of the typical cause, by a principle of which we shall speak in the next article; unite their nature to his nature, their intelligence to his intelligence, their will to his will, their life to his life, their bliss to his bliss; and we shall have one universal society, partaking of the nature, the intelligence, the will, the life, the bliss, of the Theanthropos ”

“ Their new thought, which gave foundation to their moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality of all men in the presence of the universal Reason, to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they said, ought to be rational; everyone ought to try to extend the empire of reason. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ Results in philosophy must needs lead to new problems. With this definition in mind of what it is to be, how shall we next undertake to describe that more special constitution of the world which our concept of Being involves? ”

“ Ideas, then, bear three types of relations to organic life, relations socially incarnated in traditional art, religion, and philosophy. First of all they may be an expression of innate capacities, the very essence of the freedom of life. ”

“ Moreover, let the world of fact, taken in its wholeness, possess any constitution that you please. Assert that any degree of multiplicity, of mutual isolation, of temporal succession, of variety in individual existence, or of other dividing principle, variegates the universe, or keeps finite acts, meanings, and interests asunder. Then, by hypothesis, all this variety and mutual isolation is fact, and by our Fourth Conception of Being it all exists only as a consciously known fact. ”

“ On the other hand, there are those who assert that nature has general and fixed characteristics; in discovering them, we penetrate into the essence of things. Events and individuals have but a borrowed existence; under their fleeting appearances, we must seek the enduring; and thus, the greater the generalisation, the higher we rise in reality and in dignity. ”

“ The more so as the necessary foreignness of the absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of totality, which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of perfection in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is inspiring. ”