Universals

“ We make representations of a thing to ourselves, and say “it is blue;” this is a universal. The question now is whether such universals are something real in and for themselves, apart from the thinking subject, and independent of the individual existing thing, so that they exist in the individual things independently of the individuality of the thing and of each other; or whether the universal is only nominal, only in the subjective representation, a thing of thought. ”

“ But from the fact that universals are in particular beings, is it necessary to conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside there, and that they{77} have no other reality than that of the objects to which they are applied? ”

“ Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the point of view of the world-condition this self-revelation of particular individuals appears as the passing of its universality into the distinct embodiments of living individuality, an aggregate over which universal forces still assert the mastery. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, if we will annex a meaning to our words, and speak only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge that an idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These two aims, the one abstract and universal, the other concrete and individual, can always be combined, just as in every human countenance are combined a type, which is universal, and a character, which is individual. ”

“ We cannot directly by sense perceive the Universal, though sense is the principium of the Universal. By multiplied observation of sensible particulars, we can hunt out and elicit the Universal, enunciate it clearly and separately, and make it serve for demonstration.87 The Universal is precious, because it reveals the Cause or διότι, and is therefore more precious, not merely than sensible observation, but also than intellectual conception of the ὅτι only, where the Cause or διότι lies apart, and is derived from a higher genus. ”

“ What is in the highest degree remarkable and commendable in these little essays, all of which being composed in one spirit, form together a perfect whole, is the very intimate knowledge they display of the whole civil state of man. We see a system resting upon the past, and still in vigorous existence. ”

“ The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their rise. ”

“ And the task set to the freedom of individual men, and to mankind as a whole, namely, to work out their own nature through their own labour and exertion, and to ascend to perfection—this deepest meaning of all individual and collective existence—would have its exact prelude and preparation in the general nature and evolution of all living creatures. ”

“ Upon the basis of the general theory of human knowledge thus broadly sketched, we shall next pass to a study of the questions offered to our scrutiny by Nature, when viewed in its relation to Man. Here our main purpose shall be to apply our general idealistic doctrine, concerning what is meant by Reality in general, to the problem as to the sense in which Nature and Man are real. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The maxims derived from this study may be called maxims of abstract or absolute right; they are not absolutely universal, ‘eternal and immutable,’ but they are independent of the individual, and practically universal for the present condition of the human species. ”

“ Yes, it would be to know what the whole individual Being called the World is; and who the Individual of Individuals, namely the Absolute, or God himself, is. Just such final determinateness, just such precision, definiteness, finality of meaning, constitutes that limit of your own internal meaning which our theory will hereafter seek to characterize. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have given the history of the different forms which they successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality and their necessity are manifest. ”

“ Branches of science, philosophy or art have been selected and treated as though possessed of great and independent importance. The process of individuality has been the cause; but true evolution, whether in man or matter, consists in viewing whatever is presented for consideration as being related to all the rest, and as a part of the whole. ”

“ In the first place we have the actual condition of the world generally, which is assumed as involved in individual action and its specific character. Secondly, we have the particularity of condition, the determination of which introduces difference and tension within the substantive unity, which is the motive-spring of the action, in other words the situation. ”

“ Now what we have characterized as the difference and opposition in which the world-condition, hitherto harmonious with the individuals conditioned by it, is involved, if we consider it from the point of view of universal condition, is the manifestation of the essential content which it carries in itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the present, the Third Conception of Being, has amongst all the four conceptions the unique character that it alone, so far as it has more fully come to understand itself, consciously attempts to define the Real as explicitly and only the Universal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Few, however, effectively fix their thought on that universality which alone is such, which alone can be such, which has nothing outside of itself, not even the particular, and which is ideal on condition that the idea to which it belongs be reality itself in all its determinateness. ”

“ How is the conversion of common sense into philosophy to be brought about? We answer, by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That they may be one!—If, like an individual soul, the state has attained its normal differentiation of parts, as with that also its vitality and effectiveness will be proportionate to the unity of those parts in their various single operations. The productive, the executive, the contemplative orders, respectively, like their psychological analogues, the senses, the will, and the intelligence, will be susceptible each of its own proper virtue or excellence, temperance, bravery, spiritual illumination. ”

“ 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. ”