FACT AND IDEA. 1099 
§ Here we might arbitrarily end our survey of the human 
procedure ; the moral and esthetic processes testify more clearly 
as to its nature. We have seen man everywhere at work 
modifying—what? we cannot say—since the human procedure 
reaches down into perception and sensation. It would be too 
much presumption even to say that he works on an indifferent. 
Something is given, something is brute fact ; but does not that 
very word “brute” denote its distance from us? (Is not brute 
fact, perhaps, another of our myths!) Fact first exists for us 
when our interests lead us to set a value on something ; and when 
does this valuation first begin? None can say ; it is involved in 
the simplest act of consciousness. 
What, then, does it signify to be true to fact? To be true to 
one’s own most lasting interests. The man who is at all costs 
true to brute hard fact, as he says, what else is he doing than 
allowing his rigid honesty to dominate all other instincts ? 
We have further seen—important fact—how consciousness has 
broken up its own unity, that it might become more fully aware 
of its different interests, each by each, and use them in turn as 
means to remodel the world. We have seen also how unsatis- 
factory were the results of each isolated process ; and, in truth, 
were it not futile to remain in this divided state ? 
Surely, all has been just so much preparation to some greater 
synthesis—the complete humanisatior of the Universe, when man 
shall have attained complete knowledge of himself—how many 
assumptions are here involved ? (is man, then, something stable ?) 
§ Man’s task is to spiritualise, idealise, humanise—the terms 
are all equivalent : is not human pride here evident /—to humanise 
the world ; and the challenge proceeds from the Infinite. 
Our negative consciousness of the infinite, the void, imane 
profundum has for emotional aspect the aspiration, or more than 
aspiration ; 7, the Human, ought to be there—to fill that void ; 
or, since in the Infinite we can only live Here and Now, to feel 
that we stand in some satisfactory natural relation with Eternity, 
our most certain environment ; to feel that we are indeed here 
and now in the place where we should be : and as reverse side of 
this—for all aspiration has its reverse side—the old doubt, Ought I ? 
am I fit ? 
This existent objective universe in all its solidity—and yet this 
solidity is, perhaps, to a great extent our work—infinite by one 
at least of the cognitive forms, belongs to us—or rather we belong 
to it by a certain side of our nature ; by another we seek to 
establish ourselves above it, as we, by the other and more abstract 
cognitive form, belong to infinity. 
What is the emptiness that terrifies us in the infinite? We 
cannot be more swallowed up, more lost in boundless Time and 
