The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 91 
but the commonest kind of leaf now seen becomes ^^mine own’^ 
and a unique leaf thereby. I may thrust my cup a thousand 
times into the ocean and each cupful of water will be an individual 
till it flows back into the immensity of the infinite. 
The ultimate criterion of validity is, we repeat, congruousness. 
We must believe that the world is an organism or we cannot begin 
to think, and so, as philosophers, we admit that individuals which 
are creatures of our experience must have an external validity; 
but how we are to construe the relations which are perceived as 
individual is a large question. It is easy to learn that the objects 
which we perceive as discrete lose this discreteness when we learn 
more about them. Their relations to us are but insignificant 
as compared to the relations they sustain to the universe at large. 
The present is but a drop when seen in relation to past and future 
■ — in fact when so compared, it is not. Individuality is depend- 
ent upon the now; but there is no now, only a forever. 
So far from the purpose creating the individual as we know it 
in experience, it destroys it by converting it into continuous 
quantity. You cannot photograph the movement of the train — 
individuality is an instantaneous photograph, while purpose is 
the train conceived in motion; it is a trajectory. But, it is 
asked, Could you not trace out the single thread in the tangled 
skein and would not the thread, though endless, be an individual? 
The illustration is faulty; for really the continuity of the thread 
is as much lateral as longitudinal, except that we fail to perceive 
the lateral connections. Strict analysis might follow the lines 
of force in the stream passing over Niagara, though each particle 
is under equal pressure at all times in all directions from its 
adjacent portions of the stream. In this sense purpose does 
individualize. It serves to express the share of one part of the 
universe in its total purpose. Here, as before, it is an analysis 
imposed from the mind instead of something inherently individual. 
Individuality thus appears as a limitation. We cannot con- 
ceive of existence without it, but Where wast thou when I 
laid the foundation of the earth?’’ ^^Knowest thou the ordin- 
ances of heaven?” Perhaps there are things not dreamed of in 
our philosophy, and it may yet be true that it hath not entered 
into the heart of man to conceive of many things the truth of 
which we have no right to den}^ Because our consciousness 
requires individualizing as a condition of its functioning, it does 
