It is now high time to ask why the internal meaning seeks this external
meaning. Why does it seek an object? Why does it want to cross the
chasm? In other words, what is the significance of the demand for the
particular judgment? In the introduction we have been told, as a matter
of description, that the internal meanings do seek the external meaning,
but why do they? We have also been told that universal judgments
"develop and enrich the realm of internal meaning." Why, then, should
there be a demand for the external meaning, for a further object? The
answer is:
We have our internal meanings. We develop them in inner
experience. There they get presented as something of universal
value, _but always in fragments_. They, therefore, so far
dissatisfy. We conceive of the Other wherein these meanings shall
get some sort of final fulfilment.[189]
It is, then, the incomplete and fragmentary character of the internal
meaning that demands the particular judgment. The particular judgment is
to further complete and determine the incomplete and indeterminate
internal meaning. And yet no sooner is this particular judgment made
than we are told that "it is a form at once positive, and very
unsatisfactorily indeterminate." Again:[190]
The judgments of experience, the particular judgments, express a
positive but still imperfect determination of internal meaning
through external experience. The limit or goal of this process
would be an individual judgment wherein the will expressed its own
final determination.[191]
Apparently, then, the particular judgment to which the internal meaning
appeals for completion and determination only succeeds in increasing the
fragmentary and indeterminate character.
This brings us to another "previous question." Just what are we to
understand by this "fragmentary" and "indeterminate" character of the
internal meaning? In what sense, with reference to what, is it
incomplete and fragmentary? Later we shall be told that it is with
reference to "its own final and completely individual expression." This
is to be reached in the individual judgment. And if we ask what is meant
by this final, complete, and individual expression--which, by the way,
no human being can experience--we read, wondering all the while how it
can be known, that it is simply "the expression that seeks no other,"
that "is satisfied," that "is conclusive of the search for
perfection."[192] Waiving for the present questions concerning the basis
of this satisfaction and perfection, all this leaves unanswered our
query concerning the other end of the matter, viz., the meaning and
criterion of the fragmentary and indeterminate character of these
internal meanings.
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