objectification of will, so far as it is a thing-in-itself, and
therefore has no multiplicity. These grades are related to
individual things as their eternal forms or prototypes." Hence,
the world known to the senses could be nothing other than mere
phenomenal appearance.

Now it is manifestly an enormous stride in the direction of
Nature Mysticism to recognise in material objects a factor, or
element, which is akin to the highest activities of the human
mind. But, as already stated, in expounding the view known as
Ideal-Realism, the nature-mystic cannot be content to stop here.
Nor indeed was Schopenhauer consistent in stopping here. If he
had been faithful to his conception of Will as the Ground of all
existence, he could not well have denied some degree of reality
to objects in their own right. This particular tree, this particular
table, this particular cloud--what are they, each in its individual
capacity, but objectifications of will?--therefore real! Each
individual object is _unique_, and fills a place of its own in the
totality of objects--each is related to all the rest in particular and
defined manners and degrees--each exhibits a special kind of
behaviour in a special environment. Why, then, deny to each
individual thing its own grade and degree of reality?

Thus there is in each object an immanent idea; but this is fused
with the sensuous form, and presents itself to conscious human
thought as an objective manifestation of the Real. There is an
organic interpenetration of the sensuous and the spiritual; and it
is by virtue of this interpenetration that the human reason can go
out into the external world and find itself there. As Emerson
well puts it--"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a