For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.
Josiah RoyceMemory and hope constantly incite us to the extensions of the self which play so large a part in our daily life.
Josiah RoyceFor the Absolute, as we now know, all life is individual, but is individual as expressing a meaning.
Josiah RoyceBut you are alone. Yet I never tell what you are. And if your face lights up my world as no other can - well, this feeling too, when viewed as the mere psychologist has to view it, appears to be simply what all the other friends report about their friends.
Josiah RoyceThe unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest.
Josiah RoyceIf usually the "present age" is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as thehistory of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.
Josiah Royce