The object does not possess being, and its existence is not a participation in being, nor any other kind of relation. It is. That is the only way to define its manner of being; the object does not hide being, but neither does it reveal being.
We produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way.
Of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently, though as little of one as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
Confronted, when the weather is fine and I am in propitious emotional circumstances, with certain landscapes, certain works of art, certain human beings, I know, for the time being, that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. On other occasions, skies and destiny being inclement, I am no less immediately certain of the malignant impersonality of an uncaring universe. Every human being has had similar experiences. This being so, the sensible thing to do would be to accept the facts and frame a metaphysic to fit them. But with that talent for doing the wrong thing, that genius for perversity, so characteristically human, men have preferred, especially in recent times, to take another course. They have either denied the existence of these psychological facts; or if they have admitted them, have done so only to condemn as evil all such experiences as cannot be reconciled in a logical system with whatever particular class of experiences they have chosen, arbitrarily, to regard as "true" and morally valuable. Every man tries to pretend that he is consistently one kind of person and does his best consistently to worship one kind of God. And this despite the fact that he experiences diversity and actually feels himself in contact with a variety of divinities.
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story.
I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!
How far I was then from all that resignationism!
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.