Each of those four great types of will-attitude which we insisted on--that is, of submitting, of approving the given, of approving change, and of transcending--can be carried out on these three stages, that is, as individual act, as historical act, and as over-individual act. And we may say at once that only if we submit and approve and change and transcend in an over-individual act, do we have Truth and Beauty and Morality and Conviction. If we approve, for instance, a given experience in an individual will-act, we have simply personal enjoyment and its object is simply agreeable; if we approve it in harmony with other individuals, we reach a higher attitude, yet one which cannot claim absolute value, as it is dependent on historical considerations and on the tastes and desires of a special group or a school or a nation or an age. But if we approve the given object just as it is in an over-individual will-act, then we have before us a thing of beauty, whose value is not dependent upon our personal enjoyment as individuals, but is demanded as a joy forever, by every one whom we acknowledge at all as a complete subject. In exactly the same way, we may approve a change in the world from any individual point of view: we have then to do with technical, practical achievements; or we may approve it in agreement with others: we then enter into the historical interests of our time. Or we may approve it, finally, in an over-individual way, without any reference to any special personality: then only is it valuable for all time, then only is it morally good. And if our will is transcending experience in an individual way, it can again claim no more than a subjective satisfaction furnished by any superstition or hope. But if the transcending will is over-individual, it reaches the absolute values of religion and metaphysics.
Exactly the same differences, finally, must occur when our will submits itself to experience. This submission may be, again, an individual decision for individual purposes; no absolute value belongs to it. Or it may be again a yielding to the suggestions of other individuals; or it may, finally, again be an over-individual submission, which seeks no longer a personal interest. This submission is not to the authority of others, and is without reference to any individual; we assume that every one who is to share with us our world of experience has to share this submission too. That alone is a submission to truth, and experience, considered in so far as we submit ourselves to it over-individually, constitutes our knowledge.