CHAPTER II. The Systematic Unity of Reality

THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF REALITY

§ 1. The problem whether Reality is ultimately One or Many is inevitably suggested to us by the diverse aspects of our own direct experience of the world. The different theories may be classed, according to their solution of this problem, as Monistic, Pluralistic, and Monadistic. § 2. Pluralism starts from the presumed fact of the mutual independence of human selves, and teaches that this independence of each other belongs to all real beings. But (a) the independence with which experience presents us is never complete, nor the unity of the “selves” perfect. (b) The theory is inconsistent with the systematic character of all reality as presupposed in both knowledge and action. § 3. Monadism again makes the systematic unity of the real either an illusion or an inexplicable accident. § 4. Reality, because systematic, must be the expression of a single principle in and through a multiplicity. The unity and multiplicity must both be real, and each must necessarily involve the other. § 5. If both are to be equally real, the whole system must be a single experience, and its constituents must also be experiences. A perfect systematic whole can be neither an aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an organism. The whole must exist for the parts, and they for it. § 6. This may also be expressed by saying that Reality is a subject which is the unity of subordinate subjects, or an individual of which the constituents are lesser individuals. § 7. The nearest familiar analogue to such a systematic whole would be the relation between our whole “self” and the partial mental systems or lesser “selves.” § 8. The nearest historic parallel to this view is to be found in Spinoza’s theory of the relation of the human mind to the “infinite intellect of God.”

§ 1. The problem of the One and the Many is as old as Philosophy itself, and inevitably arises from the earliest and simplest attempts to think in a consistent way about the nature of the world in which we play our part. On the one hand, our experience, in the piecemeal shape in which it first appears as we begin to reflect on it, seems to exhibit an indefinite plurality of more or less independent things, each pursuing its own course and behaving in its own way, and connected at best with only a few of the other members of our environment. There is, for instance, no obvious connection between one man’s career and those of most of his contemporaries, to say nothing of the innumerable host of his predecessors and successors in the race of life. And, similarly, the behaviour of one inanimate thing seems at first sight to be unaffected by that of most of the other things around it. The world seems to us at times to be made up of an indefinite multiplicity of beings who merely happen to be actors on the same stage, but have, in the majority of cases, no influence upon each other’s parts.

Yet, on the other hand, there are equally strong primâ facie reasons for regarding the world as a single unity. Every addition to our theoretical insight into the structure of things adds to our recognition of the intimate connection between things and processes which previously seemed merely disconnected. Physical science, as it grows, learns more and more to look upon nature as a realm of interconnected events where no one fact is ultimately entirely independent of any other fact; political experience and social science alike reveal the intimate interdependence of human lives and purposes. And, over and above the ascertained empirical facts which point to the ultimate unity of the world, there is another potent influence which we might call the “instinctive” basis for the belief in unity. However discontinuous my environment may appear, it is never a mere disconnected multiplicity. The very circumstance that it is throughout my environment, and thus relative to the ends by which my attention is determined, gives it to a certain degree the character of a coherent system. At the lowest level of philosophic reflection, we cannot permanently fail to apprehend our world as in principle one, precisely because it is our world, and we ourselves are all in some degree beings of steady systematic purpose, not mere bundles of disconnected and conflicting impulses. While yet again, it is the very limitation of our own interests and our lack of clear insight into their full import which leads us at other times to find apparent disconnected multiplicity and lack of cohesion in our world.

The problem of Philosophy in dealing with these rival aspects of the world of experience then becomes that of deciding whether either of them can be adopted as the truth in isolation from the other. Or if neither is the whole truth, we must ask ourselves in what way the world can be at once One and Many, how the characters of systematic unity and of indefinite variety can be consistently thought of as belonging to the same Reality. Is Reality, we have to ask, One or is it Many, and if it is both, how are the unity and multiplicity connected?

The answers which different philosophical systems have given to this question may conveniently be classified under three general denominations. There are (1) the Monistic views, which lay the principal stress upon the unity of the real, and tend to treat the aspect of plurality and variety as illusory, or at least as of secondary importance; (2) the various forms of Pluralism, according to which the variety and multiplicity of real beings is the primary fact, and their systematic unity either an illusion, or at any rate a subordinate aspect of their nature; (3) Monadism, which aims at harmonising the positions of the monist and pluralist, by treating the world as a multiplicity of really independent things or “monads,” which are somehow combined from without into a system. From this last point of view the plurality and the systematic unity are alike real and alike important for the understanding of the world, but are of different origin, the plurality being inherent in the things themselves, the unity external to them and coming from a foreign source. Within each of the three main types of theory there is, of course, room for the greatest divergence of view as to the special nature of the real. A monistic system may be purely materialistic, like that of Parmenides, who taught that the world is a single homogeneous solid sphere, or idealistic like that, e.g., of Schopenhauer; or again, it may treat mind and “matter” as “aspects” of a common reality. A pluralist or monadist, again, may conceive of each of his independent real things as a physical atom, as a soul of any degree of organisation, or even, in the fashion of some contemporary thought, as a person.

With regard to the relation between this classification of philosophical theories and that of the last chapter, I may just observe that, while a monist is not necessarily an idealist, a consistent pluralist or monadist ought logically to be a realist. For the mutual independence of the various real things cannot exist without involving in itself their independence of experience. If A and B are two completely independent things, then the existence and character of A must be independent of presence to the experience of B, and similarly A must be equally independent of presence to the experience of C, or of anything in the world but itself. And we have already seen that there is always more in the nature of any finite percipient than can be present to his own experience. Thus ultimately the existence and qualities of A must be independent of all experience, including A’s own. For this reason I cannot but think that the various attempts to combine Pluralism with Idealism by maintaining that the universe consists of a number of independent “souls” or “persons,” rest on confusion of thought. These doctrines appear to be essentially realist in their spirit.

§ 2. We may conveniently attempt to construct our own theory of the One and the Many by first excluding views which appear mistaken in principle, and thus gradually narrowing the issues. Among these mistaken views I am forced to reckon all forms of consistent and thorough-going Pluralism. Pluralism, so far at least as I am able to see, begins by misapprehending the facts upon which it professes to base itself, and ends by giving an interpretation of them which is essentially irrational. The fundamental fact from which Pluralism starts as an ultimate datum of all experiences is the familiar one that there are other men in the world besides myself. My world is not simply a theatre for the execution of my own aims and the satisfaction of my own wants. There are interests in it which are not mine, and to which I must adapt myself if I mean to achieve my own purposes. The world thus contains minds other than my own, and what makes them other is that the interests and purposes by which their lives are determined are, like my own, unique and incommunicable. Now, Pluralism bids us take the facts, as thus stated, as the model for our conception of the universe. The pattern upon which the pluralist views of Reality are constructed is that of a community consisting of a great number of selves or persons, each with its own unique interests, and each therefore at once internally simple and indivisible and exclusive of all the rest. In whatever special form the pluralist thinks of his ultimate realities, whether as physically indivisible particles, as mathematical points, or as sentient beings, it is always from the facts of human social life conceived in this ultra-individualist way that he in the last resort derives his concept of their simplicity and mutual repulsion.

But (a) the facts themselves are not correctly stated. The human experiences upon which the pluralist relies for his conclusion present at once too much and too little unity for the purposes of his theory. On the one hand, the selves or persons composing society are not themselves simple, undifferentiated unities. Just as your interests and mine may often collide, so within what the pluralist assumes as the indivisible unit of my own personality there may be a similar collision. What I call my “own interests” or my own “apperceptive systems” or “trains of thought” may exhibit the same kind of incompatibility and the same sort of conflict for superiority as is found where your ideas and mine clash. Thus Ethics and Psychology are led to distinguish between my “true” self and the false selves by which it may on occasion be dominated, between my “higher” self and the “lower” selves which, in morality, have to be repressed by the higher, my “permanent” self, and the temporary interests by which it is often overpowered, to say nothing of “subliminal” consciousness and “dual” or “alternating personality.” The “self” is so far from being a mere unit, that the variety and, what is more, the incompatibility of its contents is a matter of everyday experience.

Pluralism may, of course, and often does, verbally admit this. The units of the pluralist, we are often told, are not mere units devoid of variety, but wholes which are the union of differences. But to concede this is to cut away the ground from under the pluralist’s feet. If the variety and the mutual struggle between the elements of the self are not enough to destroy its unity, by parity of reasoning the multiplicity of selves in the world and their mutual repulsions are not enough to prove that the whole of Reality is not, in spite of its multiplicity of detail, a unity more complete than any of the partial unities to be met with in our experience. In fact, the pluralist has to meet the following dilemma. Either his units are mere units without internal variety, and then it is easy to show that they are the merest nothings, or they have internal variety of their own, and therefore simply repeat within themselves the problem they are supposed to solve.

On the other hand, just as the facts of experience show us internal struggle and repulsion within the supposed units, so they also exhibit other relations than that of mutual exclusion between the different units. Human personal interests, for instance, are never merely mutually exclusive. No society consists of individuals whose purposes and interests are simply reciprocally repellent. My aims and purposes may never completely coincide with those of other members of the same community, yet they have no meaning and could get no realisation but for the fact that they are, partially at any rate, comprised in the wider whole of social interests and purposes which makes up the life of the social organisations to which I belong. As the very etymology of such words as “society” and “community” shows—to say nothing of the results of psychological inquiry into the process of learning by imitation—the conception of human selves as independent units which somehow happen to stand in merely accidental or external relations is in flagrant conflict with the most fundamental facts of our social experience. It is only by the systematic suppression of fact that personal and social life can be made to support the hypothesis of Pluralism.

(b) Again, even if we could accept the pluralist account of the facts, the theory which Pluralism puts forward to account for them is in the end unintelligible. What Pluralism does, consciously or unconsciously, is to separate the unity of the world from its multiplicity. The multiplicity is supposed to be grounded in the ultimate nature of the real things themselves, their unity as a system, if they really are a system, to be imposed upon them from without. We are, in fact, left to choose between two alternatives. Either the world is not a systematic whole at all, but a mere chaos of purely independent atoms, in which case the whole of our thought, with its indispensable presupposition of the systematic unity of the object of knowledge, is an illusion, or else the world really is a system, but a system, so to say, by accident. The things of which the system is composed are real as detached separate units, but by a fortunate chance they happen all to possess some common relation to an external tertium quid (for instance, to God), by which they are combined into a system and thus become knowable as a connected whole.

Now we cannot, if we are intellectually conscientious, rest finally content with a statement of this kind, which leaves the plurality and the systematic unity of the real world side by side as two independent unconnected facts. If the contents of the world really form a system at all, in any way whatever, that is itself one fact among others which a sound metaphysical theory must recognise, and of which it must offer some intelligible account. E.g., suppose you say, with some recent pluralists, that the world consists of a number of independent persons or spirits, who nevertheless form a connected system or “moral kingdom,” in virtue of the fact that they all find their moral ideal in God, the most perfect among them. You have now not one ultimate fact before you, the multiplicity of independent selves, but two, this multiplicity and the relation of each element in it to God. Unless you are going to treat this second fact as an “ultimate inexplicability,” i.e. a fortunate accident, you are now bound to treat the systematic relation of the selves to God and through God to each other as no less a part of their ultimate nature than their distinction from each other. Their separateness and independence is thus no longer for you the ultimate truth; they are just as truly one by your account as they are many. Their union in a system is no longer an external relation foreign to their own nature, but the deepest truth about that nature itself.

I will repeat the essence of this argument in another form. Any genuine Pluralism must be resolute enough to dismiss the idea of a systematic interconnection between its independent realities as an illusion of the human mind. But in doing so it must, to be consistent, deny the possibility of their mutual knowledge of each other’s states. Each real thing must be a little world to itself, shut up within the closed circle of its own internal content. And thus, supposing Pluralism to be true, and supposing myself to be one of the real things of the pluralist scheme, I should have no means of knowing it to be true. Pluralism is unable to stand the question propounded by Mr. Bradley as the test of a philosophical doctrine, “Is the truth of this theory consistent with the fact that I know it to be true?”

The persistent popularity of Pluralism in many quarters is in fact due to the intrusion into Metaphysics of other than genuinely philosophical interests. It is maintained, not on its philosophical merits as a consistent theory, but because it is believed by its adherents to safeguard certain interests of morality and religion. It gives us, we are told, a “real God” and “real moral freedom.” But, apart from the question whether these claims are justified by candid examination of the doctrine, we must protest against their being allowed any place at all in a metaphysical discussion. Metaphysics is, from first to last, a purely speculative activity; its one concern is to think logically about the constitution of Reality, and the only interests it has a right to consider are those of consistent logical thought. If consistent logical thought about ethical and religious problems involves the recognition of a “real God” and “real freedom,” and if these again are only possible on the pluralistic theory, then the mere process of consistent thought is bound in the end to lead us to a pluralistic result, and it is superfluous to appeal to extra-logical interests in the matter. But if those who defend Pluralism on the ground that it gives us a “real God” and “real freedom” mean that, apart from the question of their intellectual justification, these beliefs ought to be maintained in Metaphysics because certain persons will be less moral or less happy without them, we must answer that Metaphysics has nothing to do with making us moral or happy. It is no proof of the truth of a belief that it increases my personal virtue or happiness, nor of its falsity that it diminishes them. And if the study of Metaphysics could be shown to make certain persons less virtuous or less happy, Metaphysics would still be in no worse case than Ethics or Medicine. There may be persons for whom it is undesirable, on grounds of happiness or morality, to devote themselves to the pursuit of speculative truth, but it is none the less a lapse from intellectual single-mindedness for the man who has elected to play the game of speculation to violate its rules by indulging in constant appeals to speculatively irrelevant issues.

§ 3. The Monadism of Leibnitz was an attempt to effect a compromise between Pluralism and Monism. According to this view, the universe consists of an infinite plurality of fundamentally separate beings. These beings are at once simple and indivisible, and at the same time each of them contains an infinite variety of internal states. Being mutually independent, the monads have no genuine relations with each other; each is conscious only of the succession of its own states. As Leibnitz expressed it in a metaphor which has become classic, the monad has no windows. So far the system is pure Pluralism. But at the same time the unity of the whole system of monads, though “ideal” and not “real,” is to be genuine. They form a system “ideally,”—i.e. for the understanding of an omniscient spectator,—inasmuch as the internal states of each monad are adjusted to those of all the rest, or, as Leibnitz also puts it, inasmuch as each monad “represents” the same systematic structure from its own special point of view. Hence, though no monad really perceives or acts upon any other, every monad behaves as it would if there were mutual perception and interaction between all. When we ask after the source of this “pre-established harmony,” we meet with a double answer. On the one hand, its actual existence as a fact is due to the creative will of God. On the other, it was precisely the complete adjustment of the internal states of its various monads which determined God to will the existence of the actual world-order in preference to that of any other of the indefinitely numerous logically possible arrangements which He foresaw and might have chosen. This relation between God and the world-order is further complicated by the fact that on occasion Leibnitz treats God as simply one, though the supreme one, among the monads.

Now a system of this kind seems to exhibit all the defects of Pluralism with certain superadded difficulties of its own. We might reasonably object that experience presents us with no example of a genuine system in which all the elements are actually independent. The nearest approach to such a case seems to be found in the classes of an “artificial classification,” in which things standing in no relation of interaction among themselves are put together by us because it is convenient for some extraneous purpose of our own to comprehend them under a single point of view. But, apart from the impossibility of constructing a classification which shall be more than relatively artificial, such a mere aggregate or collection is not a real system. In a true system, as distinct from a mere collection, the principle of unity has always some sort of significance for the members of the system themselves. It represents, at the least, the way in which the members interact with each other. (Thus, to take an extreme case, the serial arrangement of cutting implements in a museum, from the flaked stone of the Palæolithic age to the latest specimen of Sheffield cutlery, is more than a merely “artificial” classification, precisely because it is more than a mere grouping of separate objects according to their likeness and unlikeness; it represents the stages of a continuous historical evolution.) Now, it is essential to Monadism that the monads, because ultimately independent, shall only seem to interact. They appear to form a single world with a history in which each distinct state of each monad is a stage. But really, while the successive states of the individual monad are, what they seem to be, a connected process of development, the various processes do not make up a single-world history at all. They only seem to do so by an inevitable illusion. Hence the unity of the whole system must after all be not only ideal, but, strictly speaking, imaginary.

Similar difficulties arise from the ambiguous position accorded to God in the scheme. If the “pre-established harmony” between the states of the individual monads were simply due to a creative fiat of God, we should be thrown back upon mere arbitrary chance as the reason, if it can be called a reason, why existence is not a chaos. But if God’s choice to create this scheme of things rather than another was due to the superior attraction which a world with at least the appearance of connected system had for the divine intellect, then it is ultimately in the constitution of the divine mind that we have to find the reason why the alternative possibilities before creation were what they were; and again, why just this one was preferred to all the rest. And thus the monads cease to be any longer ultimate and independent, and the nature of God becomes the single determinate ground of all reality.

It is scarcely necessary to add that Monadism suffers besides from all the defects which we found in Pluralism. If the monad be made into a mere unit without internal variety, it ceases to be a thing with a definite nature at all; and if its unity is compatible with the variety of its states, there seems to be no special reason why the wealth of varied existence in the world should lead us to assume a plurality of independent principles as its ground. It has been pointed out that Leibnitz was apparently determined in favour of Monadism against Monism by the assumption that individual human selves are internally simple units and externally entirely exclusive of each other, an assumption we have already seen reason to reject.

§ 4. We seem driven, then, to reject the view that the ordered world of experience can be the expression of a plurality of ultimately distinct and heterogeneous principles. Because the world as known, or again as providing for the coherent realisation of practical purposes, is an orderly system, and on any other supposition coherent knowledge and consistent action are alike impossible, the world must for Metaphysics be regarded as the complete embodiment and expression of a single ultimate principle. We are thus committed to some form of theory of the type generally known as Monism. The name Monism we may perhaps be allowed to avoid, as it has gathered about it associations which are apt to mislead. Among the doctrines most frequently spoken of as monistic are some which treat the apparent variety and multiplicity of existence as purely illusory. Again, the name has of late been widely used as the self-chosen designation of the doctrine according to which “mind” and “matter” are alike “aspects” or “manifestations” of a third principle which is neither material nor mental. It should already be clear that the doctrine indicated by our previous discussions differs widely from both these types of Monism. We have insisted that the source of fallacy in Pluralism and Monadism was one-sided emphasis upon one term in the antithesis of the Many and the One to neglect of the other, and we have no intention of repeating the mistake for ourselves. Also, we have already come to the conclusion that Reality, whatever its detailed structure, is mental in its general character; we can have nothing therefore to do with a “neutral” or “agnostic” Monism. Our detailed theory of the relation between the unity of the world and its multiplicity must do equal justice to both, and it must be consistent with our previous recognition of the experiential nature of the real.

We may perhaps work out our theory in detail as follows. The world for knowledge must, we have seen, be an orderly whole or system. To be a system at all, it must be the development or expression in detail of a single principle. Therefore it must most certainly be one; it cannot be a medley of independent elements which somehow luckily happen to form a coherent collection. But again, because it is a system, it cannot be a mere unit; it must be the expression of a single principle in and through a multiplicity of terms or constituents. Not only must it be both one and many, but it must be many precisely because it is truly one, and one because it is truly many. Further, we must add that because the world-system is a perfectly systematic whole, not only is multiplicity in general necessary to its unity, but each particular element in the multiplicity is necessitated or logically implied by the character of the unity. In a complete system no single member can be missing or be other than it is without the fundamental law of construction of the whole being changed. Also, we may incidentally observe that in a complete system the number of distinct terms may be actually endless, while the law of construction is perfectly determinate. To think of the world as a single systematic unity, then, means to think of it as the manifestation in a possibly infinite multiplicity of detail of one perfectly determinate principle. And, of course, what we have called the individual elements of the multiplicity may on inspection themselves turn out to be systems of infinite complexity determined by a law of construction derived in a determinate way from that of the complete system, and so on literally ad infinitum. Thus the unity of ultimate principle we demand for Reality in no way excludes its possession of a wealth of detail infinitely infinite.

§ 5. We may take a further most important step forward. In the all-embracing systematic whole the unity and the multiplicity must be equally real and each must be real through the other. How is this possible? Only on condition that the whole system forms a single experience, and that the constituent factors again are single experiences. This will perhaps be best brought out by examining some typical case of the kind of unity in multiplicity which is insufficient for our purpose. (a) The unity of the world cannot be that of a mere collection or aggregate. In a mere aggregate the elements are real independently of their relation to one another as elements in this aggregate. So long as we keep strictly to the case of what is no more than an aggregate, the quality of the elements is entirely unaffected by their inclusion in the aggregate. The aggregate has no unitary character of its own which reveals itself in and through the behaviour of its elements. Its unity consists in nothing more than the fact that we have found it convenient to think of its elements together. An aggregate of ten bricks, for instance, has no character as a whole beyond the mere fact of being thought of in one mental act. It has not even a collective weight until you put your ten bricks into the same cart, or on the same scale-pan, and then they have ceased to be a mere aggregate in the very moment of exerting pressure upon the same surface, and have become a true material system.

(b) Nor can the world of Reality be satisfactorily thought of as a mere whole of parts. A whole of parts approaches indeed more nearly to the ideal of a true systematic unity than a mere aggregate, inasmuch as it has a determinate single character as a whole, which manifests itself in the structure of the various parts. For this reason a geometrical figure or a machine is much more than a mere aggregate; it has a character as a whole, and this character is differently expressed by the construction of the different parts. The figure or machine is thus a true unity of differences. Yet in this case we cannot really say that the unity and the variety are equally real. For the whole cannot exist without the parts, whereas the parts may continue to exist, though not, of course, as parts of this whole, without the whole. The whole is constituted by the successive generation or construction of the parts, and thus may be said to be formed out of pre-existing parts, and the parts again may survive the destruction of the whole. There is not that equal reality and complete mutual implication of the two sides which we have deemed necessary to a genuine systematic unity.

(c) An organism is in some respects a truer systematic unity than a mere whole of parts. It has a systematic character of its own which manifests itself in and through the difference of its various members. And here, the whole is not historically subsequent to and generated by the members. It is not their resultant but their living unity. The members only come into being along with the whole, and in the course of its growth as a whole; and though they may, in a sense, continue to exist after severance from the whole, it is not with the same kind of existence which belonged to them as members. But an organism, like a machine, fails to exhibit the perfect systematic unity of the One and the Many of which we are in quest. In the machine the aspect of multiplicity was relatively more real than that of unity; in the fully evolved organism the unity seems more completely real than the multiplicity. For the unity is a conscious one; in some degree at least it exists for itself, and its members again for it. Whereas it must be very doubtful whether the member exists for itself, and still more doubtful whether the whole exists in any sense for the members. And though the member cannot retain its peculiar form of existence except as a member in the whole, yet in even the highest organism the unity is so far relatively independent that it is unaffected by the removal of some of the members.

Not every member is of vital significance for the life of the whole. But in a complete systematic unity, as we saw, the unity and the multiplicity of the system must be equally real and equally interdependent. This can only be the case if the whole is for its members as well as the members for the whole. And that this may be so, just as the all-embracing whole of reality must, as we have learned, be an experience, so each of its members must be itself an experience. And because the members form a single system, just as there can be nothing in the experience of any member which is not contained in the experience which is the whole, so, on the other side, there can be nothing in the whole which does not in some way affect the experience of every member. Only in this way can we conceive of a systematic Reality in which the unity and the multiplicity of the system are alike real and equally real. Such a view is, strictly speaking, hardly to be called either Pluralism or Monism. It is not Pluralism, for it does not make the unity of the system an illusion or an inexplicable accident; it is not Monism, in the current sense of the word, because it does not make the multiplicity deceptive. If a name is wanted, we might perhaps agree to call it Systematic Idealism.

§ 6. We may say, then, that Reality is a systematic Experience of which the components are likewise experiences. It would be much the same thing if we called it a subject which is the unity of subordinate subjects. It is tempting again, at first sight, to say it is a self of selves. But the extreme ambiguity of the term “self” as used in contemporary Psychology makes it desirable to avoid an expression which is capable of the gravest misuse. It is scarcely possible to say with any precision what we mean by one “self,” whereas it is possible in a general way to say what we mean by one experience. An experience may be called one and the same in so far as it is the systematised expression of a single coherent purpose or interest, in so far, in fact, as it has a teleological unity. In practice it may be impossible to say precisely when this condition is fulfilled, but the slightest acquaintance with the psychological facts of the struggle between competing systems of ideas in normal, and of “dual” and “multiple” personality in abnormal, mental life is sufficient to show that the limits thus set by our definition to the single experience do not coincide with those ascribed to my “self” or “personality” in any of the shifting senses of the terms. The limits within which experience remains one experience according to our definition are, as the facts just alluded to show, often narrower, but again, the definition suggests that they may also be wider, than any which would currently be given to the “self.”

Moreover, what we have already said as to the possibility of each “member” of our system being itself a system of lesser systems, forbids us to identify our view with any doctrine which asserts merely atomic and simple “selves” as the elements of Reality.

Another way of expressing the same thought would be to say that Reality is an Individual of which the elements are lesser individuals. The advantage of this form of expression is that it emphasises the fundamentally teleological character of the unity of the real, and also of each and all of its constituents. A thing, as we have already seen, is individual just so far as it is unique, and only that which is the embodiment of a single purpose or interest can be unique. A single whole of experience, owing its unity as a whole precisely to the completeness and harmony with which it expresses a single purpose or interest, is necessarily an individual. The all-embracing experience which constitutes Reality is thus in its inmost nature a complete individual. And the lesser experiences which form the elements or material content of Reality are each, just so far as each is truly one experience, individual in the same sense as the whole. We may thus call Reality a complete or perfect individual of minor or incomplete individuals.

What the fundamental distinction between the supreme individual whole and the lesser individuals must be taken to consist in we shall discuss in our next chapter. Meanwhile we may note two points:—(1) The important thing about an individual is not its mere numerical unity, but its qualitative uniqueness. Any experience which we can pronounce to be individual must be called so, not merely because it is numerically one and not many, but because it is the consistent and harmonious embodiment of a coherent purpose. Numerically considered, every such individual is necessarily many as well as one, precisely because it is a system. This applies especially to the supreme or absolute individual, the complete system of experience. It is individual primarily not because it is numerically one, but because it is the complete expression of a coherent idea or purpose. It has been the defect of too many monistic theories to overlook this, and to lay the main stress on the numerical oneness of the real.

(2) An experience individual in the sense already explained is what we mean by a “spirit.” Spirit cannot be properly defined by contradistinction from a supposed non-spiritual reality, such as “matter,” for such a definition would only amount to the assertion that spirit is what is not other than spirit; and would tell us nothing of the term to be defined. Nor, again, is spirit properly defined as a series of states or modifications of the abstraction “consciousness.” The positive characteristic by which spiritual existence may be recognised is that in it the what and the that are combined in the unity of immediate feeling. And immediate feeling, as we have seen, is essentially teleological. Where you have a connected system of factors which can only be understood as a whole by reference to an explicit or implicit end, which constitutes their unity, you have spirit, and where you have spirit you have such a system. So that to call reality an individual of individuals is the same thing as to say that it is a spiritual system of which the elements, constituents, or terms, are in their turn spiritual systems. Our doctrine may thus be seen to be fairly entitled to the name Idealism, which current usage has appropriated to the view that all existence is ultimately mental.

§ 7. Such a relation as we have asserted between the individual whole of Reality and the elements or terms within the whole is necessarily unique, and cannot be adequately illustrated from any less perfect type of systematic unity recognised by everyday or by scientific thought. In particular, we must carefully avoid the mistake of conceiving the relation of the elements to the totality in a mechanical way as that of “parts” to a “whole of parts”; or, again, in a merely biological way, as that of “members” to an organism. All such analogies lose sight of the intimate character of a union in which the elements and the totality exist not merely in and through, but also for each other.

The individual experiences which compose the supreme experience have a genuine, if an imperfect and partial, individuality of their own. They are not in it merely “ideally” or implicitly, as the points on a curve may be said to be in the periphery. And the whole, again, is a real individual, not a mere aggregate in which the parts are real but their unity merely imaginary. We may, if we like, say that it is made up of experiences or minds, but we must not say that it is a collection of minds. For a mere collection, as we have seen, in so far as it is a collection and nothing more, cannot be said to have any genuine individuality, precisely because it has no teleological unity of structure beyond that which we arbitrarily, and with reference to ends lying outside its own nature, impose upon it in the very act of counting its members, i.e. arranging them in serial order. Whether we could properly speak of the absolute whole as a society of minds is a further and a more difficult question. A society is much more than a mere collection: it has a purposive unity of structure which exists not merely for the sociological observer from without, but for its own members as active in assigning to each of them his own special place in relation to all the rest. How far society can be said to have such a unity for itself is a question which we cannot answer until we have dealt more fully with the problem of the relation between selfhood and individuality. And until we have answered it, we must defer the decision as to whether the systematic individuality of the Absolute would be adequately recognised if we thought of it as a society. (See infra, Bk. IV. chap. 3.)

If we are to look at this stage for some analogue within our partial experience for the kind of unity of individuals in a single supreme individual which we have demanded for the system of Reality, we shall probably do best to turn to what is after all the most familiar thing in the world,—our own personal experience. If we consider the nature of any coherent purpose or “mental system,” we shall find that, as the coherent embodiment of a purpose, it possesses a degree of individuality of its own. In proportion to the comprehensiveness, and again to the inner harmony or systematic structure of the interest it embodies, it constitutes a genuine self-existing individual whole of the kind which psychologists recognise as a “self.” And again, in so far as my life exhibits determinate character, so far do these systematic purposes or minor “selves” form a larger system, also individual, which may be called my “total self.” And both the many lesser “selves” and the larger “self” are real in the same sense of the word. Neither exists merely in or for the other; the wider or whole “self” is no mere collection or resultant or product of the more special “selves,” nor are they again mere results of a theoretical process of analysis and abstraction. In so far as they are genuine systems at all, they are not mere “parts” of a whole, but each is the expression, in a concrete conscious life, of the nature of a larger whole from a special “point of view.” The whole, if not equally in every part, is yet as a whole present in every part, and precisely for that reason the category of part and whole is inadequate to express their relation. Somewhat after this fashion we must conceive the structure of any individual whole of lesser individuals. Why, in spite of the analogy, it is desirable not to speak of the whole of Reality as a “Self,” will be made clearer as we proceed.

§ 8. The view we have formulated is perhaps more closely akin to Spinoza’s conception of the relation of the human mind to the “infinite intellect of God,” than to any other historically famous theory. According to Spinoza, the individual human mind is an “eternal mode of consciousness which, taken together with all other such ‘modes,’ makes up the infinite intellect of God.” The meaning of the epithet “eternal” we cannot, of course, enter into until we have discussed the relation of the time-process to experience. The rest of the definition pretty clearly coincides in its general sense with the view we have tried to expound of the nature of the relation between the supreme experience and its constituent experiences. For the “modes” of Spinoza are definitely thought of as genuinely individual manifestations of the nature of his ultimate reality, “substance” or “God.” Their individuality and their infinite multiplicity is no result of illusion or illegitimate abstraction. And, on the other hand, “substance” itself is genuinely individual; it is no mere abstract name for the common properties of a number of ultimately independent things.

Most of the adverse criticism which Spinozism has met with, as far at least as regards its doctrine of the nature of the human mind, seems to be based on misapprehension about the first of these points. From his use of the numerical category of whole and part to express the relation between substance and its modes, Spinoza has incorrectly been taken to be denying the fact of the genuine individuality of the finite experience, and therefore to be declaring the very existence of the finite to be mere baseless illusion. With his doctrine as thus misinterpreted, ours has, of course, no similarity. Nothing is explained away by calling it “illusion”; the “illusory” fact is there in spite of the hard names you choose to bestow on it, and demands explanation no less than any other fact. Our theory aims not at dismissing finite individuality as illusion, but at ascertaining what it means, what are its limits, and how it stands related to the complete individual whole of experience which Spinoza calls the infinitus intellectus Dei.

The mention of Spinoza will no doubt suggest to the reader the famous doctrine, which has played so large a part in the subsequent development of philosophical Monism, of the double “aspects” or “attributes” of Reality. It is from Spinoza that modern Monism has learned the view that the mental and physical orders are related as two parallel but distinct manifestations of a common underlying reality, so that to every member of one order there corresponds a determinate member of the other. The two are thus everywhere inseparable and everywhere irreducible “parallel” expressions of a nature which is neither mental nor physical. On this fundamental point our theory, as will have been seen already, completely parts company with Spinozism. That the nature of one and the same common whole should be equally manifested in two entirely irreducible forms, is a patent impossibility. Either the unity of the whole or the absolute disparateness of its twin manifestations must be surrendered if we are to think consistently. Hence we cannot avoid asking in which of the two series the assumed common nature is more adequately expressed. According as we answer this question we shall find ourselves led in the end either to thorough-going Materialism or to thorough-going Idealism. For our own part, the perception that Reality is experience and nothing else has already committed us to the view that both of the seemingly disparate series must in the end be mental. Thus our doctrine may be said to be much what Spinoza’s would be if the attribute of “extension” were removed from his scheme, and the whole of Reality identified with the “infinite intellect of God.”

Consult further:—B. Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, lect. 2; Logic, vol. ii. chap. 7; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 13, 14, 20; L. T. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, pt. 3, chap. 6, “Reality as a System”; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. i. chap. 6 (Eng. trans., vol. i. pp. 163-191); J. S. Mackenzie, Outlines of Metaphysic, bk. i. chaps. 2, 3; bk. iii. chap. 6; J. E. M‘Taggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, chap. 2.

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Footnote 54:

This consideration obviously influenced Leibnitz. It is a much-decried doctrine in his system that every “monad,” or simple real thing, perceives nothing but its own internal states; there are no “windows” through which one monad can behold the states of another. It is easy to show that this doctrine leads to extremely far-fetched and fantastic hypotheses to account for the apparent communication between different monads, but not so easy to show that Pluralism can afford to dispense with it. See in particular Leibnitz’s New System of the Nature of Substances (Works, ed. Erdmann, 124 ff.; ed. Gerhardt, iv. 477 ff.; Eng. trans. in Latta’s Leibnis: the Monadology, etc., p. 297 ff.), especially §§ 13-17 and Monadology, §§ 7-9, 51.

Footnote 55:

See for a recent treatment of this point in its bearing upon the theory of volition and moral accountability, Mr. Bradley’s article on “Mental Conflict and Imputation” in Mind for July 1902. There is probably no part of Psychology which suffers more from an improper over-simplification of awkward facts.

Footnote 56:

As the reader will readily collect from the preceding discussion, I do not myself admit that they are justified. On the contrary, I should hold that any consistent Pluralism must issue in what, if I held it myself, I should feel compelled to describe as Atheism, and the doctrine of blind chance as the arbiter of all things. In this matter I should like to associate myself entirely with the emphatic protest of Mr. Bradley, in Mind July 1902, p. 313, and with the remarks of Mr. B. Russell in his work on The Philosophy of Leibniz, p. 172. I need not say that I do not make these remarks for the purpose of disparagement. By all means, if Atheism is the logical outcome of consistent thinking, let us say so; what I object to is the constant appeal to theistic beliefs on the part of metaphysicians who, so far as I can see, ought to be atheists if they were in earnest with their own position.

Footnote 57:

For a popular exemplification of the kind of appeal to religious and ethical interests here objected to, see the first essay in Prof. James’s Will to Believe. I have never been able to understand why these appeals, if legitimate, should not be allowed in Psychology or any other science as readily as in Metaphysics. Would Prof. James regard it as a valid argument for the “timeless self” or the Innervationsgefühle, that some men may be better or happier for believing in them? Or again, is it in itself an objection to the study of Ethics that certain persons may become both less moral and less happy as a consequence of studying it?

Footnote 58:

N.B.—These possibilities, it must be remembered, though numerically infinite, are assumed to be qualitatively determinate, being constituted of the condition of conformity to the logical principle of non-contradiction. Now there is no reason in the nature of a plurality of independent things why this principle should be recognised rather than not.

Footnote 59:

A medley of independent things would not even be really “many.” For until you can count “first, second, third....” you have not your Many. And nothing but the terms of a coherent connected series can be counted. What you can count as many is shown by the very fact of your ability to count it to have a common nature or ground which permits of its orderly arrangement, and thus to be part of one system. Compare Plato, Parmenides, 164, 165.

Footnote 60:

As Aristotle more than once says, a human hand, for instance, is not when severed from the rest of the body a “hand” at all, except ὁμωνύμως “equivocally,” any more than the “hand” of a statue is a true hand. (I.e. it is only a “true hand” so long as it does the work of a hand. Captain Cuttle’s hook probably deserved the name of “hand” better than the severed member it replaced).

Footnote 61:

I shall attempt to show in a later chapter (Bk. IV. chap. 3) that, in any useful signification of the term “self,” Reality is not a “self” nor yet a mere community of “selves.”

Footnote 62:

Again, I must remind the reader that this recognition of the teleological character of mind does not in the least preclude the necessity for psychological analysis of mental states. Still less does it require us to include in our analysis a volitional element as one distinguishable aspect or component of the isolated mental state by the side of others, such as the presentational and emotional aspects. It might even be contended that a “tripartite” or three-aspect Psychology commits the mistake of counting in the whole psychical fact as one of its own components.

Footnote 63:

See infra, Bk. IV. chap. 3, where we shall find that the relation of the individual self to a social whole probably furnishes a still better, though not altogether satisfactory, illustration of our principle.

Footnote 64:

For Spinoza’s doctrine see especially Ethics, I. 15, 25; II. 11, 40; III. 6-9; V. 22, 23, with the explanations of any good exposition of his system, such as that of Pollock or Joachim.

Footnote 65:

See further on the “Parallelistic” doctrine, Bk. IV. chap. 2.