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” 84