A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in PhilosophyJames, William
Philosophy
A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy
James, William
Philosophy, Modern
For monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not,
drags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. The log
starts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. If a thing
were once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according
to monism. The pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a
definite one. It is just thus, that if _a_ is once out of sight of _b_
or out of touch with it, or, more briefly, 'out' of it at all, then,
according to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get
together; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may
work together, or in some way be connected again. Monism allows for
no such things as 'other occasions' in reality--in _real_ or absolute
reality, that is.
The difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more
than the difference between what I formerly called the each-form and
the all-form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the
each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or
collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form
allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the
parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form,
on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with
a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It
is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not
necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path
of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word 'or' names
a genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead _or_ to the
right _or_ to the left, and in either case the intervening space and
air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of
this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these
faces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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