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.[54] 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.