The Absolute of Idealistic thought is not, however, now conceived of (as the Pragmatist would have us believe) as an abstract unity, but as one involving a social bond, and hence relations which can be described as personal, if we remember that the Personality of the Absolute transcends our notion of human personality. Such a conception of the term Absolute, a new reading of the theory of the One and the Many, has been led up to by Bradley and Royce by methods of logic, and without any reference to dogma. It has been conveniently expressed by Taylor. The argument is briefly that ultimate Reality must be One, Many, and Personal. “For our conclusion that mere truth cannot be the same thing as ultimate reality was itself based upon the principle that only harmonious individuality is finally real, and this is the very principle employed by the intellect itself whenever it judges one thought-construction relatively higher or truer than another.”[17] And again:-- “If we speak of existence as a society, then we must be careful to remember that the individual unity of a society is just as real a fact of experience as the individual unity of the members which compose it, and that when we call the Absolute a society rather than a self, we do not do so with any intention of casting doubt upon its complete spiritual unity as an individual experience.”[18] The Absolute has been stated in modern thought to be One, Many, Real, and Personal or Social, and these terms of its qualification have been successively arrived at. W. James’s words ring hollow when he attempts to dissociate such a conception from the reality of which it is the crown and inclusive symbol, and type and essence. “I personally,” he says, “give up the Absolute. I find it entangles me in metaphysical paradoxes that are inacceptable.” He allows that there may be a God, though limited in power and goodness, “one helper amongst others, _primus inter pares_ in the midst of all the shapers of the great world’s fate.” In such a system, as H. Jones has pointed out, “there is neither in the universe nor in God any principle to inspire or guide, or in any way to bring about the amelioration desired. The process is guided by no end. The universe begins by being an aggregate of accidents, pluralistic, discontinuous, irrational, and, of itself, cannot become otherwise. There is nothing actual within to change its character.… God is himself finite, helpless to bring about this great change, a part, and no more, of a universe broken in fragments.”