Then, secondly, to attempt to think in philosophy or any other science _merely in accordance with the Principle of “Non-Contradiction”_ will never[365] take us beyond the few initial positions of fact or of principle (God, “substance,” pure being, matter, identity, final cause, freedom, force, the will, the idea a perfect being, or what not) with which we happen for one reason or another to start in our reflections. Nor will this procedure account, of course, for these initial assumptions or facts. Thirdly, in virtue of its implication in the “solipsism” and the “representationalism” of Subjective Idealism, Dr. Bosanquet’s “Absolute” is inferior (both so far as fact and theory are concerned) to the Pluralism and the possible Theism of Pragmatism and Humanism to which we have already made partial references.[366] Fourthly, it is only natural that, on account of these, its many polemical mannerisms, “Individuality and Value” has already made upon some of its critics the impression of being a book that refuses to see things as they are--in the interests of their forced adaptation to the purposes of a preconceived philosophical theory. Fifthly, there is certainly a sufficient number of contradictions in “Individuality and Value” to prevent it from being regarded as a consistent and a workable (_i.e._ really explanatory) account of our experience as we actually know it. Of these contradictions we think the following may well be enumerated here: (1) That between Dr. Bosanquet’s professed principle of accepting as real only that which is “mediated” or established by proof, and the arbitrariness he displays in announcing convictions like the following: “That what really matters is not the preservation of separate minds as such, but the qualities and achievement which, as trustees of the universe, they elicit from the resources assigned them.” (2) The contradiction between his belief in the conservation of “values” without the conservation of the existence of the individuals who “elicit” these “values,” or who are, as he puts it, the “trustees” for the “universe.” (3) That between what he logically wants (his “concrete individual”) and what he gives us (an impersonal “system”). (4) The contradiction between the completed personal life in God (or in a perfected society of individuals) that most of us (judging from the great religions of the world) want as human beings, and the impersonal “conceptual” experience of his book. (5) The contradiction that exists between his intellectualism and his commendable belief in “great convictions” and “really satisfying emotions and experiences.” (6) The standing contradiction between his “solipsistic” view of reality (his reduction of the universe to the conceptual experience of a single self-perfecting individual), and the facts of history in support of the idea of the “new,” or the “creative” character of the contributions of countless individuals and groups of