§ 213. If the attempt to construct experience in the special terms of
some part of experience be abandoned, how is reality to be defined? It
is evident that in that case there can be no definition of reality as
such. It must be regarded as a collection of all elements, relations,
principles, systems, that compose it. All truths will be true of it, and
it will be the subject of all truths. Reality is at least physical,
psychical, moral, and rational. That which is physical is not
necessarily moral or psychical, but may be either or both of these. Thus
it is a commonplace of experience that what has bulk and weight may or
may not be good, and may or may not be known. Similarly, that which is
psychical may or may not be physical, moral, or rational; and that which
is moral or rational may or may not be physical and psychical. There is,
then, an indeterminism in the universe, a mere coincidence of
principles, in that it contains physical, psychical, moral, logical
orders, without being in all respects either a physical, a psychical, a
moral, or a logical necessity.[420:13] Reality or experience itself is
neutral in the sense of being exclusively predetermined by no one of the
several systems it contains. But the different systems of experience
retain their specific and proper natures, without the compromise which
is involved in all attempts to extend some one until it shall embrace
them all. If such a universe seems inconceivably desultory and chaotic,
one may always remind one's self by directly consulting experience that
it is not only found immediately and unreflectively, but returned to and
lived in after every theoretical excursion.
[Sidenote: Moral Implications of such a Pluralistic Philosophy. Purity
of the Good.]
§ 214. But what implications for life would be contained in such a
philosophy? Even if it be theoretically clarifying, through being
hospitable to all differences and adequate to the multifarious demands
of experience, is it not on that very account morally dreary and
stultifying? Is not its refusal to establish the universe upon moral
foundations destructive both of the validity of goodness, and of the
incentive to its attainment? Certainly not--if the validity of goodness
be determined by criteria of worth, and if the incentive to goodness be
the possibility of making that which merely exists, or is necessary,
also good.
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