There is no way of passing, then, from an absolute One to the Many, from singularism to pluralism. We must start with Babel and achieve, if we can, "one language and one speech." In its modern form Pluralism is a revolt alike from nineteenth century Absolutism, which was the dominant school in Germany and England, and from the Naturalism brought to the fore by the advance of scientific research, and interpreting mind in terms of nature. Pluralism has been called a means of escape alike from "Naturalism's desert and the barren summit of the Absolute." The ancient pluralism took the form of atomism, but the concourse of atoms may account for rigidity and uniformity but not for spontaneity. The modern type of pluralism, starting at the level of self-consciousness, posits a multitude of monads or individuals acting towards self-conservation and self-realization, and can, it is believed, do full justice alike to law and contingency, to spontaneity and fixity. The pluralist, operating on the principle of continuity, assumes that there are conscious individuals or monads in various degrees lower than man down to the minimal point of complete unconsciousness; and higher consciousnesses than man up to a being who may be called in a sense supreme, but is never more than one of the many, not inclusive of them, and, however exalted, is never more than _primus inter pares_. The modern pluralist as described by Ward is a "pampsychist"; he believes that all existence is soul-like. There is a multiplicity of soul-like beings of various grades of development, some dominating, some serving, "conative and cognitive individuals bent on self-conservation and seeking the good."[180] All existence is soul-like, although, in what we call inorganic matter, these cognitive and conative monads have been largely "denatured" and reduced to the semblance of mechanism and routine. They have become "finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark." 180: "The Realm of Ends," 1911, p. 223. The pluralist assumes at the outset a multiplicity of soul-like beings; but he cannot explain satisfactorily their inter-action, or their action towards a common end. If, indeed, a pluralistic standpoint were hopelessly infected with contradictions, as the Eleatics might hold, then "the way to theism would be hopelessly barred; for from pluralism speculation really always has and always must begin."[181] Pluralism begins with the many and ends with the many. But did it really begin at the beginning, and does it really reach the end? Pluralism, Ward insists, "points both theoretically and practically [and both forward and backward] beyond itself."[182] 181: "The Realm of Ends," p. 224. 182: _Ibid._, p. 436.