First, the underlying problem of pluralism and pragmatism is, as James proclaims, the relation of “collective” and “distributive.” The problem of to-day, we all agree, is the discovery of the kind of federalism which will make the parts live fully in the whole, the whole live fully in the parts. But this is the central problem of philosophy which has stirred the ages. The heart of James’ difficulty was just this: how can many consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? How can you be the absolute and the individual? It is the old, old struggle which has enmeshed so many, which some of our philosophers have transcended by the deeper intuitions, sure that life is a continuous flow and not spasmodic appearance, disappearance and reappearance. James struggled long with this problem, but the outcome was sure. His spirit could not be bound by intellectualistic logic, the logic of identity. He was finally forced to adopt a higher form of rationality. He gave up conceptualistic logic “fairly, squarely and irrevocably,” and knew by deepest inner testimony that “states of consciousness can separate and combine themselves freely and keep their own identity unchanged while forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope.” James always saw the strung-along universe, but he also saw the unifying principle which is working towards its goal. “That secret,” he tells us, “of a continuous life which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant cannot be a contradiction incarnate.... Our intelligence must keep on speaking terms with the universe.” When James found that the “all-form” and the “each-forms” are not incompatible, he found the secret of federalism. It is our task to work out in practical politics this speculative truth which the great philosophers have presented to us. The words absolute and individual veil it to us, but substitute state and individual and the problem comes down to the plane of our actual working everyday life. It may be interesting to read philosophy, but the thrilling thing for every man of us to do is to make it come true. We may be heartened by our sojourns on Sinai, but no man may live his life in the clouds. And what does pragmatism mean if not just this? We can only, as James told us again and again, understand the collective and distributive by living. Life is the true revealer: I can never understand the whole by reason, only when the heart-beat of the whole throbs through me as the pulse of my own being.