prophesied as much: “Monadism,” he says, “on the whole will increase and will add to the difficulties which already exists.”[1] Whether the second half of his forecast will turn out to be as true as the first remains to be seen. At any rate the plurality of the realm of ends is what is most patent to us at the outset: if the difficulties of Pluralism point the way to Singularism[2] they will at least serve to make the character of the One clearer than any ‘cheap and easy monism’ evolved at a dialectical show — such as Mr Bradley in a famous passage has himself described[3] — can ever do. It will be well too as regards method to let the spirit of the time lead us; turning aside from what has been described as “Naturalism’s desert on the one hand and the barren summit of the Absolute on the other,” to follow the historical method as far as possible in tracing the gradual evolution of ideas, but trusting to speculative methods only in the endeavour to divine the most satisfactory solution of the problems to which they gave rise.
In the next lecture then we must try to ascertain the genesis of the ideas which lead to the problem of the One and the Many, and then we may proceed to examine the solution which those who are called Pluralists or Personal Idealists uphold.
- ↑ Op. cit. p. 118, fin.
- ↑ This term, first used by Külpe as the correlative of Pluralism (Einleitung in die Philosophie, §14), may not be happy; but it is after all better than Henism; and it is not misleading as Monism according to present usage, i.e. with a qualitative as well as a quantitative sense, certainly is. Wolf, who invented the term, used it, as I have done, only in the qualitative sense as applicable either to materialism or to spiritualism.
- ↑ Principles of Logic, p. 533.
