The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism/Lecture 9
LECTURE IX.
THE LIMITS OF PLURALISM.
What after all, we have now to ask, was Hegel’s
actual unity? It was entirely geocentric and
anthropocentric. The earth, he says, is the truth of the
solar system, just as animal nature is the truth of
vegetable, and this the truth of the mineral. The
earth is the planet : the sun has neither produced it
nor thrown it off; but sun, moon, comets, and stars are
only conditions for the earth (Bedingungen der Erde)
which they serve. Among the continents of the earth,
Europe, in virtue of its physical characteristics, forms
its consciousness, its rational part, and the centre of
Europe is Germany.[1] With his own philosophy, he
had the sublime assurance to think, the history of
philosophy closes; and in the restoration of Prussia
under Stein he thought the culmination of the world’s
history was attained. It is however not so much this
unique anticlimax that now concerns us; but rather
the general position that there are not ‘more worlds
than ours,’ which Hegel shared with the fifteenth
century ecclesiastics. They, it will be remembered,
had burned Giordano Bruno alive, who was one of the
first in modern times to proclaim this doctrine; and Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/202 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/203 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/204 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/205 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/206 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/207 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/208 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/209 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/210 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/211 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/212 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/213 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/214 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/215 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/216 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/217 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/218 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/219 Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/220 comparable, and beyond this its cardinal principles of
continuity and evolution will not enable it to go.
Neither by regressing can it reach a lowest limit or
origin, in which all diversity is latent; nor by progressing
can it reach a highest limit or goal in which all plurality
is transcended. This, the pluralist’s extremity, will
doubtless be regarded as the singularist’s opportunity.
But the latter so far has never succeeded — without
doing violence to the facts — in advancing beyond a
more or less covert dualism of the One and the Many,
of God and the World. The connexion of these two,
that is to say, remains a problem. Thus in the latest
and one of the most important expositions of singularism,
its author, Mr Bradley, tells us: — “The fact of actual
fragmentariness, I admit, I cannot explain. That
experience should take place in finite centres, and
should wear the form of finite ‘thisness,’ is in the end
inexplicable. But” — he adds — “to be inexplicable and
to be incompatible are not the same thing.”[2] Here we
have the whole matter in a nutshell. If pluralism is
‘infected with contradictions,’ as Mr Bradley affirms,
we must turn, he contends, to singularism, that is to
say, to Absolutism. If such an Absolute Being as he
supposes, is possible, then, in view of the said
contradictions, it must be declared actual. If, as we maintain,
it is not possible, then we are reduced to scepticism,
unless the asserted contradictions can be resolved. Even
though not compelled by contradictions altogether to
abandon pluralism, we ought to prefer Theism if that
systematizes more and disappoints less. The
difficulties of pluralism then must be our next topic.
Notes
[edit]- ↑ Encyclopaedie, §§249, 280, 339.
- ↑ Appearance and Reality, 2nd edn, p. 226.