The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism/Lecture 9

by James Ward

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

1. Encyclopaedie, §§249, 280, 339.
2. Appearance and Reality, 2nd edn, p. 226.