ioo MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



in many apparent characteristics of the world, yet, by 

 regarding the world in itself as unknowable, so con- 

 centrated attention upon the subjective representation 

 that its subjectivity was soon forgotten. Having re- 

 cognised the categories as the work of the mind, it was 

 paralysed by its own recognition, and abandoned in 

 despair the attempt to undo the work of subjective 

 falsification. In part, no doubt, its despair was well 

 founded, but not, I think, in any absolute or ultimate 

 sense. Still less was it a ground for rejoicing, or for 

 supposing that the nescience to which it ought to have 

 given rise could be legitimately exchanged for a meta- 

 physical dogmatism. 



As regards our present question, namely, the question 

 of the unity of the world, the right method, as I think, 

 has been indicated by William James. 1 " Let us now 

 turn our backs upon ineffable or unintelligible ways 

 of accounting for the world's oneness, and inquire whether, 

 instead of being a principle, the ' oneness ' affirmed may 

 not merely be a name like ' substance' descriptive of 

 the fact that certain specific and verifiable connections 

 are found among the parts of the experiential flux. . . . 

 We can easily conceive of things that shall have no connec- 

 tion whatever with each other. We may assume them 

 to inhabit different times and spaces, as the dreams of 

 different persons do even now. They may be so unlike 

 and incommensurable, and so inert towards one another, 

 as never to jostle or interfere. Even now there may 

 actually be whole universes so disparate from ours that 

 we who know ours have no means of perceiving that they 

 exist. We conceive their diversity, however ; and by that 



1 Some Problems of Philosophy, p 124. 



