4IO aSSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



fact that it assails all monism, of every sort and fashion, 

 and takes for its task the supplanting of it by a system of 

 pluralism. Idealist, indeed, I am; monist, not at all — 

 not in any sense, until one comes to the very subordinate 

 question. Are there two kinds of substantive reality, mind 

 and matter ? — is there a dualism of worlds, physical and 

 mental, each existing independently of the other, or is all 

 reality translatable on the contrary into the existence of 

 conscious selves and the derivative existence of their 

 "contained" experiences? In answer to this question, I 

 do indeed say there is but one kind of substantive being, 

 and that mental. But this is one of the characteristic 

 tenets common to all systems of idealism ; in the historic 

 nomenclature of philosophy it has never borne the name 

 of monism. The contrast between monism and pluralism 

 is concerned with the theory of ultimate (or primary) 

 reality. A pluralist does not in the least believe (as the 

 reviewer apparently does) that " the ultimate interest of 

 philosophy is to find the One Reality that lies behind the 

 innumerable diverse phenomena of the world." Pluralism 

 is precisely the stubborn denial that the ultimate reality is 

 any such One and Sole Being, in which every other being 

 is but a component and fragmentary factor, with none but 

 a derivative reality. The pluralist maintains, on the con- 

 trary, that this pretender, "The Absolute," this asserted 

 " One and All," is an illusion of false speculation, arising 

 from confounding the Real with the empty and meaning- 

 less result of persistent higher and higher abstraction. 

 The fundamental issue in philosophy is just this : Is that 

 which is ultimately real One, or is it Many ? — or, still less 

 ambiguously. Are there many primary and underived real 

 beings, or is there only one ? Here it is that the pluralist 

 divides from the monist ; and he divides implacably. The 

 issue is at core the issue between a moral order (which 

 cannot be unless there are many independent agents, the 



