174 PHILOSOPHY 



IV. Cause and Effect (Ground and Consequence; Causal System); 

 V. One and Many (Number System; Monism and Pluralism); 



VI. Time and Space (their relation to Number; their Origin and 



Real Meaning) ; 

 VII. Unconditioned and Conditioned (Soul, World, God; their 



Reinterpretation in terms of Pluralism) ; 



VIII. The True, the Beautiful, the Good (their relation to the 

 question between Monism and Pluralism). 



These are successively dealt with as they rise one out of the other 

 in the process of interpreting them and applying them in the actual 

 creation of philosophy, as this goes on in the historic schools. The 

 theoretic progress of philosophy is in this way explained by them, 

 in its movement from natural dualism, or realism, through the 

 successive forms of monism, materialistic, agnostic, and idealistic, 

 until it reaches the issue, now coming so strongly forward within 

 the school of idealism, between the adherents of monism and those 

 of pluralism. 



The importance of the Fundamental Concepts is shown to increase 

 as we pass along the list, till on reaching Cause and Effect, and 

 entering upon its full interpretation into the complete System of 

 Causes, we arrive at the very significant conception of the RECI- 

 PROCITY OF FIRST CAUSES, and through it come to the PRIMACY OF 

 FINAL CAUSE, and the derivative position of the other forms of cause, 

 Material, Formal, Efficient. The philosophic strength of idealism, 

 but especially of idealistic pluralism, comes into clear light as the re- 

 sult of this stage of the inquiry. But it appears yet more decidedly 

 when One and Many, Time and Space, and their interrelations, 

 are subjected to analysis. So the discussion next passes to the 

 higher conceptions, Soul, World, God, by the pathway of the cor- 

 relation Unconditioned and Conditioned, and its kindred contrasts 

 Absolute and Relative, Necessary and Contingent, Infinite and 

 Finite, corroborating and reinforcing the import of idealism, and, 

 still more decidedly, that of its plural form. Finally, the strong 

 and favorable bearing of this last on the dissolution of agnosticism 

 and the habilitation of the ideals, the True, the Beautiful, and the 

 Good, in a heightened meaning, is brought out. 



This carries the inquiry to the second part of it, that of the Philo- 

 sophical Methods. Here I recount these in a series of six: the 

 Dogmatic, the Skeptical, the Critical, the Pragmatic, the Genetic, 

 the Dialectic. These, I show, in spite of the tendency of the earlier 

 members in the series to over-emphasis, all have their place and 

 function in the development of a complete philosophy, and in fact 

 form an ascending series in methodic effectiveness, all that precede 

 the last being taken up into the comprehensive Critical Rationalism 

 of the last. Methodology thus passes upward, over the ascending 



