ISO PHILOSOPHY 



Here, accordingly, comes into view the further and in some respects 

 deeper conceptual pair, Many and One. The history of philosophic 

 thought proves that this antithesis is darkly obscure and deeply 

 ambiguous; for about it have centred a large part of the conflicts 

 of doctrine. This pair has already been used, implicitly, in exhibiting 

 the development of the preceding group, Cause and Effect; and 

 in so using it we have supplied ourselves with a partial clarification 

 of it, and with one possible solution of its ambiguity. We have seen, 

 namely, how our strong natural persuasion that philosophy guided 

 by the fundamental concept Cause must become the search for the 

 One amid the wilderness of the Many, and that this search cannot 

 be satisfied and ended except in an all-inclusive Unit, in which the 

 Many is embraced as the integral and originated parts, completely 

 determined, subjected, and controlled, may give way to another 

 and less oppressive conception of unity; a conception of it as the 

 harmony among many free and independent primary realities, 

 a harmony founded on their intelligent and reasonable mutual 

 recognition. This conception casts at least some clearing light upon 

 the long and dreary disputes over the Many and the One; for it 

 exposes, plainly, the main source of them. They have arisen out of 

 two chief ambiguities, the ambiguity of the concept One, and the 

 ambiguity of the concept Cause in its supreme meaning. The normal 

 contrast between the One and the Many is a clear and simple con- 

 trast: the One is the single unit, and the Many is the repetition of 

 the unit, or is the collection of the several units. But if we go on to 

 suppose that there is a collection or sum of all possible units, and 

 call this the Whole, then, since there can be no second such, we call 

 it also "one" (or the One, by way of preeminence), overlooking the 

 fact that it differs from the simple one, or unit, in genere; that it is 

 in fact not a unit at all, not an elementary member of a series, but 

 the annulment of all series; that our name "one" has profoundly 

 changed its meaning, and now stands for the Sole, the Only. Thus, 

 by our forgetfulness of differences, we fall into deep water, and, 

 with the confused illusions of the drowning, dream of the One and 

 All as the single punctum originationis of all things, the Source and 

 Begetter of the very units of which it is in reality only the resultant 

 and the derivative. Or, from another point of view, and in another 

 mood, we rightly enough take the One to mean the coherent, the 

 intelligible, the consistent, the harmonious; and putting the Many, 

 on the misleading hint of its contrast to the unit, in antithesis to 

 this One of harmony, we fall into the belief that the Many cannot 

 be harmonious, is intrinsically a cluster of repulsions or of collisions, 

 incapable of giving rise to accord; indeed, essentially hostile to it. 

 So, as accord is the aim and the essence of our reason, we are caught 

 in the snare of monism, pluralism having apparently become the 



