35^ MAN AND GOD. 



Yet as this possibility of the interaction of the 

 Many is the One, PluraHsm is in a way based upon 

 Monism : the Many presuppose the One. But not 

 in any sense which can affect the substantlaHty of 

 the Many. The One which is presupposed by 

 Pluralism is the most meaningless of all things ; it 

 is a mere possibility of the interaction or co-exist- 

 ence of the Many ; it is a mere potentiality which 

 has no actual existence except as an ideal factor in 

 a real plurality. It is the actual interaction of the 

 Many that gives a meaning to the One ; Monism 

 becomes possible only when it has been included 

 and absorbed In Pluralism. For if each of the 

 many individual existences had never actually 

 exerted its power of interacting with the others, no 

 world would have existed. The terms " one " and 

 "many" would have had no meaning, and there 

 would have been no occasion for Monism to be. in- 

 vented in order to explain how the many could be 

 one. 



Monism is thus essentially parasitic in Its nature ; 

 it is a theory which becomes possible only on the 

 basis of the real fact of plurality. And it is equally 

 dependent upon Pluralism for its further develop- 

 ment. It is a theory parasitic also in this, that it 

 construes the One on the analogy of the Many and 

 after a fashion derived from its knowledge of the 

 phenomenal world with its many substances ; in 

 other words, it hypostasizes it. But by this hypo- 

 stasization it refutes itself; by treating as a real and 

 transcendent substance this co-existence and possibil- 

 ity of the interaction of the Many, this immanent and 

 impersonal ultimate nature of existence, it reduces 

 the real world of existences, which it set out to ex- 

 plain, to absolute unreality. And all this in order 



