04 Part 2 - The One and the Many - Pragmatism - William James

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The great monistic dank middle for a hundred years past has been the notion of the one nowhere.

The many exist only as objects for his thought.

Exist in his dreams, as it were, and as he knows them, they have one purpose,

form one system, tell one tale for him.

This notion of an all-enveloping, noetic unity in things is the sublimeest achievement of intellectualist philosophy.

Those who believe in the absolute, as the all-knower is turned, usually say that they do so for cursive reasons,

which clear thinkers cannot evade.

The absolute has far-reaching practical consequences, some of which I drew attention in my second lecture.

Many kinds of difference important to us would surely follow from its being, too.

I cannot hear entering to all the logical proofs of such a being's existence,

farther than to say that none of them seemed to me sound.

I must therefore treat the notion of an all-knower simply as a hypothesis,

exactly on a par logically with a pluralist notion that there is no point of view,

no focus of information extant from which the entire content of the universe is visible at once.

God's consciousness, says Professor Royce, footnote the conception of God New York 897, page 292,

forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious moment.

This is the type of noetic unity on which rationalism insists.

Empiresism, on the other hand, is satisfied with the type of noetic unity that is humanly familiar.

Everything gets known by some noeer along with something else,

but the noeers may in the end be irreducibly many,

and the greatest noeer of them all may yet not know the whole of everything,

or even know what he does know at one single stroke.

He may be liable to forget.

Whichever type obtained, the world would still be a universe noetically.

Its parts would be conjoined by knowledge, but in the one case the knowledge would be absolutely unified,

in the other it would be strung along and overlapped.

The notion of one instantaneous or eternal noeer, either adjective here means the same thing,

is, as I said, the great intellectualist achievement of our time.

It has practically driven out that conception of substance,

which earlier philosophers set such store by, and by which so much unifying work used to be done.

Universal substance which alone has being in and from itself,

and of which all the particulars of experience are but forms to which it gives support.

Substance has succumbed to the pragmatic criticisms of the English school.

It appears now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are actually grouped,

and given in coherent forms, the very forms in which we finish noeer's experience or think them together.

These forms of conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience,

as are the terms which they connect.

And it is a great pragmatic achievement for recent idolism to have made the world hang together

in these directly representable ways, instead of drawing its unity from the inheritance of its parts.

Whatever that may mean, in an unimaginable principle behind the scenes.

The world is one, therefore, just so far as we experience it to be concatenated,

one by as many definite conjunctions as appear.

But then also not one by just as many definite disjunctions as we find.

The oneness and the meniness of it thus obtain in respects which can be separately named.

It is neither a universe pure and simple nor a multiverse pure and simple,

and its various manners of being one suggest for their accurate assortment,

so many distinct programs of scientific work.

Thus the pragmatic question, what is the oneness known as,

what practical difference will it make,

saves us from all feverish excitement over it as a principle of sublimity,

and carries us forward into the stream of experience with a cool head.

The stream may indeed reveal far more connection and union than we now suspect,

but we are not entitled on pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in any respect in advance.

It is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness can mean

that probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude which we have reached.

Nevertheless, there are possibly some radically monistic souls among you

who are not content to leave the one and the many on a par.

Union of various grades, union of diverse types, union that stops at non-conductors,

union that merely goes from next to next,

and means in many cases outer nextness only,

and not a more internal bond, union of concatenation in short,

all that sort of things seem to you a halfway stage of thought.

The oneness of things superior to their meniness you think must also be more deeply true,

must be the more real aspect of the world.

The pragmatic view, you are sure, gives us a universe imperfectly rational.

The real universe must form an unconditional unit of being,

something consolidated, with its parts co-implicated through and through.

Only then could we consider our state completely rational.

There is no doubt whatever that this ultra-monistic way of thinking means a great deal to many minds.

One life, one truth, one love, one principle, one good, one God.

I quote from a Christian science-leflit which the day's male brings into my hands,

beyond doubt such a confession of faith has pragmatically an emotional value,

and beyond doubt the word one contributes to the value quite as much as the other words.

But if we try to realize intellectually what we can possibly mean by such a glut of oneness,

we are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations again.

It means either the mere name one, the universe of discourse,

or it means the sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and concatenations.

Or finally, it means some one vehicle of conjunction treated as all-inclusive,

like one origin, one purpose, or one nowhere.

In point of fact, it always means one nowhere to those who take it intellectually today.

The one nowhere involves, they think, the other forms of conjunction.

His world must have all its parts co-implicated in the one logical, aesthetic,

teleological, unit picture which is his eternal dream.

The character of the absolute nowhere's picture is however so impossible for us to represent clearly,

that we may fairly suppose that the authority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses

and probably always will possess of some persons draws its strength far less from intellectual than from mystical grounds.

To interpret absolute monism, worthy, be a mystic.

Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown by history, usually though not always,

to make for the monistic view.

This is no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism,

but I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean.

The Paragon of all monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of Hindustan,

and the Paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekandanda,

who visited our shores some years ago.

The method of Vedantism is the mystical method.

You do not reason, but after going through a certain discipline you see,

and having seen, you can report the truth.

Vivekandanda thus reports the truth in one of his lectures here.

Where is any more misery for him who sees this oneness in the universe,

this oneness of life, oneness of everything?

This separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child,

nation from nation, earth from moon, moon from sun,

this separation between atom and atom is the course really of all the misery.

And the Vedanta says, this separation does not exist, it is not real.

It is merely apparent on the surface, in the heart of things, there is unity still.

If you go inside, you find that unity between man and man,

women and children, races and races, high and low, rich and poor,

the gods and men, all are one, and animals too.

If you go deep enough, and he who has attained to that has no more delusion.

Where is any more delusion for him?

What can delude him?

Who knows the reality of everything?

The secret of everything?

Where is there any more misery for him?

What does he desire?

He has traced the reality of everything onto the Lord,

that center, that unity of everything,

and that is eternal bliss, eternal knowledge, eternal existence.

Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow, nor misery,

nor discontent is there, in the center, the reality.

There is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for.

He has penetrated everything, the pure one, the formless,

the bodyless, the stainless, he the nowhere, he the great poet,

the self-existent, he who is giving to everyone what he deserves.

Observe how radical the character of the monism here is.

Separation is not simply overcome by the one, it is denied to exist.

There is no many.

We are not parts of the one, it has no parts.

And since in a sense we undeniably are,

it must be that each of us is the one, indivisibly and totally,

an absolute one, and I that one.

Surely we have here a religion which emotionally considered

has a high pragmatic value.

It imparts a perfect sumptuousity of security.

As our Swami says in another place,

when man has seen himself as one with the infinite being of the universe,

when all separateness has ceased, when all men,

all women, all angels, all gods, all animals, all plants,

the whole universe has been melted into that oneness,

then all fear disappears.

Whom to fear?

Can I hurt myself?

Can I kill myself?

Can I injure myself?

Do you fear yourself?

Then will all sorrow disappear?

What can cause me sorrow?

I am the one existence of the universe.

Then all jealousies will disappear,

of whom to be jealous of myself?

Then all bad feelings disappear.

Against whom will I have this bad feeling?

Against myself?

There is none in the universe but me.

Kill out this differentiation.

Kill out this superstition that there are many.

He who, in this world of many, sees that one.

He who, in this most of incency,

sees that one sentient being,

he who, in this world of shadow, catches that reality

onto him belongs eternal peace,

onto none else, onto none else.

We all have some air for this monistic music.

It elevates and reassures.

We all have at least the germ of mysticism in us.

And when our idealists recite their arguments for the absolute,

saying that the slightest union admitted anywhere

carries logically absolute oneness with it,

and that the slightest separation admitted anywhere

logically carries disunion remediless and complete,

I cannot help suspecting that the palpable,

weak places in the intellectual reasonings they use

are protected from their own criticism by a mystical feeling

that logic or non-logic absolute oneness

must somehow at any cost be true.

Oneness overcomes moral separateness at any rate.

In the passion of love, we have the mystic germ

of what might mean a total union of all sentient life.

This mystical germ wakes up in us on hearing the monistic utterances,

acknowledges their authority and assigns to intellectual considerations

a secondary place.

I will dwell no longer on these religious and moral aspects

of the question in this lecture.

When I come to my final lecture,

there will be something more to say.

Leave them out of consideration for the moment the authority

which mystical insights may be conjectured eventually to possess.

Treat the problem of the one and the many in a purely intellectual way,

and we see clearly enough where pragmatism stands.

With her criterion of the practical differences that theories make,

we see that she must equally abjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism.

The world is one just so far as its parts hang together by any definite connection.

It is many just so far as any definite connection fails to obtain,

and finally it is growing more and more unified by those systems of connection

at least which human energy keeps framing as time goes on.

It is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one we know,

in which the most various grades and types of union should be embodied.

Thus the lowest grade of universe would be a world of mere witness,

of which the parts were only strung together by the conjunction and.

Such a universe is even now the collection of our several inner lives.

The spaces and times of our imagination, the objects and events of your daydreams,

are not only more or less incoherent intersay, but are wholly out of definite relation

with the similar contents of anyone else's mind.

Our various reveries now, as we sit here,

come penetrate each other idly without influencing or interfering.

They coexist, but in no order and in no receptacle,

being the nearest approach to an absolute many that we can conceive.

We cannot even imagine any reason why they should be known altogether

and we can imagine even less if they were known together,

how they could be known as one systematic whole.

But add our sensations and bodily actions and the union mounts to a much higher grade.

Our audita, et visa and our acts fall into those receptacles of time and space

in which each event finds its date and place.

They form things and are of kinds too and can be classed.

Yet we can imagine a world of things and of kinds in which the causal interactions

with which we are so familiar should not exist.

Everything there might be inert towards everything else and refuse to propagate its influence.

Or gross mechanical influences might pause but no chemical action.

Such worlds would be far less unifying than ours.

Again, there might be complete physical chemical interaction, but no minds,

or minds, but altogether private ones with no social life,

or social life limited to acquaintance but no love,

or love but no customs or institutions that should systematize it.

No one of these grades of universe would be absolutely irrational or disintegrated

inferior though it might appear when looked at from the higher grades.

For instance, if our minds should ever become telepathetically connected

so that we knew immediately or should under certain conditions know immediately

each what the other was thinking, the world we now live in would appear to the thinkers

in that world to have been of an inferior grade.

With a whole of past eternity open for our conjectures to range in,

it may be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds of union

now realized in the universe that we inhabit may not possibly have been

successively evolved after the fashion in which we now see human systems

evolving in consequence of human needs.

If such hypothesis were legitimate, total onus would appear at the end of things

rather than at the origin.

In other words, the notion of the absolute would have to be replaced by that of the ultimate.

The two notion would have the same content, the maximally unified content of fact

namely, but their time relations would be positively reversed.

Footnote.

Compare on the ultimate, Mr. Schilder's essay Activity and Substance

in his book entitled Humanism, page 204.

After discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way,

you ought to see why I said in my second lecture, burrowing the word for my

friend G. Papini, that pragmatism tends to un-stiffen all our theories.

The world's onus has generally been affirmed abstractly only,

and as if anyone who questioned it must be an idiot.

The temper of monists has been so vehement as almost at times to be convulsive

and this way of holding a doctrine does not easily go with reasonable

discussion and the drawing of distinctions.

The theory of the absolute, in particular, has had to be an article of faith,

affirmed dogmatically and exclusively, the one and all, first in order of being

and of knowing, logically necessary itself, and uniting all lesser things

in the bonds of mutual necessity, how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner rigidity?

The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence

of any one of its parts from the control of totality, would ruin it.

Absolute unity brooks no degrees, as well might you claim absolute purity

for a glass of water because it contains but a single little collar at germ.

The independence, however infinitismal of a part, however small,

would be to the absolute as fatal as a collar at germ.

Pluralism, on the other hand, has no need of this dogmatic rigoristic temper.

Provided you grant some separation among things, some tremor of independence,

some free play of parts of one another, some real novelty or chance,

however minute she is amply satisfied and will allow you any amount,

however great, of real union.

How much a union there may be is a question that she thinks can only be decided empirically.

The amount may be enormous, colossal, but absolute monism is shattered

if, along with all that union, there has to be granted the slightest modicum,

the most incipient nasancy or the most residual trace of a separation that is not overcome.

Pragmatism, pending the final empirical as attainment of just what the balance of union

at this union among things may be, must obviously range herself upon the pluralistic side.

Someday, she admits, even total union with one knower, one origin,

and a universe consolidated in every conceivable way may turn out to be the most acceptable of all hypothesis.

Meanwhile, the opposite hypothesis of a world imperfectly unified still and perhaps always to remain so,

must be sincerely entertained.

This latter hypothesis is pluralism's doctrine.

Since absolute monism forbids its being even considered seriously,

branding it as irrational from the start, it is clear that pragmatism must turn its back on absolute monism

and follow pluralisms more empirical path.

This leaves us with a common sense world in which we find things partly joined and partly disjoint.

Things, then, and their conjunctions, what do such words mean, pragmatically handled?

In my next lecture, I will apply the pragmatic method to the stage of philosophizing known as common sense.

End of lecture 4