These four positions seem to me some, at least, of the conclusions of an epistemology, which starts only with the assumption that knowledge is possible. They are the basis on which we must construct our speculative metaphysics. If, then, we hold that the truest thing we can say about the universe as a whole is that it is the manifestation of the One in the Many, we are not 'hypostatizing logical abstractions,' but simply putting these results together and summing them up in a general formula. On the other hand, to adopt a system of monadism or pluralism is to hypostatize the abstractions, not of logic, but of popular picture-thinking—to treat the 'things' or 'souls' which are the mental constructs of ordinary thought as if they were independent, real existences. If they are not 'independent,' but included in the unity of one system, then the system is not 'pluralism' but a recognition, in a round-about way, of the 'One in the Many' as the Absolute.
The results of epistemology only set the problem for speculative metaphysics in a definite form. The problems, even when thus determined, are so numerous and admit of so many various answers that the metaphysician has no reason to complain that the epistemologist is interfering unduly with his province. Granted that the ultimate nature of reality must be expressed by such a formula as the One in the Many, we have still to ask How the One manifests itself in multiplicity and difference? To ask 'Why?' is in vain, if by the question we are attempting to get behind the Absolute—to find out its 'motives,' so to speak, as if it were a finite person. Granted that our own consciousness of our selves as subjects gives us our best clue to understanding the nature of the unity of the cosmos, we have still to endeavor to realize what is involved in a 'self' which is not in time, but 'eternal.' Mr. Bradley, indeed, seems to reject the notion of a timeless self because it is "a psychological monster."[1] "A timeless self, acting in a particular way," he says, "from its general timeless nature, is to me a psychological monster." Now I quite agree that the notion of a timeless self is absurd in the special science of
- ↑ Appearance and Reality, pp. 113, 114.
