Taken thus abstractly as it first comes to one, the
monistic insight is so vague as hardly to seem worth defending
intellectually. Yet probably everyone in this audience in some way
cherishes it. A certain abstract monism, a certain emotional
response to the character of oneness, as if it were a feature of the
world not coordinate with its manyness, but vastly more excellent
and eminent, is so prevalent in educated circles that we might
almost call it a part of philosophic common sense. Of COURSE the
world is one, we say. How else could it be a world at all?
Empiricists as a rule, are as stout monists of this abstract kind as
rationalists are.
The difference is that the empiricists are less dazzled. Unity
doesn't blind them to everything else, doesn't quench their
curiosity for special facts, whereas there is a kind of rationalist
who is sure to interpret abstract unity mystically and to forget
everything else, to treat it as a principle; to admire and worship
it; and thereupon to come to a full stop intellectually.
'The world is One!'--the formula may become a sort of number-
worship. 'Three' and 'seven' have, it is true, been reckoned sacred
numbers; but, abstractly taken, why is 'one' more excellent than
'forty-three,' or than 'two million and ten'? In this first vague
conviction of the world's unity, there is so little to take hold of
that we hardly know what we mean by it.
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