Human efforts are daily unifying the world more and more in definite
systematic ways. We found colonial, postal, consular, commercial
systems, all the parts of which obey definite influences that
propagate themselves within the system but not to facts outside of
it. The result is innumerable little hangings-together of the
world's parts within the larger hangings-together, little worlds,
not only of discourse but of operation, within the wider universe.
Each system exemplifies one type or grade of union, its parts being
strung on that peculiar kind of relation, and the same part may
figure in many different systems, as a man may hold several offices
and belong to various clubs. From this 'systematic' point of view,
therefore, the pragmatic value of the world's unity is that all
these definite networks actually and practically exist. Some are
more enveloping and extensive, some less so; they are superposed
upon each other; and between them all they let no individual
elementary part of the universe escape. Enormous as is the amount of
disconnexion among things (for these systematic influences and
conjunctions follow rigidly exclusive paths), everything that exists
is influenced in SOME way by something else, if you can only pick
the way out rightly Loosely speaking, and in general, it may be said
that all things cohere and adhere to each other SOMEHOW, and that
the universe exists practically in reticulated or concatenated forms
which make of it a continuous or 'integrated' affair.
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