The microscopist makes a hundred flat cross-sections of a given
embryo, and mentally unites them into one solid whole. But the great
world's ingredients, so far as they are beings, seem, like the
rope's fibres, to be discontinuous cross-wise, and to cohere only in
the longitudinal direction. Followed in that direction they are
many. Even the embryologist, when he follows the DEVELOPMENT of his
object, has to treat the history of each single organ in turn.
ABSOLUTE aesthetic union is thus another barely abstract ideal. The
world appears as something more epic than dramatic.
So far, then, we see how the world is unified by its many systems,
kinds, purposes, and dramas. That there is more union in all these
ways than openly appears is certainly true. That there MAY be one
sovereign purpose, system, kind, and story, is a legitimate
hypothesis. All I say here is that it is rash to affirm this
dogmatically without better evidence than we possess at present.
8. The GREAT monistic DENKMITTEL for a hundred years past has been
the notion of THE ONE KNOWER. The many exist only as objects for his
thought--exist in his dream, as it were; and AS HE KNOWS them, they
have one purpose, form one system, tell one tale for him.
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