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James, William, 1842-1910

"Pragmatism"

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
mass of insentiency sees that One Sentient Being; he who in this
world of shadow catches that Reality, unto him belongs eternal
peace, unto none else, unto none else.'"
We all have some ear 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 no logic, absolute
Oneness must somehow at any cost be true. Oneness overcomes MORAL
separateness at any rate.


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