"Rational unity of all
things" is so inspiring a formula, that he brandishes it offhand,
and abstractly accuses pluralism of conflicting with it (for the
bare names do conflict), altho concretely he means by it just the
pragmatistically unified and ameliorated world. Most of us remain in
this essential vagueness, and it is well that we should; but in the
interest of clear-headedness it is well that some of us should go
farther, so I will try now to focus a little more discriminatingly
on this particular religious point.
Is then this you of yous, this absolutely real world, this unity
that yields the moral inspiration and has the religious value, to be
taken monistically or pluralistically? Is it ante rem or in rebus?
Is it a principle or an end, an absolute or an ultimate, a first or
a last? Does it make you look forward or lie back? It is certainly
worth while not to clump the two things together, for if
discriminated, they have decidedly diverse meanings for life.
Please observe that the whole dilemma revolves pragmatically about
the notion of the world's possibilities. Intellectually, rationalism
invokes its absolute principle of unity as a ground of possibility
for the many facts. Emotionally, it sees it as a container and
limiter of possibilities, a guarantee that the upshot shall be good.
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