A Pluralistic Universe · William James
III
In Section the 6th of my article, 'A world of pure experience,' I adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same world is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second relation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first. I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with absolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, if it were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and seriously to search its strength. For instance, let the matter in dispute be a term _M_, asserted to be on the one hand related to _L_, and on the other to _N_; and let the two cases of relation be symbolized by _L--M_ and _M--N_ respectively. When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be given in the shape _L--M--N_, with no trace of doubling or internal fission in the _M_, I am told that this is all a popular delusion; that _L--M--N_ logically means two different experiences, _L--M_ and _M--N_, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must, from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into _M_'s two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two _M_'s lie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and unbridged.
In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the letter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun, being related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover no real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. And then, one might continue: 'Only an absolute is capable of uniting such a non-identity.' We must, I say, avoid this sort of example; for the dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations universally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.