"Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form, on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word "or" names a genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead or to the right or to the left, and in either case the intervening space and air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these faces. If the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Philosophers from the United StatesPsychologists from the United StatesPresidents of the American Psychological AssociationCritics from the United StatesParapsychologists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
A Pluralistic Universe (1909), Lecture VII
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William James
1842 – 1910
US-amerikanischer Philosoph und Psychologe
207 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William James →
Related Quotes
"The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in…"
"Tro ej din vän , förrän i ätit upp en halfspann salt tillsammans."
"The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possib…"
"The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his e…"
"What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wr…"
"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no rea…"
"But even the distant reader must allow that Clifford's mental personality belonged to the highest possible type to sa…"
"Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight …"
"All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods."
"Freedom is only necessity understood."