Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/90

 76 GEORGE GALLOWAY: principle of individuality in man and in other finite substances seem necessarily to be led to a denial of all real connection or relation between such substances." l It must be granted of course that there can be only one absolute Being, and a plurality of res complete is impossible. To claim such absolute reality for individuals would be suicidal, seeing that each is only an element in the universe, and all must find a place and receive a meaning in a coherent system. For this we require a supreme connecting and organising activity which is present in all individuals. Lotze tries to satisfy this need by saying that all substances " are parts of a single real Being ". 2 Yet if this statement be accepted as it stands, it does not appear possible to resist the inference that the Pluralism, which philosophy found it necessary to postulate at an earlier stage, is only a temporary hypothesis, and is superseded when thought rises to the final synthesis. The use of the term ' substance ' in this connexion has been objected to. Wundt, for example, criticises it, and would substitute for it causality or activity. 3 But it is not clear that the material associations which, as he points out, cling to the one word are absent from the other. Moreover, if we are to think of activity at all, it must be as the activity of something real : and we do not mean more when we use the word substance to denote a centre of experience. In his Microcosmus, Lotze has stated somewhat differently his attitude to the ultimate Unity which philosophy strives after. "It seems to me that philosophy is the endeavour of the human mind, after this wonderful world has come into existence and we in it, to work its way back in thought and bring the facts of outer and inner experience into connexion so far as our present position in the world allows." 4 The note of caution here is justifiable. For our thought is necessarily infected by spatial and temporal metaphors. And space and time on any view cannot adequately express the nature of the Absolute. We are inclined to forget that categories which are valid within experience cannot be employed in the same way to the ultimate conditions of experience. And it is evident that no category at our disposal is entirely ade- quate to explain the relation of the Absolute to the individual. 1 Caird, Evolution of Religion, vol. ii., p. 83. 2 Metaphysics (Eng. trans.), vol. i., p. 165. 3 System der Philosophic, p. 427. Paulsen's position on this point is, I think, just. He advocates the use of the term substance here, only demanding that we first make clear what we mean by it. Atomistic associations are of course out of place. 4 Microcosmus (Eng. trans.), vol. ii., p. 718.