Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/281

No. 3.] that we must deal only with form and not with content, is both arbitrary and highly unsatisfactory. After all, the facts of the universe are particular, and it surely lies with philosophy to explain those facts so far as it can.

Every philosophic theory must necessarily assume certain logical axioms in accordance with which its reasoning is to be carried on. It is one of the principal tasks of modern logic to reduce such axioms to a minimum. Taking these principles of reasoning for granted, the theory will proceed to start from certain definite facts as data. The more incontrovertible and immediate the facts, and the more fully realizable, the more satisfactory is the theory likely to prove. Pluralism starts from the existence of the self. It makes the assumption of the existence of other selves. Thus it is based on the existence of entities at least one example of which we know to exist, and whose nature we actually realize. It is therefore superior at the outset to theories which start from entities such as sense-data that are objective for the individual. For, in the first place, all such objects are purely artificial units, whether they be sense-data, or the constructions of sense-data which constitute the units of the world of physics. On the other hand, a self is a true unit, a true individual. In the second place, we realize what a self is. We perceive a sense-datum, but we cannot realize what it is, in itself. Moreover, there is the further point that selves cannot be resolved into sense-data, whereas it may be possible to explain sense-data in terms of selves.

The next step in the development of pluralism is the analysis of the growth of the experience of the individual subject by the genetic method. It is not sufficient to enquire what certain concepts ought to mean, but also what they do actually mean for us, and how they come to acquire that meaning. If we proceed on these lines, particularly with reference to the chief categories of experience, we arrive at results which in each case, while not leading to it as a logical necessity, strongly suggest the pluralistic hypothesis.

The part played by the subject in experience is not a purely passive one. We find that we are able to interfere in the course