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xii ence, such a public and universal view must in every mind be potential. I confess, however, that I am almost ashamed to record, here and elsewhere in these pages, this dissent from Professor James, — a writer for whose genius I feel so warm an admiration, and with whom, on the great main matter, pluralism, I am in such hearty accord. Only, I cannot consent to put our common metaphysics at such risk and disadvantage, in comparison with monism, as a confessed and despairing ultimate irrationalism involves.

Something of the same tenor I might say, too, of my relation to the views of Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, the versatile author of that striking book. Riddles of the Sphinx. But in his case, it is chiefly his finite and pathological “God” that I am unwilling to admit as an implication of pluralism, much as I delight in the point and force of what he advances in support of our common view.

To put the theory of the present book in a clearer light, its chief points had best be summarised one by one. They may be stated as follows:

I. All existence is either (1) the existence of minds, or (2) the existence of the items and order of their experience; all the existences known as “material” consisting in certain of these experiences, with