Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/42

 main issue as between spiritualism and naturalism: for such ground of the world of living and acting things would — if we should be led to assume it — surely be itself living and acting. In any case then we have a realm of ends, the only question is: — what is its constitution, how is its harmony secured; is it, so to say, a more or less orderly democracy, is it a limited monarchy, or is it possibly an absolute one?

This is none other than the old and formidable problem of the One and the Many; and this, it has been said, will be the philosophical problem of the twentieth century. Certainly there are few questions more to the fore at the present time. It is fitting- then that with this we should begin. But with such a problem much depends on the side from which we begin and the method that we adopt. The great idealistic systems of the nineteenth century began with the One as absolute and adopted what may be generally described as a speculative or a priori method. Of the greatest of these systems, that of Hegel, even its most sympathetic critics have allowed that, however perfect its ideal may be in itself, its attainment is, and must ever remain, humanly impossible. And this verdict, I do not think it audacious to say, is easy to justify: it simply amounts to protesting that we can never transcend ourselves. The first requisite of philosophy is organic coherence: it cannot, so to say, have two independent growing points, and so long as experience is the one there can be no finality about philosophy. As experience advances its meaning will unfold itself to reflexion more and more: so further progress makes further regress possible and what is last in the order of experience brings us nearer to what is first in the