Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/141

122 really two, and were not mere parts or aspects of any single being. This characteristic difference which would suffice to assure us that two beings were different realities, may be defined without in the least attempting to pass upon the question whether any variety could afterwards be found, in a realistic world, within the bounds of a single being.

Accordingly, I shall here not at all either assert or deny that a single realistic being, if found, would be a simple being. For all that I now know, a single realistic entity may be as simple as Herbart wished, or as complex as the whole arch of the heavens. I shall only say that if, in the realistic world, we were to find two objects that were as independent of each other as, in our definition of the general realistic conception of what it is to be, the object of knowledge was independent of any knowledge of that object, then, and then only, we should call those objects two real beings, really different from each other. If, however, on the other hand, we should find that, within the realistic world, all the real objects there present were in any way linked together, so as not to be mutually independent, we should so far have, according to just the present definition, to regard them as parts or aspects of One real being.

This way of stating our present meaning for the terms “One” and “Many,” as applied to the realistic world, is of course, if you please, an arbitrary way. But it has the advantage of leaving open all the questions as to whether any single being would also, upon examination, prove to be a simple being; and this definition of unity and multiplicity has also the advantage of exhaustively stating