Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/142

Rh a perfectly definite alternative. Let me restate then, in exact form, just this definition of the One and the Many.

Suppose then that, in the realistic world, we should find two real objects, a and b. Suppose that they were found to be such that if either of them changed in any way whatever, or vanished, the other of them might still consistently be conceived as undergoing no change whatever. That is, suppose that the presence or the absence, or any alteration of either of them, logically speaking, need make “no difference” to the other, in precisely the same sense in which Realism says that it now makes “no difference” to your object whether you know it or not. Suppose, in brief, the universal law that, so far as the nature of a and b is alone considered, no change in either a or b need correspond to any change in the other member of this pair. Then, by my present definition, a and b would be two different real beings; while if any less mutual independence than this existed, my present definition would regard a and b as parts of one complete Being. Upon this basis we could once more ask the realist: “Does your world contain in just this sense Many different, that is mutually independent beings, or does it contain only One real being, whose inner structure, perhaps simple, perhaps infinitely complex, still permits of no mutual independence of parts.

Two answers are, logically speaking, now open to the realist. He can decide for the One; he can decide for the Many. For the argument’s sake, I suppose him first to decide for the Many. His world shall now contain various mutually independent beings — beings such that, as they at first are defined, the existence and the nature of any