Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/15

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THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

free and immortal in some sense, in some degree or other; and so, likewise, mutatis mutandis, of Freedom and of Immortality. The differences here are as to the sense in which Freedom and Immortality are to be taken, — whether with unabated completeness or with a suppression and reduction. On this issue. Professor Le Conte, as to the resulting state of Real Existence aimed at by his method, is at one with Professor Howison: both hold to a God distinctly real, in relation with distinctly real souls, though Professor Howison questions the conceptions on which Professor Le Conte bases his method for reaching this result. Opposed to them stands Professor Royce. Professor Mezes perhaps supports this opposition with tacit assent, though he has refrained from any open expression.

Restating in the usual but more technical language of the schools the main divergence as now brought out, one would say that it is an issue between two views concerning the Whole of Real Existence — between the view known as Monism, and the view known as Pluralism. Professor Royce, and apparently Professor Mezes, adheres to Monism; Professor Le Conte and Professor Howison hold by Pluralism, though Professor Le Conte colours this with an intermediary Monism, as the means by which the final Pluralism comes to be. Only it is of essential importance to add, that both parties interpret their views in terms of Idealism. To both alike, all reality at last comes back to the reality of Mind; to the primary reality of self-consciousness, and the derivative reality of “things,” or objects ordinarily so called, as real items in such