Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/91

THE DISTINCTION OF INNER AND OUTER EXPERIENCE. 77 The result of our discussion then is, that the facts of outer experience lead us to infer that the individual sub- ject is here in direct relation with a system of other-selves. In inner experience again, the subject's own activity is primary and relation to other-selves is only indirectly im- plied. But though we claim that the monads are real, the reality which pertains to each individual can only be secondary or derivative. For the individual has its deter- minate character elicited through interaction with other monads, and the whole system presupposes an organising ground and principle of unity. If we desire a figurative expression of this unity in difference perhaps we might find it in the connexion of soul and body. In an organism the separate parts, or members, are essentially related to one another, while each has its specific function in the whole. The soul again, or the eVreA-e^eta to use Aristotle's word, is the presupposition of the organism and the ideal principle which gives it meaning and truth. By some such analogy we may conceive of the Absolute as immanent in all indi- viduals, yet allowing to each a definite function and degree of reality in the whole, while its own being is not lost in the process of finite experience. For that the universe is a co- herent whole is a presupposition both of thought and of ethical action. A further observation may be added. In any view we take of the ultimate Unity, we must not ignore the world of ethical and spiritual values. For the facts of moral and religious experience have as good a claim to be taken into account as the facts of science. The tendency to "excessive unification," which Aristotle ob- jected to in Plato, has always been a danger to which philosophy is peculiarly liable. And a philosophy, which in the interests of system undermines the moral-responsibility of the individual and treats religion as an illusion, lays itself open to the charge of explaining away what it cannot ex- plain. The intellectual necessity we are under of striving after unity in all experience must be conditioned by the ethical necessity by which we postulate that the Supreme Reality satisfies our spiritual nature. There can be no final dualism between the two spheres any more than there can be between inner and outer experience. But the Absolute, be it remembered, does not merely explain an aspect of the world but the world as a whole. And a thinker whose out- look is catholic will try neither to ignore nor to misconstrue any phase of experience in order to secure unity of system.