LECTURE X.
PSYCHOPHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL DIFFICULTIES IN PLURALISM.
There is one difficulty which the exposition I have
attempted to give would so readily suggest, that it is
perhaps best to mention it at the outset. The goal
of final harmony and unification on which the personal
idealist counts as — a far-off event, it may be, but still
as — a rational possibility may yet never be attained,
however rationally possible, because of what we
ordinarily call physical hindrances. Let these consist, if
you like, of the actions of inferior — sentient it may
be — but still irrational monads: the disaster would be
none the less appalling on that account, nor is its
possibility for that reason very seriously diminished.
For we have had meantime to allow that millennial
dreams of a liberation of Nature from the thraldom
of so-called physical evil are as fanciful as the legends
of this subjection as a consequence of moral evil. It
is true there are modern pluralists, Renouvier certainly
and probably Dr Howison, who still defend such views
of the solidarity of the cosmos. But if we smile at
Fourier when he imagined that, so soon as we have
learnt to dwell in brotherly love together, the whales
will seize our ships by their cables and tow them
to their destinations over seas no longer briny but
pleasant to drink, must we not regard it as still more
