XXI
INDIVIDUALITY

 

WHATEVER understanding I possess of Stephen's philosophy came not with sudden fullness that precluded subsequent confusion. Quite the contrary! For instance, while Joan and the poet were hobnobbing, I found time to indulge in no small measure of what Stephen calls hypothetical reasoning. I mobilized my emotions around the word "individual," used by Stephen, just prior to the poet's appearance, in his statement of quantity as the gift of the individual to the whole.

 

"In the first place," I said, "I don't by any manner of means accept you, Stephen, as an individual outside my own mind and Joan's. If I did, I could not, of course, question the possibility of individualistic survival. But oneness means oneness, Stephen. And oneness ever more perfectly realized seems to be the very heart of your revelation. When the consciousness which is the me of me develops to supremacy, there must then be realized, it would seem, a oneness of myself with the all, so overpowering that my individuality will be quite lost."

 

"Have you heard my philosophy to so little advantage?" mourned Stephen.

"Listen! The poet has just said: 'What we strive for is the height of consciousness, the perfect realization of individuality and of that individuality's relation to the whole.' The entire story is contained in those words. The supreme degree of consciousness is composed at once of the height of individual consciousness and of the perfection of individual adjustment to the whole."

 

But old thoughts were still strong upon me. For so long I had scouted hope of personal survival. Try as I might, I was unable to grasp—or, rather, having grasped, hold to—the idea that perfect oneness of the whole and, perfect individuality of its parts reasonably can coexist.

 

Joan is the book-buyer at our house. A day or two after Stephen and I had deadlocked on individuality's survival she saw offered for sale—on a bargain counter, if you please—A Pluralistic Universe, by William James.

 

"I just bought it on a bet," she said, as she handed me the volume.

And you won," I exclaimed, after I had run through a score of pages. For the elusive thought of oneness joined with many-ness was by the little book made clear.

 

Here was a monist who, dissatisfied with a oneness which in its ultimate obliterates the many, finally found it reasonable to consider the "each" as fundamental as the "all." The "all," the whole, may be made up, he saw, of a number of parts, or "eaches."

 

I rushed for the ouija-board and said, "Stephen, are you here?" And, with Joan co-operating, Stephen said, "But, yes."

 

And then, too filled with my great thought, I—well, I lost it. So, while Joan waited patiently, I took up James's book again, and for a second time skimmed its pages.

 

Then said I, repossessed of my great new thought, "Stephen, have you gone?"

 

And Stephen replied, saying: "That is always such an interesting question to answer. If ever I am not present when you call, I shall tell you so."

 

At this point my notes carry the word "Laughed." We did, I remember—heartily. And then I formulated my thought for Stephen's hearing, something as follows:

 

"Monism is true. There is but one reality, which, as you say, Stephen, is consciousness. You hold that the high degree of consciousness found in man is the result of millions of years of evolution on this plane and of like ages of development on yours. Further, you link up, through rebirth of quality, quantitative development on earth with qualitative development on your plane, thus spanning the two planes. Now evolution, development, rebirth continue, you say, on and on, with the supreme degree of consciousness as the ultimate. Toward the supreme all consciousness tends; in the end all consciousness, meaning the all of all that is, reaches supremacy. And now, Stephen, your crowning thought is that the ultimate, the supreme, is a perfect whole made up of perfectly adjusted parts. Joan, you, I, all that is, one day will be just such perfect parts, perfectly serving just such a perfect whole. The 'each,' Stephen, is as true a thought as is the 'all.' Individuality endures."

 

"To hear you speak so," spelled Stephen, "is wonderful. Could you know the satisfaction manifested here! There is joy in heaven, to speak tritely."

 

"But," I answered, "the credit is not mine. It belongs to James, who wrote the book, and to Joan, who bought the book at a bargain sale."

 

"No credit to me," said Joan. "I bought the book on impulse, without looking beyond its title—just because the thought flitted through my mind."

 

"And," said Stephen, "I flitted the thought."

"Pluralistic monism," I mused. "What a phrase! How contradictory, and yet how expressive!"

 

The failure of religion, I thought, has been that it tends to place God outside the world. Its glory lies in its insistence on the validity of individual experience. The glory of modern speculative science is that, sensing the necessity of the whole, it has sought its deity, its reality, not outside the world, but in it—in energy, in matter, in life. The failure of science is that, having through experimental examination of the parts gained vision of the whole, it straightway deserts experience, permitting its conception of oneness to become a nebulosity. Are not the "each," or part, idea and the "all," or whole, idea inseparably bound together? Is not the apparent contradiction contained in the phrase "pluralistic monism" the varies logic experience offers?

 

Addressing Stephen, I said, "I must thank James for the thought contained in that phrase."

The tripod assumed a stately gait. It was our professor. He said: "The phrase 'pluralistic monism' is not James's. It is your own."

"Why, no," I insisted.

"Look in the book," spelled the professor.

 

I did as he bade me, and, indeed, he was right. Nowhere had James used the phrase. When I returned to the ouija-board I found the professor waiting.

 

"I knew James well," he said. "His thought was of pluralistic idealism. He had come to realize that oneness, in any true system of logic, could be thought of pluralistically. But, because of the stress the world about him was placing on the modern materialistic interpretation of reality, and because he felt that somehow, despite even science, life did possess a spiritual value, he was veered toward idealism. Had he hit upon the non-committal phrase 'pluralistic monism,' he might have arrived at the exact truth…. That he should have missed it by a hair is odd, my dear sir, very odd."

 

Well, if science should find the one reality in consciousness, let it not feel called upon to miss by a hair the obvious fact that consciousness, however monistic, is in experience pluralistic as well. Consider society. Surely mankind in its social relations tends toward oneness. Surely national development is prophet of that perfect social oneness toward which consciousness strives. Yet nations grow in oneness only as the individual citizens grow toward perfect individuality.

 

And where now is the emphasis—on oneness or on plurality?

"On oneness, always on oneness," says Stephen. "The height of individuality is but the perfect adjustment of a part to the whole. I am a part of the whole, yet the whole is I. In you, in me, is all that is, consciousness. Yet we are but parts of the greater whole."

 

I have sought for an illustration that might convey some clear appreciation of pluralistic monism. I offer this:

 

A fussy audience has gradually filled the music-hall, each individual fussily settling in his seat and fussily waiting for that to happen which brought him and the others together.

 

At last the orchestra, fifty, seventy-five, one hundred strong, files in upon the stage; and fussily the musicians take their stations. Fussily they tune their instruments and fussily arrange their scores. Then comes the leader. Fussily he bows, fussily faces his players, and taps his baton—perhaps less fussily—in signal for the symphony to begin.

 

I need not press the figure. You know that the many individuals who compose that orchestra will not cease, during the performance of the symphony, to exist as individuals, that instead they will become more individualistic than ever. Yet, not in spite of that accentuation of individuality, but because of it, the orchestra becomes for the period of the number a whole.