Plurality

“ Substance, and everything else considered absolutely, founds the relations of unity and plurality. Action and passion found the relations of causality and dependence. Quality founds the relations of likeness or unlikeness. Quantity founds the relations of equality or inequality. ”

“ For these two terms are more appropriately chosen to describe plurality in the supreme Being, because the word person is applied only to an individual, rational nature; and the word substance is ordinarily applied to individual beings, which especially subsist in plurality. ”

“ The failure of the French Directory, and from the same cause, seems to have authorized a belief that the form of a plurality, however promising in theory, is impracticable with men constituted with the ordinary passions. ”

“ Thus, in like manner, so-called collective nouns are simply comprehensive singular designations of plurality. Now, the speaker or writer may choose to think of the collective of which he is speaking as a unity or as a plurality, and the way in which he chooses to regard it may affect the concord; nay, it may even affect the gender.
The most common case is where a plural verb follows a singular collective noun: as, ‘The whole nation seem to be running out of their wits’ (Smollett, Humphrey Clinker) ; ‘The army of the Queen mean to besiege us’ (Shakespeare, 3 Hen. VI., I. ii.) ”

“ But when we look at the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad. ”

“ A few words by way of preface to a book on the Plurality of the Human Race are necessary as well as advisable. They are especially so when the Author and Editor differ considerably in their opinions, as in this case ”

“ For, just as to separate properties of separate beings, plurality is not attributed, since they are not properties of two things, so, what is common to both preserves an indivisible unity, although it belongs, as a whole, to them taken separately. ”

“ Neither by regressing can it reach a lowest limit or origin, in which all diversity is latent; nor by progressing can it reach a highest limit or goal in which all plurality is transcended. This, the pluralist’s extremity, will doubtless be regarded as the singularist’s opportunity. ”

“ No matter how many nouns there may be, as long as it can be shown that they are in apposition, the verb is in the singular number.
§ 480. Collectiveness as opposed to plurality.—In sentences like the meeting was large, the multitude pursue pleasure, meeting, and multitude are each collective nouns; that is, although they present the idea of a single object, that object consists of a plurality of individuals. ”

“ The one and the many are opposed in several ways, of which one is the opposition of the one and plurality as indivisible and divisible; for that which is either divided or divisible is called a plurality, and that which is indivisible or not divided is called one. ”

“ the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. ”

“ In the Alexandrian and early mediæval schools of philosophy, much attention was given to the nature of unity and plurality chiefly called forth by the question of the Trinity. In the last two centuries whole sciences have been created out of the notion of plurality, and yet speculation on the nature of plurality has dwindled away. ”

“ It is further necessary to consider that unity and plurality are accidents supervening to an object according as it consists of many elements or of one. This is fully explained in the book called Metaphysics. ”

“ In order to resolve this point, we may observe that all plurality is a consequence of division. Now division is twofold; one is material, and is division of the continuous; from this results number, which is a species of quantity. Number in this sense is found only in material things which have quantity. The other kind of division is called formal, and is effected by opposite or diverse forms; and this kind of division results in a multitude, which does not belong to a genus, but is transcendental in the sense in which being is divided by one and by many. ”

“ If the division between the noble and the common of the human race, as established by birth, by hereditary rank, by unalterable caste, were stronger and deeper and less eradicable than at this day, the real division, as visible in his nature, between man and man, of the noble and the common, the difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, his pleasures, his capacity no less than his power of enjoying, was a mere nothing then, to what it is to-day. ”

“ And, if there can be recognized any such primitive unity, recognition of it will help us to interpret the ultimate diversity. We shall understand better how in each society the several components of the political agency have come to be what we now see them, and how those of one society are related to those of another. ”

“ The modern type of pluralism, starting at the level of self-consciousness, posits a multitude of monads or individuals acting towards self-conservation and self-realization, and can, it is believed, do full justice alike to law and contingency, to spontaneity and fixity. The pluralist, operating on the principle of continuity, assumes that there are conscious individuals or monads in various degrees lower than man down to the minimal point of complete unconsciousness ”

“ The group in relation must be the object of our study if that study is to be fruitful for politics. The pluralists have pointed out diversity but no pluralist has yet answered satisfactorily the question to which we must find an answer—What is to be done with this diversity? ”

“ We have the variety and multiplicity on the one hand in the states or qualities of the thing, its unity on the other in the form of the law connecting these states, but how the variety belongs to or is possessed by the unity we know no better than before. Thus the old problem of substance returns upon us; the many qualities must somehow be the qualities of a single thing, but precisely how are we to conceive this union of the one and the many? ”

“ We assume Unity or Identity; you assume Difference, and seek to reconstitute unity only through mastership on the one hand and reverent obedience on the other. We do not deny Difference; we recognize the truth of spiritual Degree; we merely elect the common element as the material out of which to constitute, and the force by which to operate, the State.
Now my judgment is, that either the truth of a common Manhood or the truth of spiritual Rank may be made primary in a State, and that with admirable results, provided it be duly allied and tempered with its opposite. ”

“ Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. ”

“ Some of the pluralists tend to lose the individual in the group; others, to abandon the state for the group. But the individual, the group, the state—they are all there to be reckoned with—we cannot ignore or minimize any one. The relation of individual to group, of group to group, of individual and group to state—the part that labor is to have in the new state—these are the questions to the consideration of which this book is directed. ”

“ Hence the familiar idea of the universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the physiological is universal—as universal, to repeat, as it is indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the lawful or the lawless is universal. ”

“ Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely 'external' environment of some sort or amount. Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word 'and' trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. 'Ever not quite' has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. ”

“ We see that we are dependent on the whole, while seeing that we are one with it in creating it. We are separate that we may belong, that we may greatly produce. Our separateness, our individual initiative, are the very factors which accomplish our true unity with men. We shall see in the chapter on “Political Pluralism” that “irreducible pluralism” and the self-unifying principle are not contradictory.
85 XII
THE CROWD FALLACY MANY people are ready to accept the truth that association is the law of life. ”

“ They are not given except as contained in and as qualifying some whole, and their independence consists merely in our vicious abstraction. Nor when we pass to the relational stage does diversity cease to be the inseparable adjective of unity. For the relations themselves cannot exist except within and as the adjectives of an underlying unity. The whole that is analyzed into relations and terms can fall into the background and be obscured, but it can never be dissipated. ”

“ We shall make our division on the principle of proceeding from the most general, or those which relate to society in its most extensive sense, to those which are less general, relating to society in its more specific and determinate sense, and finally to those which are the most particular, relating to separate portions and members of society, to the family and to the individual. ”

“ On the other hand, if the whole nation makes a law for the whole nation, it is only considering itself; and if a relation is set up, it is between the whole community regarded from one point of view, and the whole community regarded from another point of view, without any division of that whole. ”

“ Idealistic pluralism is distinguished from this pluralism of mere caprice, of pure self-will, by the doctrine that the many Primary Realities, when we discover them in their undermost foundations, are all rational intelligences, and that they therefore spontaneously constitute, not indeed any Unit, in which their freedom would be swamped and crushed, but a rational Union, or Harmony, which is therefore as indestructible as they are. ”

“ Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?—would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale. ”

“ The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any one of its parts from the control of the totality, would ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees--as well might you claim absolute purity for a glass of water because it contains but a single little cholera-germ. The independence, however infinitesimal, of a part, however small, would be to the Absolute as fatal as a cholera-germ. ”

“ So there are now going by the name of Personal Idealism two theories, quite divergent upon most of the prime philosophical issues, with little in common but the affirmation of a fundamental pluralism in the world of ultimate reality, and with profoundly different conceptions as to what that pluralism means. Such a confusion in the use of a prominent term is an unfortunate obstacle in the way of the very readers whom we all wish to enlighten and convince. ”

“ The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul—our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment—our republican idea, individual citizenship. ”

“ The Customs, Manners, and Habits of the People, do, as I have said, form one Part of the Political Constitution; if these are altered therefore, this must be changed likewise; and here, as in the Natural Body, the Disorder of any Part will, in its Consequence, affect the whole.
One known Division of the People in this Nation is into the Nobility, the Gentry, and the Commonalty. ”

“ This is what culture gives. Here then we also perceive that with the development of variety and complexity, the element of unity becomes more active and manifest. This view of the progressive unitization of the individual man in a psychological aspect, is very suggestive when taken in connection with the wane of despotism and the growth of liberty, as society and government advance, and it becomes ever less the province of law to govern, and also to regulate. ”

“ The representatives of the nation are incessantly employed on a social compact, of which the component powers, separated, but not divided, all contribute, by their reciprocal action, to harmony and unity. ”

“ The whole question revolves in very truth about the word 'some.' Radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for the legitimacy of the notion of some: each part of the world is in some ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other parts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are obvious, and their differences are obvious to view. ”

“ Once more:—the nature of the Absolute State consists herein,—that all individual powers be directed towards the Life of the Race,—in place of which Race the State puts the aggregate of its own Citizens. ”

“ Every one who entered this society was obliged, at least so long as he continued to be a member of it, to lay aside all distinctions arising from rank, nation, or religion, in short, every general mark or distinction whatever, and to submit himself to the condition of universal equality. ”

“ A declaration of rights made by bodies politic is construed as an essay upon the individual relations of man to man. Arguing to their own satisfaction for the unity in origin of the races of man, they draw thence the conclusion of his present equality. ”