Unity of thought

“ Why has so fundamental an inversion of reality come to be widely accepted? The answer is presumably because the achievement of genuine unity of mind and heart among peoples whose experiences are deeply at variance is thought to be entirely beyond the capacity of society’s existing institutions. ”

“ for if simple unity could be adequately perceived by the sight or by any other sense, then, as we were saying in the case of the finger, there would be nothing to attract towards being; but when there is some contradiction always present, and one is the reverse of one and involves the conception of plurality, then thought begins to be aroused within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision asks 'What is absolute unity?' This is the way in which the study of the one has a power of drawing and converting the mind to the contemplation of true being. ”

“ Now nothing can be more certain respecting the thinking principle, than its individuality. It has been said, that the mind can entertain but one thought at one time; and certain it is, from the nature of attention, and from the association of ideas, that unity is one of the principal characteristics of mind. ”

“ So that to our thought ideas appear as constituting one unique whole, a unity, that something which we call 102 science, truth, knowledge. They are not a multitude, for the simple reason that in multiplicity they would be unthinkable. Their connection with and participation in an absolute unity come from the fact that they are the object of thought, and are therefore submitted to its activity, whereby they are ordered, correlated, organised, unified. In order that we may say that one idea contains another, or many others, we must analyse this first idea and define it. ”

“ But unity of this sort is characteristic of all animal bodies; and, though the mind has this kind of organic unity, it acquires, in proportion as self-consciousness develops, over and above this kind of unity, a unity of an altogether new and unique kind; a unity which consists in the whole (or the self) being present to consciousness, whether clearly or obscurely, during almost every moment of thought, and pervading and playing some part in the determination of the course of thought and action. ”

“ By means of our own aspiration, we can now grasp, unite, and deepen all the goodwill, genuine feeling, and untiring activity of our day, which was hitherto inadequate only because it lacked inner unity and quickening spiritual power. ”

“ The unity, the identity, the individuality, and the immateriality that appear in the psychic life are thus accounted for as phenomenal and temporal facts exclusively, and with no need of reference to any more simple or substantial agent than the present Thought or 'section' of the stream. ”

“ In enquiring about any one individual we must ask how other individuals enter ‘objectively’ into the unity of its own experience. This unity of its own experience is that individual existing formally. ”

“ If the dualism is to be abandoned, must we instead define Being as an absolute and simple unity? Must we say, the phrase “to be real” means something that cannot be asserted of any object whatever, so long as this object is defined through ideas that refer to it, or so long as the ideas themselves, with their endless search for the Other, trouble our consciousness, emphasize differences, and by their very striving after something beyond, keep our knowledge from its true goal? ”

“ And, even in organic life, the unity, though more perfect and palpable than in the mechanical and inorganic world, is only a perception, a vision,—a necessary mode of realising the unity of the facts. ”

“ For it is precisely the wholeness, and not the mere fragmentariness, the presence, and not the mere absence of unity in our consciousness, the relative attainment, and not the mere postponement of our meanings, which, from this point of view, guides us towards a positive view of how the unity of Being is, in the midst of all the varieties, attained. ”

“ Now if, with this fact in mind, I look back on the world which I attempted thus to describe, I find that the limitation which experience often seems to set to my postulates about the discrimination of facts, may well be founded in the deepest nature of things. The true world, the World of Values or of Appreciation, as rightly viewed by an absolute insight, would be a world of Selves, forming in the unity of their systems One Self. ”

“ We have still to ask how in particular we can most truly conceive the systematic unity which is formed by the whole multiplicity of apparently more or less independent subjects of experience, what degree of permanence and individuality, so far as we can judge, belongs to ourselves as members of that system, and what light is thrown by our ethical, religious, and æsthetic aspirations and ideals on the concrete character of the whole system and on our own place in it. ”

“ Indeed, if there is any one thing that has been demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a doubt by modern research in the physical and psychical realms, it is the significant fact that life is a unity. ”

“ So long as I remain in this consciousness, as I am wholly practical, wholly life and deed, I only know my feeling, desiring, willing, etc., as they occur one after the other, but I do not expressly know myself as the unity and as the principle of these various determinations. ”

“ Here, on a small scale and on a precarious foundation, we may see clearly illustrated and foreshadowed that Life of Reason which is simply the unity given to all existence by a mind in love with the good. ”

“ And every unity, every identity, every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily believing in it. ”

“ This truth, then, in regard to the constitution of the human minds, and of all minds, namely, that they agree in some respect, seems to be a necessary axiom of reason. In all intelligence there is, by the terms of its conception, a universal, that is, an essential unity of kind, however small the point of unity may be. ”

“ The thing as actually present in a given world is there with all its relations; for it to be known as it there exists, they must be known too, and it and they form a single fact for any consciousness large enough to embrace that world as a unity. But what constitutes this singleness of fact, this unity? Empiricism says, Nothing but the relation-yielding matrix in which the several items of the world find themselves embedded,—time, namely, and space, and the mind of the knower. ”

“ Now, on the contrary, the general inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its object—Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity emerge. ”

“ Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world. ”

“ And my practical experience of the way in which my own most clearly defined and conscious purposes depend for their fulfilment upon connection with the interests and purposes of a wider social whole possessed of an organic unity, should help me to understand how the totality of interests and purposes determining the selective attention of different percipients can form, as we have held that it must, the harmonious and systematic unity of the absolute experience. ”

“ And so, when we speak of the final unity of the world-life, we have no right to define that unity merely in terms of the special categories of the distinctively human type of consciousness. Our foregoing sketch of the manner in which, for us men, present, past, future, physical, mental, mathematical, and moral reality seem to be linked in a single system, is not therefore by itself a sufficient basis for stating the way in which the whole meaning of reality gets presented to the single unity of the consciousness that we have already called divine. ”

“ Two reasons, then, exist why our mind in all things seeks unity. Objects are unintelligible, except so far as subjected to a certain perceptible unity, to a form, under which the multiple is made one, and the composite simple. ”

“ Simply, though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a genius for universality. ”

“ And thus if our understanding could ascend to the knowledge of all truths, and embrace them in their unity and in all the relations uniting them, it would see them after arriving at a certain height, notwithstanding their dispersion and divergence as now perceived by us, converge to a centre, in which they unite, like rays of light in the luminous object from which they issued. ”

“ The individuality, however, which is truly free, and nothing short of this will satisfy the Ideal, has not merely to declare itself as universality, but at the same time, to assert its nature as concrete singularity, as the mediating bond which unites and transpierces both sides thus related, which in their self-related actuality subsist as unity. ”

“ Such contemplations as these Materialism, and the popular philosophy of mind and matter, alike forbid: they are only consistent with the Intellectual System.... The view of Life presented by the most refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. ”

“ But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the case for both personality and [p.160] society, no idea can be more immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature ”

“ And we also know, with an astonishing universality of application, how great a multiplicity in unity is necessarily presented by every concrete object and by every mental act and emotional state of every sane human being throughout every moment of his waking life ”

“ So men have said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. ”

“ But this unity, which we must take as an internal fact which consciousness places beyond all doubt, and the conviction of which it is impossible for us to withstand,—this unity produces the knowledge of multiplicity. There is something which affects us and which is not ourselves. Our will, our activity, is impotent to resist other activities which act upon us; there is, then, something which is not ourselves, which is independent of us. ”

“ The only way to get forward with our notion is to treat it pragmatically. Granting the oneness to exist, what facts will be different in consequence? What will the unity be known-as? The world is one—yes, but HOW one? ”

“ Its oneness may thus be said to be both objective and subjective. Thus the more completely our own inner life is the systematic expression of consistent purpose, the greater the right with which we may regard ourselves as being each truly “one thing” and as such truly individual. But when we remember how far what any one of us calls “his” inner life is from exhibiting such complete 127internal coherency of structure, we shall realise that even in the highest case the unity is still a matter of degree. ”

“ So do we mingle our duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere wholly apart and peculiar. ”

“ The fact that intellect, as well as social sympathy, is a distinctive attribute of our nature, might lead us to suppose that either of these two might be supreme, and therefore that there might be more than one method of establishing unity. ”

“ I agree with the Pythagoreans—unity is the perfect principle of creation! Seriously, how can you mistake the principles of opinion for the principles of conduct? I am a Benthamite, a benevolist, as a logician—but the moment I leave the closet for the world, I lay aside speculation for others, and act for myself. ”

“ Here our general concept of Being gives us our test of truth, but our experience shows us special ways in which facts not only can be unified, but are unified. These ways, as far as they go, are for us valid guides. Thus, then, our general and relatively a priori proof of the unity of Being, in the early part of this lecture, has itself been brought into unity with the empirical view of our real world. We see then how the world of our Fourth Conception must be One. ”