The Stability of Truth Author:David Starr Jordan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill REALITY AND MONISM " The analysis which is necessary to let us master the phenomena of life furnishes us with a surer base than that which leads direct... more »ly to explain such phenomena."—Alfred Giard. ONE of the conspicuous features of modern philosophical discussion is a revival in the name of science of the doctrine of Monism. A phase of this doctrine is that of " a completely unified knowledge in which physical and mental world meet on equal terms." This, according to James, was " the original Greek ideal to which men must surely return." The doctrine of monism, in whatever form, proclaims the essential unity of things which, in their various contacts with human experience, appear to us different. The primal conception of monism is that there is one spirit or one essence in all that exists, whether ponderable or imponderable, whether visible or invisible, tangible or impalpable; that the whole cognizable world is constituted and has been developed in accordance with one common fundamental law. This one is defined as " the concreteunified whole of all that is." In this view we are to conceive that all categories at bottom are one, matter and force, sense and spirit, object and subject, Nature and God. This fundamental conception of monism has never been made really intelligible, because it can be stated in no terms of human experience. There is no way known to us by which we can expose it to scientific tests. Whether it be the noblest generalization of philosophy or a mere play on words, no one can say, for no one knows. No one yet knows how to find out. According to Professor Stuart, " There are two ways in which it may be sought to establish a monistic hypothesis: (1) We may try to synthesize all descriptive science to the end of showing how all phases of reality...« less