Note 89 — Chapter VIII

It is easy for "analysis" to separate society into "individual" monads, and impossible for "synthesis"—once the validity of the analytic process is accepted—to put society together again. In fact, once the analytic process is begun, and once its results are accepted as anything more than matters of logical convenience, all unity and all organic connections, whether in the social or in other fields, seem to vanish like a dissolving show. There is a psychological doctrine of monadism, quite as logical as the sociological monadology here criticized, which finds it impossible to link together even the elements in a single individual's mind. (See William James, Principles of Psychology, 1905 ed., vol. i, pp. 179-80.) Into what inextricable difficulties one falls, in pursuing the monadistic logic, is more dramatically illustrated than by anything else I know by Bradley's Appearance and Reality, esp. chaps. ii and iii. The most useful viewpoint seems to be as follows: unity is as much an object of immediate knowledge as is plurality,—both being, in fact, the products of reflective thought. And unity is no more called upon to justify itself, before we recognize its existence, than is plurality. Cf. William James, The Meaning of Truth, New York, 1909, p. xiii; and also his Psychology, vol. i, pp. 224-25. Cf. also the writings of Professor John Dewey.