Note 124 — Chapter I · GASSENDI

This question of the relations and comparative values of the monistic and pluralistic ideals, of the One Being and the being at one, is too big to be discussed incidentally. It has been touched upon by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller in The Riddles of the Sphinx (p. 353): ‘We may reasonably conclude then that monism is a failure, that by assuming unity at the outset it incapacitates itself for the task of explaining phenomenal plurality, and a fortiori for the still higher task of really uniting the Many in a significant union’; p. 355: ‘And Leibnitz might well take for granted that as the Many do interact, they must be capable of interacting, and that it was unnecessary to demonstrate that what actually existed was also capable of existing.’