in discussing the notion of a mixture:  ’The two principles, of rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred, will have to be absolutely separate and independent.  For if there were any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate explanation ... and the theory, having thus become monistic,’[9] would resolve itself into the same alternative once more:  is the single principle rational through and through or not?

‘Can a plurality of reals be possible?’ asks Mr. Bradley, and answers, ‘No, impossible.’  For it would mean a number of beings not dependent on each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict.  For to be ‘many’ is to be related, the word having no meaning unless the units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger reality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper selves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[10] Either absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence—­this, then, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers.  Of course ‘independence,’ if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only conclusion allowable is that, in Ritchie’s words, ’every single event is ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole to which it belongs.’  The whole complete block-universe through-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all!

Professor Taylor is so naif in this habit of thinking only in extremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from under their own feet in not consistently following it themselves.  What pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the pattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred.  What Professor Taylor thinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of universe is logically impossible, and that a totality of things interrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that can be seriously thought out at all.[11]

Meanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this dogmatic extreme.

If chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists interpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out of a dice box as double sixes are.  If free-will is spoken of, that must mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners to-day as a Maori chief was a hundred years ago.  It is as likely—­I am using Mr. McTaggart’s examples—­that a majority of Londoners will burn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as likely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing a murder,[12] and so forth, through various suppositions that no indeterminist ever sees real reason to make.