As the reader has seen, this Absolute has nothing in common with the God in which Berkeley believed, and in which the plain man usually believes.  It is the night in which all cats are gray, and there appears to be no reason why any one should harbor toward it the least sentiment of awe or veneration.

Whether such reasonings as Mr. Bradley’s should be accepted as valid or should not, must be decided after a careful examination into the foundations upon which they rest and the consistency with which inferences are drawn from premises.  I do not wish to prejudge the matter.  But it is worth while to set forth the conclusions at which he arrives, that it may be clearly realized that the associations which often hang about the word “idealism” should be carefully stripped away when we are forming our estimate of this or that philosophical doctrine.

[1] “Principles of Psychology,” Part VII, Chapter VI, section 404.

[2] “Principles,” section 148.

CHAPTER XIV

MONISM AND DUALISM

54.  THE MEANING OF THE WORDS.—­In common life men distinguish between minds and material things, thus dividing the things, which taken together make up the world as we know it, into two broad classes.  They think of minds as being very different from material objects, and of the latter as being very different from minds.  It does not occur to them to find in the one class room for the other, nor does it occur to them to think of both classes as “manifestations” or “aspects” of some one “underlying reality.”  In other words, the plain man to-day is a Dualist.

In the last chapter (section 52) I have called him a Naive Realist; and here I shall call him a Naive Dualist, for a man may regard mind and matter as quite distinct kinds of things, without trying to elevate his opinion, through reflection, into a philosophical doctrine.  The reflective man may stand by the opinion of the plain man, merely trying to make less vague and indefinite the notions of matter and of mind.  He then becomes a Philosophical Dualist.  There are several varieties of this doctrine, and I shall consider them a little later (section 58).

But it is possible for one to be less profoundly impressed by the differences which characterize matter and mind.  One may feel inclined to refer mental phenomena to matter, and to deny them the prominence accorded them by the dualist.  On the other hand, one may be led by one’s reflections to resolve material objects into mere ideas, and to claim that they can have no existence except in a mind.  Finally, it is possible to hold that both minds and material things, as we know them, are only manifestations, phenomena, and that they must be referred to an ulterior “reality” or “substance.”  One may claim that they are “aspects” of the one reality, which is neither matter nor mind.

These doctrines are different forms of Monism.  In whatever else they differ from one another, they agree in maintaining that the universe does not contain two kinds of things fundamentally different.  Out of the duality of things as it seems to be revealed to the plain man they try to make some kind of a unity.