‘The world is one,’ therefore, just so far as we experience it to be concatenated, one by as many definite conjunctions as appear.  But then also not one by just as many definite DISjunctions as we find.  The oneness and the manyness of it thus obtain in respects which can be separately named.  It is neither a universe pure and simple nor a multiverse pure and simple.  And its various manners of being one suggest, for their accurate ascertainment, so many distinct programs of scientific work.  Thus the pragmatic question ’What is the oneness known-as?  What practical difference will it make?’ saves us from all feverish excitement over it as a principle of sublimity and carries us forward into the stream of experience with a cool head.  The stream may indeed reveal far more connexion and union than we now suspect, but we are not entitled on pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in any respect in advance.

It is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness can mean, that probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude which we have reached.  Nevertheless there are possibly some radically monistic souls among you who are not content to leave the one and the many on a par.  Union of various grades, union of diverse types, union that stops at non-conductors, union that merely goes from next to next, and means in many cases outer nextness only, and not a more internal bond, union of concatenation, in short; all that sort of thing seems to you a halfway stage of thought.  The oneness of things, superior to their manyness, you think must also be more deeply true, must be the more real aspect of the world.  The pragmatic view, you are sure, gives us a universe imperfectly rational.  The real universe must form an unconditional unit of being, something consolidated, with its parts co-implicated through and through.  Only then could we consider our estate completely rational.  There is no doubt whatever that this ultra-monistic way of thinking means a great deal to many minds.  “One Life, One Truth, one Love, one Principle, One Good, One God”—­I quote from a Christian Science leaflet which the day’s mail brings into my hands—­beyond doubt such a confession of faith has pragmatically an emotional value, and beyond doubt the word ‘one’ contributes to the value quite as much as the other words.  But if we try to realize intellectually what we can possibly mean by such a glut of oneness we are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations again.  It means either the mere name One, the universe of discourse; or it means the sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and concatenations; or, finally, it means some one vehicle of conjunction treated as all-inclusive, like one origin, one purpose, or one knower.  In point of fact it always means one knower to those who take it intellectually to-day.  The one knower involves, they think, the other forms of conjunction.  His world must have all its parts co-implicated in the one logical-aesthetical-teleological unit-picture which is his eternal dream.