I
do not easily fathom why my opponents should
find the separateness so much more easily understandable
that they must needs infect the
whole of finite experience with it, and relegate
---
1 See above, pp. 42 ff.
2 I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles_of_Psychology, vol. I,
pp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to argue (as I am forced
now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two
surfaces and all that lies between) which is both under my pen and on
the table while I write -- the 'claim' that it is two sheets seems so
brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists of sincerity!
106
the unity (now taken as a bare postulate and
no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to
the region of the Absolute's mysteries. I do
not easily fathom this, I say, for the said opponents
are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all
that I can catch in their talk is the substitution
of what is true of certain words for what is
true of what they signify. They stay with the
words, -- not returning to the stream of life
whence all the meaning of them came, and
which is always ready to reabsorb them.
IV
For aught this argument proves, then, we
may continue to believe that one thing can be
known by many knowers.
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