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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
This paper is concerned with a question in metaphysics. The question is: Is the world ultimately one, or is it many? It is neither a very profound nor a very complicated question. It is, on the contrary, very simple. But despite its simplicity, it expresses the most basic of all metaphysical problems.
When two metaphysical problems, A and B, are so related that the statement of B assumes an answer to A, then we may fairly infer that A is more basic than B, and B less basic than A.
1 Howard Selsam, What is Philosophy? (International Publishers, N. Y., 1938) p. 22.
2 Opus cited (Scribner's, N. Y. and London, 1929), pp. 29–31.
3 Frazer, J. G., Psyche's Task (Macmillan, London, 1909), pp. 82–83.
4 Etymologically, “matter” derives from “mater” and “pattern” derives from “pater”, the Latin, respectively, for mother and father. To contemporary Mediterraneans, hence, Plato's contribution may have seemed considerably less novel than it appears to us.
5 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism (Open Court, 1930), page 3.