gs or mixtures or compromises can obtain. Mr. McTaggart writes,
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
o