Thus, unless one mistook the meaning of motion, which might
well be, the scientific synthesis commonly called Unity was the
scientific analysis commonly called Multiplicity. The two things
were the same, all forms being shifting phases of motion.
Granting this ocean of colliding atoms, the last hope of
humanity, what happened if one dropped the sounder into the abyss
-- let it go -- frankly gave up Unity altogether? What was Unity?
Why was one to be forced to affirm it?
Here everybody flatly refused help. Science seemed content with
its old phrase of "larger synthesis," which was well enough for
science, but meant chaos for man. One would have been glad to
stop and ask no more, but the anarchist bomb bade one go on, and
the bomb is a powerful persuader. One could not stop, even to
enjoy the charms of a perfect gas colliding seventeen million
times in a second, much like an automobile in Paris. Science
itself had been crowded so close to the edge of the abyss that
its attempts to escape were as metaphysical as the leap, while an
ignorant old man felt no motive for trying to escape, seeing that
the only escape possible lay in the form of vis a tergo commonly
called Death. He got out his Descartes again; dipped into his
Hume and Berkeley; wrestled anew with his Kant; pondered solemnly
over his Hegel and Schopenhauer and Hartmann; strayed gaily away
with his Greeks -- all merely to ask what Unity meant, and what
happened when one denied it.
Pages:
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633