ABSTRACT
Reality being a single systematic whole, the nature of its constituent elements is only finally intelligible in the light of the whole system. Hence each of its “appearances” if considered as a whole in itself, must be more or less contradictory. But some “appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole more adequately than others, and have therefore a higher degree of reality. In a systematic unity, the whole can exist only in so far as it expresses its nature in the system of its parts, and again the parts can have no being except as the whole expresses itself through them. To the degree to which this condition is departed from by any of the types of system familiar to metaphysicians, those systems fall short of being perfectly systematic. Some “appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole more adequately than others, and have therefore a higher degree of reality.
