Chapter 76
Unity and multiplicity; wholes and parts; how many things can be one.
104 passages · 44 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Few questions reach as far through these volumes as the question of how many things can be one. It arises when a soldier asks what makes an army more than a crowd, when a naturalist wonders whether a coral is one animal or a thousand, and when a theologian asks how a single God can be present to countless creatures. It arises again when a critic demands that a poem hold its many parts in a single design. Pascal states the puzzle in its plainest form. Men make an army, houses a town, units a number, yet no single man, house or unit is the whole1. Every later question is a variation on this one. Is the whole something real beyond its parts, or only a name for them gathered together? Is the universe one thing or many? How do individuals belong to a society, a church, a body? How does the mind take hold of variety at all? The idea is great for these books because it joins metaphysics, natural science, religion, politics and art. The positions an author takes in one of these fields tend to carry over into the others.
The first question is whether a whole is more than its parts. Several authors answer that it is, because parts in a true whole depend on one another and on the whole that contains them. Pascal observes that we cannot know the part without the whole, nor the whole without the parts2. Carlyle makes the same point in physiological terms. Health is unity and wholeness, and sickness shows itself when separate organs begin to announce themselves3. Emerson gives the principle a moral and cosmic scope. The world, he says, is whole and refuses to be disparted, and every attempt to sunder one thing from another fails4. Darwin, working from observation rather than intuition, reaches a cognate conclusion about living bodies. The whole organisation is so tied together that a change in one part brings changes in others5.
Against this stands the Buddhist analysis, which denies that a whole is anything over and above its parts. The discussion opens by asking whether a whole exists besides its parts, whether these are taken singly or together6. It answers that it does not. A composite is only parts placed in a certain relation, and when the parts are examined one by one no whole is found. The self, likewise, is only a collection of constituent groups7,8. Pascal does not deny the whole, but he feels the force of this dissolving analysis. A man is a whole, he grants, yet dissected he becomes many parts. Theology is one science and also many9. His formula that all is one and all is different, with many natures and vocations in a single man, holds both truths together without reducing either10.
The difficulty grows sharper when one asks what counts as a single thing in nature. Plato distinguishes compound things, which can be broken up, from uncompounded things that cannot. He sets the many beautiful objects against the one beauty11, which suggests that true unity belongs to what is simple. Darwin’s zoophytes trouble any simple rule. The polyps of a coralline act as one body, which raises the question of what an individual is12. Their appendages belong to the whole zoophyte as roots belong to a tree, not to any single polyp13. Compound animals and trees, he concludes, unite separate individuals in a common stock, so that buds and polyps are individuals only partly divided14. In Darwin individuality becomes a matter of degree, where Plato had treated it as a matter of kind.
The second great question concerns the universe itself. The Stoics hold that all things are bound together in one whole15. Marcus Aurelius returns to the thought again and again. All things refer to one perception and one movement16. All things are interconnected in one substance, each following another in order17. They are bound together in one universe, one god, one substance, one law, one common reason, one truth18. Yet he does not simply assert this. He repeatedly sets it against an alternative: either all substance is one, or else it is dispersed19, and the universe is either mutual involution and dispersion or unity and order20. Unity is for him a conviction he chooses, not a certainty he can demonstrate. Its practical fruit is that all men work toward one end, knowingly or not, and even those who resist events serve the whole21. Bodies cooperate with the universe as the parts of our body cooperate with us22. Pope restates the Stoic vision for the eighteenth century. All parts are members of one stupendous whole, and no part may claim the place of another23. Channing finds the same lesson in every object, complex in itself yet knit into a whole in which each thing serves all24.
The Romantics and the scientists take this a step further. They hold that the whole is present in each part and that diversity springs from a single stuff. Emerson holds that the entire system of things is represented in every particle25. Every thing contains all the powers of nature and is made of one stuff26, and a single stuff serves up nature’s dream-like variety27. The infinite relations of things are many yet one28. He credits Plato with perceiving globe and universe as expressions of an all-dissolving Unity29. Shelley sings that nothing in the world is single, since all things mingle in one another’s being30. Carlyle detects in both the philosophies he examines a principle of unity, nature striving to become whole again31. Dante had already seen the scattered things of the universe clasped in one volume of love, compounded yet one light32. Faraday shows a more modest version in the laboratory. Every part of a magnet contains the dual power, though it is evident only at the ends33. Newcomb argues from astronomy that the universe shows unity in its whole structure and diversity only in details. It is not a chaos of separately originated things34, as similar regions, common chemical elements and average motions across vast distances attest35. Here the Stoic intuition receives empirical support, though Newcomb claims only a unity of structure and makes no claim about reason or providence.
When the one behind the many is identified with the divine, the question becomes theological. The Bhagavad-Gita offers the most thoroughgoing answer. The yogi sees one Life in good and evil alike36. All is the one divine being pervading all diversity37, one Spirit sensed as one force everywhere though manifold38. The whole universe is enfolded in one Body39. God is not manifold yet subsists in all that lives40. Separate creatures issue from the One and blend into it again41, and true knowledge sees one inseparable life in all separate lives42. Marcus Aurelius speaks in strikingly similar terms of one light, one substance and one intelligent soul distributed among many bodies43.
Christian writers make the One the source of the many, and they also treat it as the place where a scattered soul finds rest. Augustine says that in turning from the One Good he lost himself among a multiplicity of things44. Thomas à Kempis says that the man who sees all things in one is steadfast in God45. Dante describes goodness multiplied through the stars while revolving on its own unity46. He describes all thoughts issuing from the first mind as numbers issue from unity47, and the eternal Might dispersed over countless mirrors yet remaining whole and one48. More’s Utopians, divided into many sects, agree in one chief God conceived in differing ways49. Browne wonders whether, as a common nature unites individuals into a species, one universal spirit may unite all things50. Pope speaks of one all-extending soul51. Shelley sets the One that remains against the many that change and pass, life staining “the white radiance of Eternity”52. Emerson gathers these strands into the Over-soul. It is the Unity containing every particular being, so that we see parts while the whole is the soul53. All things resolve into the ever-blessed ONE54, and even earnest debate makes a company aware of one mind55. In his “Brahma” the one spirit is at once wings, doubter and hymn56.
Yet divine unity cannot simply be the unity of finite things. Augustine asks whether God fills creatures with His whole self or with parts, or is wholly everywhere57. Browne holds that nothing is truly alone that is not truly one, and that created things fall short of unity and are many58. Milton’s Adam contrasts God, One and infinite, with man, who must be multiplied by number to remedy his defective unity59. Two writers go further and suggest that the highest unity contains plurality. Pascal says all is one, one in the other, like the Three Persons60. Lessing argues that God’s unity is not that of finite things and does not exclude a kind of plurality61.
The same patterns govern thought about society. Aesop’s fable of the body’s members, which perish when they refuse to cooperate62, reappears in Plutarch’s account of the state as one body63. Epictetus holds that a foot is a foot only as part of the body, and that the individual likewise exists for the whole64,65. Marcus calls rational beings limbs of one system made for cooperation66. He insists that nothing harms the part which benefits the whole67,68. The unsocial man is a severed limb or a lopped branch69,70, though Marcus adds the consoling thought that he can grow back69. Pascal turns the image toward religion. He imagines a body of thinking members71. A member that learns what body it belongs to would submit to that body’s will, even to perishing for it72. Separated from the body it dies, yet it believes itself whole73. Haskell’s account of Gettysburg shows the darker side of such absorption, with individuality drowned in a single mass of men74.
Union is also praised as strength. Aesop’s oxen resist the lion together and are destroyed apart75, and his bundle of sticks cannot be broken while single sticks can76. Schiller stages the dispute in William Tell. Stauffacher holds that even the weak grow strong through union, while Tell replies that the strong man is strongest alone77.
That exchange opens a real controversy among the moderns. Hobbes holds that a multitude becomes one person through the unity of its representer, not of the represented78. On this view the unity is made, not found. Schiller warns that unity achieved by suppressing variety makes administration imperfect79. Montaigne argues that perfect friendship is single and cannot be multiplied80. Emerson agrees that conversation is one-to-one, and that in a group the persons merge into a social soul81, though he also sees the Deity in friends making many one82. Against the reform associations of his day he insists that no society can be as large as one man83. Concert is no more potent than individual force84, and true union is inward and is achieved through each member’s isolation, while forced covenants cramp everyone in them85. The Stoic part lives for the whole. In Emerson’s view a whole is worth having only if each part is first whole in itself.
The church brings these strains to a focus. Paul’s body has many members and diverse gifts from one Spirit, and none may say it has no need of another86. Luther uses the image to deny that there are two bodies, one spiritual and one temporal87. Milton finds unity in many moderate varieties, contiguous rather than continuous, like branches from one root88. Pascal gives the balanced formula. Plurality without unity is confusion, and unity without plurality is tyranny89. Papists err by excluding plurality and Huguenots by excluding unity90.
Finally, unity is a canon of art and a drive of the mind. Augustine notes that a whole made of successive parts pleases more than its parts taken severally91. Beauty, he says, arises from wholeness and from the fit of part to whole92. Burke requires that great objects be one, simple and entire93. Coleridge defines richness as variety held in unity94, a unity needed if the mind is to grasp variety at all95. Hugo subordinates secondary plots to one action because the mind can grasp only one ensemble at a time96. Sainte-Beuve cites Buffon’s demand that every subject be treated as one unbroken whole97. Schiller laments that the Greeks received unified forms from nature, while the dividing understanding leaves moderns fragmented98.
The mind’s unifying power works beyond art as well. Wordsworth shows imagination fusing a fleet into one person and then resolving it into many ships99. Emerson finds the same instinct in the scholar, who ties many things into one nature100, and in every mind that seeks resemblance101. Mazzini faults Goethe for never tracing things to a common source102. In science the unity sought is more modest. Faraday’s attractions resolve into a dual kind103, and Darwin’s forms of life fall into groups subordinate to groups104.
What remains open is whether this unity is discovered or imposed. It may be a real whole present in each part, as Emerson and the Gita hold. It may be a perspective on parts that are alone real, as the Buddhist texts hold. It may be a unity conferred by a representer, as in Hobbes. Pascal’s counsel, to exclude neither the one nor the many, is less a solution than a statement of the problem that runs through all these books.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: God 6c