MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO A THEORY OF MONADS OUTLINES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY BY H. WILDON CARR, D.LITT. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED MAR 27 1926 PREFACE In this book I have brought together studies which have occupied me for many years, and have tried to impress on them the directive force of my general philosophy of life. They do not pretend to the completeness of system, they are not meant to suggest that a final solution of the philosophical problem is to be attained along any definite speculative line, they are not even my voyage of discovery, they are my exploration of the great problem of existence. Yet while I am conscious that I may have raised more problems than I have elucidated, with regard to one problem at least, I think I may claim to have made an advance. For many years it seemed to me that philosophy was paralysed by the inability to offer any escape from the solipsistic dilemma, and in the theory of the monads this difficulty has always seemed to assume its most intractable form. The argument which I have developed in my second chapter and illustrated in my tenth, may not appeal with the same force to every one, but it is the argument which satisfies me on this point. Each chapter has an individual theme and may be read by itself. Yet the themes are not strung together as beads on a thread. They present, at least in their author's mind, a definite order in the development of the philosophical problem, and they are all inspired by the motive of evolving a theory consistent with the principles of the new science. Chapters VI., VII. and VIII. contain the substance of |