as shape, size, and mobility, could be thought as truly
primeval and universal. In this wise a conception like our modern
physical conception of matter came at length into vogue. Now the problem
of which these were all tentative solutions is, in general, the problem
of _metaphysics_; although this term belongs to a later era, arising
only from the accidental place of the discussion of first principles
_after physics_ in the system of Aristotle. _The attempt to secure a
most fundamental conception which attaches some definite meaning to the
reality including and informing every particular thing, is metaphysics._

[Sidenote: Monism and Pluralism.]

Sect. 61. It must not be supposed that metaphysics is dogmatically
committed to the reduction of all reality to a unity of nature. It is
quite consistent with its purpose that the parts of reality should be
found to compose a group, or an indefinite multitude of irreducibly
different entities. But it is clear that even such an account of things
deals with what is true of all reality, and even in acknowledging the
variety of its constituents, attributes to them some kind of
relationship. The degree to which such a relationship is regarded as
intimate and essential, determines the degree to which any metaphysical
system is _monistic_,[159:10] rather than _pluralistic_. But the
significance of this difference will be better appreciated after a
further differentiation of the metaphysical problem has been noted.

[Sidenote: Ontology and Cosmology Concern Being and Process.]

Sect. 62. It has already been suggested that the test of Thales's
conception lay in the possibility of deriving nature from it. A world
principle must be fruitful. Now an abstract distinction has prevailed
more or less persistently in metaphysics, between _the general
definition of being_, called _ontology_, and the study of the processes
wherewith being is divided into things and events. This latter study has
to do primarily with the details of experience enumerated and
systematized by the natural sciences. _To reconcile_ these, _or the
course of nature, with the fundamental definition of being_, is the
problem of _cosmology_. Cosmology is the construing of the _prima facie_
reality in terms of the essential reality. It is the proof and the
explanation of ontology. Since the most familiar part of the _prima
facie_ reality, the part almost exclusively noticed by the naive mind,
is embraced within the field o