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Hartshorne says: "All individuals are one in principle, but some are immensely diverse in degree. It becomes only a verbal question whether we say, the least monad is a very low-grade 'mind' or 'soul,' or something different from this only by representing peculiarly low values of the same variables by which minds or souls are compared with one another" ("The Compound Individual": 208).

But just what are the "variables" to which Hartshorne refers—or, better, what should he be referring to if the variables in question are to be the strictly "metaphysical," and so universal, variables he holds them to be? What else could he refer to than the "transcendentals" definitive of an "individual" (i.e., "concrete singular," and so "event," or "individual")?

25 April 2005