The world is full of partial stories that run parallel to one another, beginning or ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but we can not unify them completely in our minds. In following your life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them alternatively upon his readers attention. It follows that whoever says the whole world tells one story utters another of those monostic dogmas that man believes at his risk. It is easy to see the world’s history pluralistically, as a rope of which each fibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of each cross-section of the rope as an absolute single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal series into one being living an undivided life, is harder.
- Pg 62, Pragmatism – William James, ISBN 978-0-7607-4996-8
