METAPHYSICS seems to me more prudent to adhere to the grand Aristotelian principle that there is no individuation without actualization—the counterpart of the cardinal anti-Platonic principle that there is no actualization without individuation In the English-speaking world metaphysics was flourishing at the beginning of the twentieth century, with Peirce in America extolling the principle of cosmic love, and the neo-Hegelians in Britain tracing the lineaments of the Absolute As the century progressed philosophers became more and more hostile to metaphysics; this hostility climaxed with the positivism of the 1930s, but continued influential well into the second half of the century With the approach of the twenty-first century, metaphysics once more became respectable, but with a difference The place once occupied by the monistic metaphysics of the British idealists is now taken by the pluralistic, indeed exuberant, metaphysics of the explorers of possible worlds It will be interesting to see whether the twentyfirst century exhibits a similar cycle of metaphysical thought 191