Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/577

No. 5.] individuals" (p. 218). This formula is tested by its application to the course of evolution in all its principal stages.

In Book III our author applies the principles established to the construction of his own Weltanschauung. Whatever is real is finite. The extended world and space — the world-process and time — all are finite. Time, Becoming, and Evil are the corruptions of Eternity, Being, and Perfection. Eternity is not the negation of Time, but the ideal into which Time is ultimately to pass. Matter is a form of Force. Force implies a sense of effort, hence intelligence and will. An atom is a constant manifestation of divine Force or Will exercised at a definite point. Force implies resistance. The divine Force or God must interact with other ultimate realities, viz. ourselves. The one ultimate reality, God, appears to us as the material world; the other ultimate realities, the Transcendental Egos, appear as our present phenomenal selves. The cosmos of our experience is a stress or interaction between God and the Egos. God is finite, one among the Many, their supreme ruler and aim, and not the One underlying the Many. As the Egos are ultimate realities, God cannot annihilate them; the most that can be done is to bring them into harmony with the Divine Will. The world-process is designed to bring this about. It is the finiteness of the Deity that makes this long and arduous process necessary. Evil is imperfect harmony with the divine will, and as God is not infinite he is not responsible for this resistance and disharmony on the part of others. In order to subdue the resisting Egos which he cannot destroy, the Deity immerses them in Matter, thus reducing them to an all but unconscious state and gradually accustoming them to the order which the divine wisdom has seen to be best. It is the function of matter to repress consciousness. The Transcendental Egos that underlie our phenomenal selves and are at once the basis and end of our development are eternal and immortal. The question of our future life depends upon the relation of the self to the Ego. In so far as the self is spiritually developed, and has attained to its ideal, the Ego, it will persist in the future. Possibly a single Ego may be manifested in several selves and this may explain Sex and Love. The work closes with an appendix of ten pages on "Free Will and Necessity." We make no attempt at a criticism of details. Doubtless some of the apparent inconsistencies and difficulties are due to the necessary limitations in treating so large a subject in so brief a compass. The author's avowed contempt for epistemology and his uncritical acceptance of individualism seem to us sources of real weakness to the work as a whole. The polemic against Infinity deserves comparison with Locke's attack on Innate Ideas, and it is in this that the work makes its most important contribution to metaphysics. The style is clear, and