Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/224

210 life of the individual and the species, and (2) that even apart from natural selection there is in all living beings a tendency to greater perfection of being, a tendency which by inheritance would in course of time lead to the variation of species. In man this tendency, which in lower beings is blind and instinctive, assumes the form of conscious striving after pre-determined ends. The rival theory of Atomism is an untenable hypothesis. Material atoms are pure abstractions. If an atom is extended, it must be divisible; if it is a system of forces it cannot be an atom, because force necessarily implies something upon which it acts. Thus each change in nature presupposes changes in nature as a whole. The same thing holds in regard to the changes of the inner life. But while this is true, it is not the less true that all psychical events imply the operation of will; in other words, the ordered succession of events is here purposive. And this holds good, not merely of all organic beings, but even of inorganic things, though of course only of those beings in their inner life. From these considerations the conclusion irresistibly follows, that all forms of reality are but phases of a single Reality or Will; in other words, that the totality of psychical events are but the modes in which the one Unity unfolds its essential content with absolute spontaneity.

Is this Idealistic Pantheism inconsistent with the religious consciousness? If that consciousness consists in the feeling of reverence, based upon the perception of our finitude, and of faith in infinite goodness, it is a doctrine which is in perfect harmony with religion. It may be objected that, in denying the personality of God, Pantheism cuts at the root of all religion. To this objection the answer is, that while the inner nature of the All-one is no doubt different in kind from ours, yet God must be conceived rather as beyond than below personality. We may therefore speak of the holiness, wisdom, goodness, and blessedness of God, if only we remember that these predicates are but symbols of a nature which transcends our power of conception. Thus an Idealistic Pantheism at once affirms the immanence and the transcendence of God: He is manifested in the world, and yet He is not identical with it.

After thus showing the relation of his doctrine to science and religion, the author gives an interesting sketch of the historical evolution of the idea of God, and a short discussion of the relations of faith and knowledge. This brings him to the second great division of his subject: the relation of knowledge to reality, and the origin of knowledge. That we have a real knowledge of