Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/77

61 eternally real; in the consciousness of the Absolute is eternally realized the goal to which our felt Ideals would direct us. Now, herein is necessarily involved nothing less than this: A process in time cannot be the ultimate and most fundamental fact in the universe. In so far as the Absolute is such a process, or has a history, its essential nature is not manifest. This, again, is only to say in other words that every consistent Idealism must regard the world as fundamentally rational, righteous, and perfect.

On the other hand, it is equally essential firmly to keep hold on the reality of the time-processes of growth and change in individual lives, for which the Ideal may be more or less fully realized. For "in all real growth it is implied that though the less perfect is destined to give place to the more perfect, the less perfect exists in its own time and place no less than the more perfect to which it leads up." Hence come the irrationality and unrighteousness which enter into actual life. To deny this would be to deny the very motive for which Idealism exists,—the very one which gives it all its significance; for the experience of the threefold or longing, as felt in individual centers of life, is the main motive to the construction of an idealistic theory of things. Hence these finite centers of life must have a reality of their own, and not be mere accidents or incidents of a universal Life. It is not enough to hold, with Parmenides and Spinoza, that— The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments."

Such a view may be found satisfactory if everything is subordinated to the (supposed) demands of the purely intellectual ideal; but history shows that an intellectualism of this kind inevitably ends by passing over into Naturalism. The system of Spinoza is already there; the systems of Aristotle and of Hegel reached the same result in the hands of certain of their followers.