Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/322

306 (p. 474). Reality is evolving in some direction and to some end. The highest purposes and volitions of conscious human beings are that end (p. 451). The ultimate fact of the world is a process, a force, an evolution. The ends of the world are already determined by the world-will, and the intellect can at most discern ways and means by which these ends are to be attained. It may be said that the ends of the world may, to a certain extent, be read along the lines of what the world-will has already achieved in history and in civilization, as well as in the adaptations that are apparent in the bodies of animals and men (p. 462).

What is this world-will? It is God. God is the will of the world as characterized by its highest purposes, which we feel and see in our own human consciousness. We know the cosmic will immediately in our feelings and in our impulses, and we are enabled through moral and idealistic faith to credit it with the fulfilment of those ideal ends and purposes which we see only faintly suggested, partly for sense and partly for imagination, in the real world (p. 416). We have no conceptual knowledge of God. We have only an organic apprehension of the world-will, only such knowledge as is necessary for the practical purposes .of life, necessary to constitute for us a permanent motive towards further volition and development. Man's higher will may attain to a reality in this cosmic will, if he but trust the affirmation of his consciousness which tells him that he is in relation to it throughout his whole experience (p. 423). If man can become real as will, he will become really real, and not merely ideally real. The effort after ideal volition and ideal purpose is for the individual the highest reality in the universe (pp. 427 if.). The world-will sustains an absolute relation to my will—its volition determines my reality as a person; all mere 'things' sustain only a relative relation to my will—they can be used by me as instruments or tools. Human persons and the supreme will of the universe are the only ultimate existences. With the question of what the world is apart from human purposes, we cannot possibly have anything to do (p. 110).

Professor CaldwelFs troubles multiply as his 'system' develops. The world consists of a mass of individual wills. These wills are expressions of a cosmic force or will, and are determined by such a will. How do we know all this? Why, immediately, of course; in our own feelings and impulses, in our highest purposes, we know the cosmic will. And we believe that God will realize our ideal ends and purposes. And if we believe all that, why then our "higher will" "may attain to a reality in this cosmic will," whatever that