Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/12

Rh Religions Aspect of Philosophy, is adequate to establish in the Absolute Reality a nature in the strict sense divine.

(2) Whether the conception of God upon which the whole argument of the leader proceeds is in truth a conception of a Personal God.

(3) Whether this conception is compatible with that autonomy of moral action which mankind in its fully enlightened civilisation, and especially under the Christian consciousness, has come to appreciate as the vital principle of all personality.

On the first matter, Professor Mezes and Professor Howison differ with Professor Royce. Professor Le Conte declines any critical opinion upon it, though he prefers, and offers, an entirely different argument for the reality of a Personal God.

On the second point, the extreme division is between Professor Royce on the one side (apparently supported by his pupil, Professor Mezes), and Professor Howison on the other. Here, the question disputed being in fact the question of an Immanent God as against a God distinct from his creation, Professor Le Conte offers a mediating theory, based on the doctrine of Cosmic Evolution, by which he would conjoin the conception of God as immanent in Nature with the conception of man as eventually a literally free intelligence: through the process of evolution, operated by the God indwelling in it, the human being is at length completely extricated from Nature, hence becomes strictly self-active, and thus intrinsically immortal. To this proposal for reconciling an Immanent God with a Personal God, — the