Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/127

66 trast the two forms as the materialistic and the idealistic. Nor does further reflection at once disabuse us of this mistake; for the seeming identity of atheistic pantheism with materialism is very decided, and the only correction in our first judgment that we next feel impelled to make, is to recognise the ambiguous character of acosmic pantheism. The Universal Substance, we then say, in order to include an exhaustive summary of all the phenomena of experience, must of course be taken as both extending and being conscious; but is this Substance an extended being that thinks, or is it a thinking being that apprehends itself under a peculiar mode of consciousness called extension? In other words, is the thinking of the Substance grounded in its extended being, or has its extension existence in and through its thinking only? Which attribute is primary and essential, and makes the other its derivative and function? Under the conception of the all-embracing existence of the Absolute, this question is inevitable, irresistible — will not down. According as we answer it in the first or the second of the two suggested ways, we turn the pantheism into materialism or, as we shall see presently, into objective idealism.

It thus becomes plain that the acosmic form of pantheism may carry materialism as unquestionably as it carries idealism, though indeed not so naturally