Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/233

172 The attempt to take the universe as beyond or apart from or plus consciousness has sublated itself into bringing the universe wholly within consciousness and coincident with it; and the ancient saying, Man the measure of all things, comes round again, but in a new and pregnant sense — a sense which in the last resort gets its meaning from the intrinsic harmony of human with divine cognition. Only, this universe-consciousness must be thought as it is, without omission or exaggeration of any of its contents, and, above all, by mastering the grounds of its existence and the method of its possibility.

What we have arrived at is this : All that is, comes within consciousness and lies open to it, — the literal all, — whether “starry heavens without” or “moral law within,” sensible system of Nature, with its bond of mechanical causation, or intelligible system of moral agency, with its bond of free allegiance constituting a “kingdom of Ends.” A world of spirits, a world of minds each self-active, with the Father of Spirits omnipresent to all — consciousness means that. In being conscious, we are conscious of a universe; wherein each of us, to put the case in a metaphor (inadequate, of course), is a single self-luminous but focal point, upon which the remaining whole of light is poured in rays that are reflected back and then returned again, and so on without end, each added return bringing rays in