Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/262

Rh of Powers, which work together in harmony or in discord, and which give you Products. The religious ideals must find satisfaction here, if at all, in contemplating the goodness of these powers and of their works. If the religious ideals here fail, there will be the other aspect open. Regarded in a truly philosophical way, and in its eternal nature, the world, as we shall hereafter come to see, cannot be supposed to be either a power or a heap of powers. For powers have their being only in time, and only in relation to one another. If then all fails when we consider this external world of powers, this figment of popular metaphysics, the eternal nature of reality in some deeper view of that nature may still be found of infinite value to us. In fact we shall find the search for a religious truth, among the powers of this popularly conceived external world, very disheartening. The jargon of their contending voices will not unite into any religious harmony. We shall find these powers like the thunder and the fire. The still small voice is not in them. We shall be driven to some other aspect of the world. We shall approach that aspect in ways that imply no disrespect to those who have been so long scientifically studying the history and forces of the assumed external world. Their results, with the practical consequences in daily life, and with all that Agnosticism about the nature and purposes of the powers of this visible world which such men nowadays feel bound to proclaim, we shall on the whole accept. We too shall be Agtics, namely, as to the powers that rule the visible world. But we shall find a very different way, un-