Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/287

262 lute and Infinite, Logos and not Logos, Mind-Stuff and Spirit — what are they all for critical philosophy, but, in the first place, mere ideas, conceptions of reason, to be mercilessly analyzed without regard for consequences?

One way remains whereby this realistic monism can still hope to reach a satisfactory statement of the world-problem. Suppose that, once for all, the historical form of statement is abandoned, while the notion of the Reason as a power is retained. This may be done in either of two ways. The universal reason may be conceived as manifesting itself in time, but not in a series of events that are united as the parts of a single process. The world-life may be conceived not as a single history, but as an eternally repeated product of the One reason, a process ever renewed as soon as finished, an infinite series of growing and decaying worlds — worlds that are like the leaves of the forest, that spring and wither through an eternity of changing seasons. The rationality of the world-process is thus saved for our thought by the hypothesis that reason is not like a belated traveler, wandering through the night of time, seeking for a self-realization that is never reached, but, rather, like the sun that each day begins afresh his old task, rejoicing as a giant in the fullness of his attained power. Whoever regards the world as it now is as plainly a sufficient expression of infinite rational power, is at liberty to accept this hypothesis; but he must prepare to answer those of his objectors to whom reason means perfection, and to whom the world of sense will not appear as just at present more perfect than the world of Candide’s experi-