Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/288

Rh ences. For every one but the blind optimist there is difficulty in regarding this wind-swept battle-field of human action as obviously and altogether a drama of unhindered infinite reason, to be repeated with unwearying tautology through an unending future. Thus, then, we are tossed back and forth between the possibilities suggested by our hypothesis. “The world is the manifestation of infinite reason;” good, then, but how? “The world is a rational growth from lower to higher.” How, then, is this possible if the infinite reason rules all and desires the higher? Was it not always at the goal? So, then: “The world is not one process merely, but an eternal repetition of the drama of infinite reason, which, as infinite, is thus always active and always at the goal.” But this hypothesis is seemingly overthrown by the appearance of the least imperfection or irrationality in nature. The first starving family, or singed moth, or broken troth, or wasted effort, or wounded bird, is an indictment of the universal reason, that, always at the goal, has wrought this irrational wrong. The other possible hypothesis leaves us, after all, in the same quandary. Time may be a mere “mirage.” For the eternal One there is, then, no process; only fact. This notion of a timeless Being is, no doubt, very well worth study. But, then, the eternal One is thus always at the goal, just as in the other case. The One, we should think, cannot be infinite and rational and yet productive of the least trace of wrong, absurdity, error, falsehood. Again our Monism fails. For, after all, the world has been viewed by us only from without; and so remains dark.