Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/34

Rh troversies concerning the being and attributes of God, the existence of the physical world, and the nature of human individuality. Thus we shall gradually approach a position where we shall learn the inevitableness of a certain final conception of the meaning of our ontological predicates; and the result of our critical study will be a light that we may not wholly have anticipated, both upon the conception of God, and upon our notion of the relations between God, the World, and the Human Individual. With the development of these fundamental conceptions, the first of my two series of lectures will close. We shall herewith have stated the bases of religion.

The second series I intend first to devote to the application of our fundamental conceptions to the more special problems of the nature of the human Ego, the meaning of the finite realm called the Physical World, and the interpretation of Evolution. The vast extent of the discussions thus suggested will be limited, in our own case, by the very fact that we shall here be attempting merely the application of a single very general ontological idea to a few problems which we shall view rather as illustrations of our central thesis concerning Reality, than as matters to be exhaustively considered for their own sake. Having thus sketched our Cosmology, if I may call it such, we shall then conclude the whole undertaking by a summary discussion of the problems of Good and Evil, of Freedom, of Immortality, and of the destiny of the Individual, still reviewing our problems in the light of our general conception of Being. The title that I shall have given to the whole course of lectures, “The World and