lative or human validity; and is sufficient not only for the guidance
of life but even for the partial, though not the complete, satisfaction
of one of the noblest impulses of the human mind--the disinterested
passion for truth. 'Now we see in a mirror darkly'; but still we see.

The view of the Universe which I have endeavoured very inadequately to
set before you is a form of Idealism. Inasmuch as it recognizes the
existence--though not the separate and independent existence--of many
persons; inasmuch as it regards both God and man as persons, without
attempting {121} to merge the existence of either in one all-including,
comprehensive consciousness, it may further be described as a form of
'personal Idealism.' But, if any one finds it easier to think of
material Nature as having an existence which, though dependent upon and
willed by the divine Mind, is not simply an existence in and for mind,
such a view of the Universe will serve equally well as a basis of
Religion. For religious purposes it makes no difference whether we think
of Nature as existing in the Mind of God, or as simply created or brought
into and kept in existence by that Mind. When you have subtracted from
the theistic case every argument that depends for its force upon the
theory that the idea of matter without Mind is an unthinkable absurdity,
enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in
point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled
by Mind. The argument for Idealism may, I hope, have at all events
exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of
materialistic and naturalistic assumptions, and left the way clear for
the establishment of Theism by the arguments which rest upon the
discovery that Causality implies volition; upon the appearances of
intelligence in organic life; upon the existence of the moral
consciousness; and more generally upon the enormous probability that the
ultimate Source of Reality should resemble rather {122} the highest than
the lowest kind of existence of which we have experience. That Reality
as a whole may be most reasonably interpreted by Reality at its highest
is after all the sum and substance of all theistic arguments. If anybody
finds it easier to think of matter as uncreated but as always guided and
controlled by Mind, I do not think there will be any religious objection
to such a position; though it is, as it seems to me, intellectually a
less