psychism on which we are
now proceeding--because _x_ presents attributes at least as much higher
than consciousness or volition as these are higher than mechanical
motion. For when we consider the utmost that our conscious volition is
able to accomplish in the way of contrivance--how limited its knowledge,
how short its duration, how restricted its range, and how imperfect its
adaptations--we can only conclude that _if_ the ultimate constitution of
all things is pyschical, the philosophy of the Cosmos becomes a
'philosophy of the Unconscious' only because it is a philosophy of the
Superconscious.

Now, if once we feel ourselves able to transcend the preliminary--and
doubtless very considerable--difficulty of symbolically conceiving the
world-eject as super-conscious, and (because not limited) also
super-personal, I think there can be no question that the world-object
furnishes overwhelming proof of psychism. I candidly confess that I am
not myself able to overcome the preliminary difficulty in question. By
discharging the elements of personality and conscious volition from the
world-eject, I appear to be discharging from my conception of mind all
that most distinctively belongs to that conception; and thus I seem to
be brought back again to the point from which we started: the
world-eject appears to have again resolved itself into the unknown
quantity _x_. But here we must distinguish between actual conception and
symbolical conception. Although it is unquestionably true that I can
form no actual conception of Mind save as an eject of personality and
conscious volition, it is a question whether I am not able to form a
symbolical conception of Mind as thus extended. For I know that
consciousness, implying as it does continual change in serial order of
circumscribed mental processes, is not (symbolically considered) the
highest conceivable exhibition of Mind; and just as a mathematician is
able to deal symbolically with space of _n_ dimensions, while only able
really to conceive of space as limited to three dimensions, so I feel
that I ought not to limit the abstract possibilities of mental being by
what I may term the accidental conditions of my own being.

I need scarcely wait to show why it appears to me that if this position
is granted, the world-object furnishes, as I have said, overwhelming
proof of psychism; for this proof has been ably presented by many other
writers. There is first the antecedent improbability