te maintains relations. It
condescends to no transactions of detail.

[362] Transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world
makes THIS difference, that facts EXIST. We owe it to the Absolute
that we have a world of fact at all. "A world" of fact!--that exactly
is the trouble. An entire world is the smallest unit with which the
Absolute can work, whereas to our finite minds work for the better
ought to be done within this world, setting in at single points. Our
difficulties and our ideals are all piecemeal affairs, but the Absolute
can do no piecework for us; so that all the interests which our poor
souls compass raise their heads too late. We should have spoken
earlier, prayed for another world absolutely, before this world was
born. It is strange, I have heard a friend say, to see this blind
corner into which Christian thought has worked itself at last, with its
God who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help us with
no private burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he
is on our own. Odd evolution from the God of David's psalms!

I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correction, and merely in
order the better to describe my general point of view; but as I
apprehend the Buddhistic doctrine of Karma, I agree in principle with
that. All supernaturalists admit that facts are under the judgment of
higher law; but for Buddhism as I interpret it, and for religion
generally so far as it remains unweakened by transcendentalistic
metaphysics, the word "judgment" here means no such bare academic
verdict or platonic appreciation as it means in Vedantic or modern
absolutist systems; it carries, on the contrary, EXECUTION with it, is
in rebus as well as post rem. and operates "causally" as partial
factor in the total fact. The universe becomes a gnosticism[363] pure
and simple on any other terms. But this view that judgment and
execution go together is that of the crasser supernaturalist way of
thinking, so the present volume must on the whole be classed with the
other expressions of that creed.

[363] See my Will to Believe and other Essays in popular Philosophy.
1897, p. 165.

I state the matter thus bluntly, because the current of thought in
academic circles runs against me, and I feel like a man who must set
his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish to see it
closed and locked. In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning
intellect