erence
between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call
it a social difference, for after all, the common _socius_ of us all
is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we
must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If
spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear.

The contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts
of other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of
foreignness and intimacy. We have so many different businesses with
nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. The
philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one's business is left
out, so that no one lies outside the door saying 'Where do _I_ come
in?' is sure in advance to fail. The most a philosophy can hope for is
not to lock out any interest forever. No matter what doors it closes,
it must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects.
I have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness
because that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it
will conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which I wish this
hour to lead.

The majority of men are sympathetic. Comparatively few are cynics
because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are
such because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because
they find the idealists they are in contact with too private and
tender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the
opposite extreme. I therefore propose to you to disregard materialists
altogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party
alone.

It is normal, I say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which I use the
term. Not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to
wish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong.
Accordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and
seek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled
to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are
not troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws,
that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for
philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be
written down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that
order the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the
absolute agrees with the pluralistic