on, for the very reason that they are not problematic
existences but inherent ideals, cannot be banished from discourse.
Experience may lose any of its data; it cannot lose, while it endures,
the terms with which it operates in becoming experience. Now, truth is
relevant to every opinion which looks to truth for its standard, and
perfection is envisaged in every cry for relief, in every effort at
betterment. Opinions, volitions, and passionate refusals fill human
life. So that when the existence of truth is denied, truth is given the
only status which it ever required--it is conceived.

[Sidenote: It is the locus of all truths.]

Nor can any better defense be found for the denial that nature and her
life have a status in eternity. This statement may not be understood,
but if grasped at all it will not be questioned. By having a status in
eternity is not meant being parts of an eternal existence, petrified or
congealed into something real but motionless. What is meant is only that
whatever exists in time, when bathed in the light of reflection,
acquires an indelible character and discloses irreversible relations;
every fact, in being recognised, takes its place in the universe of
discourse, in that ideal sphere of truth which is the common and
unchanging standard for all assertions. Language, science, art,
religion, and all ambitious dreams are compacted of ideas. Life is as
much a mosaic of notions as the firmament is of stars; and these ideal
and transpersonal objects, bridging time, fixing standards, establishing
values, constituting the natural rewards of all living, are the very
furniture of eternity, the goals and playthings of that reason which is
an instinct in the heart as vital and spontaneous as any other. Or
rather, perhaps, reason is a supervening instinct by which all other
instincts are interpreted, just as the _sensus communis_ or
transcendental unity of psychology is a faculty by which all perceptions
are brought face to face and compared. So that immortality is not a
privilege reserved for a part only of experience, but rather a relation
pervading every part in varying measure. We may, in leaving the subject,
mark the degrees and phases of this idealisation.

[Sidenote: Epicurean immortality, through the truth of existence.]

Animal sensation is related to eternity only by the truth that it has
taken place. The fact, fleeting as it is, is registered in ideal history
and no inventory of the world's ri