Such, in brief outline, is the scope of this volume. The five chapters of which it consists have already, to some extent, been given to the world: the first in the Nineteenth Century, the second and fifth in the Fortnightly Review, the fourth in the Contemporary Review, where, too, a part of the third chapter has appeared, another portion of it having been published in the Dublin Review. My thanks are due to the Editors of those journals for their kind permission to use for my present purpose these contributions to their pages. But this book is not a mere reprint. It contains a considerable amount of new matter, while the old has been carefully revised, and, more or less, rewritten, to fit it for its present place. I have, however, retained the separate form originally given to the several studies now brought together, and herein, I believe, I have consulted the convenience of my readers. Each chapter deals with a special subject, and is, in a sense, complete in itself, while again, each has its proper position in the book as part of an organic whole, for, as I have explained, one argument runs through it. Each chapter, 1

may add, might easily have been expanded into a volume. But in writing for the general reader it is necessary to write short. My design has been rather to indicate lines of thought than to follow them out: and I have sought to view things, as far as possible, in the concrete. An admirable critic has well said of the greatest master of romantic fiction, "Il a saisi la verité parcequ'il a saisi les ensembles." It is the only way of grasping higher truth in any department of human thought, and I have endeavoured to follow it in this work. That must be my excuse, if excuse be wanted, for the vast extent of the ground over which I have travelled.

There are yet a few words which I must say, and for which this seems to be the proper place, to obviate misconceptions that I should much regret. First let me enter a caveat against the supposition that I commit myself irrevocably to the scientific hypotheses of Damon in the Fifth Chapter, where much that he says is by way of argumentum ad hominem, much more by way of

suggestion, for the purpose of eliciting the thought of others, and of gaining further light. Again, it must be remembered that in his attempt to harmonize his view of life and death with the doctrine of progressive evolution, Damon employs, not the precise terminology of the schools, but the vaguer language of modern speculative thought. When he says "there is only one substance," what he means is, "spirit alone is substance, and matter is a manifestation of spirit"; when he says "God will know Himself," he uses the future not as indicating change in the Unchangeable, but in view of that "far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves,' and he does not in the least forget that God is the Eternal Now: when he speaks of the illusoriness of matter as distinct from spirit, he does little else than echo, or translate into the speech of our own day, the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, that matter, materia prima, is not a substance, cannot exist by itself, is pæne nihil, and is susceptible of endless transforma1 See page 233.

tions, all of which are due to higher and immaterial energies. His argument must not be judged of by isolated phrases; it must be viewed as a whole-its main steps are indicated in the summary of the Fifth Chapter-and I am very confident that, if so viewed, it will be found to supply the true answer to that capital error which identifies God with the world, by recognising and applying to the proper use the element of truth latent and distorted therein the truth taught by Plato to the men of Athens, πάντα πλήρη θεῶν, πλήρη ψυχῆς, and recalled to them by St Paul in his sermon on Areopagus: In ipso vivimus et movemur et sumus. Damon takes the problem as the materialists state it, but proposes for it an entirely different solution. While they explain everything by ultimate matter, he explains everything by ultimate spirit. For them superior forms are only combinations of inferior. For him inferior forms are but manifestations of superior. In his hypothesis, as in theirs, Nature is a scale of graduated forms passing from one to another by a continued progress. But for them this progress

is only a complication of fortuitous changes: for him it is the operation of a Divine Law governing "the ascension of the Ego," "the metamorphosis by which the Ego comes to know itself." "Certains esprits timorés pourraient reprocher aux vues précédentes de côtoyer de très près le panthéisme, de si près même que parfois on croit y être; mais nous sommes d'avis de ne pas abuser de ce spectre du panthéisme, qui finit par paralyser toute philosophie. A force de ne voir plus que des trappes autour de soi, on n'ose plus ni parler, ni penser, ni bouger. Exprimez-vous sincèrement quelques doutes, comme le faisait Socrate, vous êtes un sceptique. Accordez-vous quelque chose aux sciences de la matière, vous êtes un matérialiste. Essayez-vous de concilier le déterminisme et la liberté, vous êtes un fataliste. Voyez-vous Dieu en toutes choses, vous êtes un panthéiste. En vérité, cette perpétuelle évocation des mauvaises doctrines est quelque chose d'irritant, et finirait presque par vous en donner le goût, comme en politique on deviendrait révolutionnaire à force d'entendre perpétuellement dénoncer par un fanatisme absurde la