BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 181 



the fact that, after all, his strivings are already 

 eternally fulfilled, his errors already eternally 

 transcended, his partial beliefs already eternally 

 comprehended. 



The modern age is marked by a refusal to be 

 satisfied with the postponement of the exercise and 

 function of reason to another and supernatural 

 sphere, and by a resolve to practise itself upon its 

 present object, nature, with all the joys thereunto 

 appertaining. The pure intelligence of Aristotle, 

 thought thinking itself, expresses itself as free 

 inquiry directed upon the present conditions of its 

 own most effective exercise. The principle of the 

 inherent relation of thought to being was pre 

 served intact, but its practical locus was moved 

 down from the next world to this. Spinoza s 

 &quot; God or Nature &quot; is the logical outcome ; as is also 

 his strict correlation of the attribute of matter with 

 the attribute of thought; while his combination 

 of thorough distrust of passion and faith with 

 complete faith in reason and all-absorbing passion 

 for knowledge is so classic an embodiment of the 

 whole modern contradiction that it may awaken ad 

 miration where less thorough-paced formulations 

 call out irritation. 



In the practical devotion of present intelligence 

 to its present object, nature, science was born, 

 and also its philosophical counterpart, the theory 

 of knowledge. Epistemology only generalized in 



