124 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



it is what- the "Categorical Imperative" enjoins. 

 We feel that, as an ultimate standard, it must be 

 " an ideal of personal worth," that the idea of 

 a spirit cannot realize itself except in spirits. 

 Unless, therefore, we give up as insoluble the 

 constant spectacle of unfulfilled human promise, 

 we are led on to the conclusion that our personal 

 self-conscious being which comes from God is for 

 ever continued in God which we suppose to be 

 the Pantheistic conclusion or else that the life 

 which is lived on earth under conditions which 

 thwart its development is 



" Continued in a society with which we have no means of 

 communication through the senses, but which shares in and 

 carries further every measure of perfection attained by men 

 under the conditions of life that we know" (p. 195). 



That there should be such an end of human 

 perfection is the demand which our spirit makes 

 upon us, which is implied in the very idea of 

 development, for a process ad infinitum cannot 

 be a process of development at all. And when 

 that which is being developed is not a natural 

 organism but a self-conscious subject, the end 

 of its becoming must be " a subject in which the 

 idea of the human spirit is completely realized." 

 This consideration suggests the true notion of 

 the spiritual relation in which we stand to God. 

 We exist not merely for Him but in Him. He 

 is the Being "with Whom we are in principle one ; 



