

OF THE SPIRIT. 347 



effectual attempts which Schelling had made to grapple 

 with it ; and it requires only one step more to designate 

 it as the seeming Irrationality of Existence ; the solu- 

 tion, if such be possible, as something in the true 

 sense of the word, supernatural or miraculous. It may 

 indeed be of some help to gain through the examples of 

 the goodness and saintliness of human character which 

 it may have been our good fortune to witness in rare 

 instances, an outlook into a higher region in which the 

 clouds have disappeared and the light of the highest 

 truth has for a moment shone brightly ; but such 

 individual experience, in the opinion of many of us, 

 cannot suffice to permanently dispel the doubts which 

 ever and again crowd in upon us. This, if at all pos- 

 sible, could be effected by nothing less than an absolute 

 miracle, by an event or a series of events so remarkable 

 in themselves and so different from anything presented 

 in ordinary life and experience, that it has not only 

 succeeded in altering the course of human history, but 

 still succeeds in endowing individual souls with that 

 strength of character which creates and sustains the 

 " Will to Believe." 



But this is exactly what religious persons term a 44. 



The idea 



Revelation. Lotze has not dealt fully with this subject, of a 



' Revelation. 



nor is it perhaps the duty of the philosopher to do more 

 than he has done ; leading his readers through a variety 

 of discussions, in which many difficulties have been re- 

 moved and many minor problems solved, on to a recog- 

 nition of that highest problem which is insoluble for the 

 human intellect. To this undertaking theology or 

 religious thought in a more restricted sense of the word 



