EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



If, then, we must apparently deny the validity 

 of the vision of the soul, can we continue to do 

 so when the vision of those who have so seen coin- 

 cides with the conclusions reached by reason ? The 

 mystic and the realist may agree that reality is 

 one, is eternal, is intelligent, is, at the very least, 

 intelligible. May not conclusions reached by such 

 different methods be regarded as valid ? 



Indeed, there is a cloud of witnesses. For if the 

 mystic^and the realist can agree that reality is one, 

 so certainly will the idealist ; and he, too, will regard 

 It as uncreated and eternal, though he may not go 

 so far with the Athanasian Creed as to admit that 

 It is incomprehensible. 1 It may surely, then, be 

 maintained that, even if we question the evidence 

 of ecstasy, yet witness of so many orders may 

 be accepted when it teaches that reality, whether 

 knowable or unknowable, is one and intelligent, 

 or, rather, endowed with something that far tran- 

 scends intelligence. 



But reader and writer are each keenly aware of a 

 conceivable attribute of which mention has not 

 been made, and that is benevolence. Here, indeed, 

 the witnesses disagree. The majesty of the Atha- 

 nasian Creed is disfigured by its denial of benevo- 

 lence in the awful language of its later clauses. 

 The idealist inclines to attribute benevolence to the 

 Eternal ; the scientific realist is inclined to the view 



1 The word in the Latin is not incomprehensibilis, but im- 

 mensus. Immeasurable, however, is almost synonymous with 

 incomp rehen sible . 



356 



