ROME AND PANTHEISM. 



399 



years ago, I thought, as now, that the only possible 

 Church must be a development of the Church of Rome ; 

 and seeing no chance of agreement between avowed free- 

 thinkers, like myself, and Eome (for I believed Rome 

 immovable), I leaned towards absolute negation as the 

 best chance for unity among civilized nations; but even 

 then, I expressed myself as "having a strong feeling 

 as though Professor Mivart's conclusion is true, that 

 'the material universe is always and everywhere sus- 

 tained and directed by an infinite cause, for which to 

 us the word mind is the least inadequate and misleading 

 symbol.'"* 



I had hardly finished 'Evolution, Old and New,' before 

 I began to deal with this question according to my lights, 

 in a series of articles upon Godf which appeared in the 

 ' Examiner' during the summer of 1879, and I returned 

 to the same matter more than once in 'Unconscious 

 Memory/ my next succeeding work. The articles I 

 intend recasting and rewriting, as they go upon a false 

 assumption ; but subsequent reflection has only con- 

 firmed me in the general result I arrived at namely, 

 the omnipresence of mind in the universe. 



I have therefore come to see that we can go farther 

 than negation, and in this case a positive expression of 

 faith as regards an invisible universe of some sort being 

 possible a Church of some sort is also possible, which 

 shall formulate and express the general convictions as 

 regards man's position in respect of this faith. I think 



* P. 371. 



t Published as " God the Known and God the Unknown " in 1909, 

 (Fifield.) 



