The Idea of Development 55 



relationship as parts of a rational scheme of development, as 

 parts in the operation of Law. 



There follows naturally from this position the conception of 

 teleology as immanent in the universe. The world is regarded 

 as the realisation of a creative Intelligence. From this point of 

 view of personal idealism, the world exists for us in so far as 

 we realise in it, and through it, the rational and beneficent Intel- 

 ligence or Spirituality which pervades it and is its essence, with- 

 out which there would be nothing to be perceived, no objects to 

 be realised, and no one to realise them. From the complementary 

 point of view, the universe must be regarded from the stand- 

 point of divine Idealism — suh specie aetcrnitatis, as Spinoza 

 would say ; and this involves a belief in what may be called, for 

 want of more explicit terms, a sort of spiritually universal 

 Theism, pervading and making real all things in heaven and 

 earth. This does not imply an objective anthropomorphism, nor 

 does it confine the nature of the Creator within the limits of 

 created things. It is what we mean when we speak of the world 

 as a realisation of creative Intelligence in the widest sense — it 

 is the conceivable absolute view of Nature which finds a partial 

 reflection or interpretation in the idealistic reconstruction of the 

 human intelligence, " and perfection, no more and no less, in 

 the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God in the 

 star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod." 



From this wider point of view there can be no contradictions 

 in Nature and no antagonisms that do not ultimately resolve 

 themselves into illusions of the human standpoint — divine ideas 

 that in the cavern of the mind seem dark and distorted. Human 

 thought is possible only through contrasts, and positive advance 

 takes place only through negation ; opposites become, through 

 the operation of the mind, reconciled in a higher unity which for 

 the moment appears to be ultimate, but it is subsequently realised 

 to be but a part of a unity of greater extension ; and so the process 

 continues and can end only with the ultimate realisation of the 

 knowledge of good and evil. The very fact of relativity involves 

 negation in the reconciliation of the elements involved, but nega- 

 tion for the sake of unity. Here we find the philosophical justi- 

 fication for the Greek view that Knowledge involves Virtue. In 

 fact, problems of Epistemology and of Ethics fuse when their 

 ideal becomes an amor intellectualis Dei. 



