MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 67 



or coherently.^ Still sharper inquiry at last makes 

 it equally clear, too, that atheistic pantheism will 

 carry idealism as consistently as it carries material- 

 ism, if doubtless less naturally. For although in 

 the sum-total of the particular existences there 

 must be recognised a gradation from such as are 

 unconscious up to those that are completely con- 

 scious, and it would therefore be the more obvious 

 step to read the series as a development upward 

 from atoms to mind, still the mystery of the transit 

 from the unconscious to the conscious cannot fail 

 to suggest the counter-hypothesis, and the whole 

 series may be conceived as originating ideally, in 

 the perceptive constitution and experience of the 

 conscious members of it. There is a marked dis- 

 tinction, however, between the idealism given by 

 acosmic pantheism and the idealism given by the 



^ There might be added here, 'n\ connexion with acosmic pantheism, 

 a ^/^m/ hypothesis — that, namely, of the simple " parallelism" or con- 

 comitance of the two attributes, extension and thought. This third hy- 

 pothesis would land us either (i) in agnosticism, as with Spencer, or (2) 

 in " absolute " idealism, as with Hegel, — in the Idee as the transcend- 

 ing synthesis of objective and subjective idealism. We should thus 

 get two additional species of non-atheistic pantheism. [The real effect 

 of the preceding note is doubtless a criticism of the twofold division 

 in the text. The fact is, this division is a relic of the Hegelian mon- 

 ism by which the original paper was in one side pervaded ; but let it 

 remain standing, — in part as a piacular memorial! The exclusion of 

 " absolute " idealism from the list of pantheisms meant the tacit as- 

 sumption that it had transcended pantheism. But see foot-note to 

 p. 74 below.] 



