134 F.SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



is the very root of joy ; evil is the requisite foil for 

 the reaction essential to life. 



Still profounder elements of good — subtle, perva- 

 sive, even mystic — are contributed by the Law of 

 the Whole. Not only does the ascent of life to 

 higher and higher levels point clearly to the greater 

 fulness of existence as part of the Final Purpose, 

 and so give play to the "influence of the ideal" 

 in the encouraging prospect of the future, but our 

 inseparable union with the Whole, our direct descent 

 from Nature, and our reproduction of its life in 

 ours, impart to us a certain Cosmic Emotion — Diih- 

 ring calls it dcr itniverselle Affect — which, stirring 

 at the foundations of our being, fills us with a 

 dumb sense of the oneness of all things, and by 

 forces coming from beneath consciousness, nay, 

 from the beginnings of the world, binds us to the 

 totality of existence with an attachment that no 

 sum of ills can utterly destroy. It is from this 

 Cosmic Emotion that the inborn love of life and 

 the instinct of self-preservation arise. Our joy in 

 the landscape comes from it ; also our delight in 

 art ; our capacity for poetry ; our bent to science 

 and philosophy, by which we would figure to our- 

 selves the form of this treasured All. It is, finally, 

 the source and the reality of the set of feelings 

 consecrated by the name of religion. To deny the 

 worth of life is therefore to put ourselves in con- 



