276 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



God, immanent in Nature, to which the evolutional 

 pantheist concludes, but, on the contrary, to a rational 

 nature everywhere present and regulative, and only 

 to a person or persons as these are necessarily pre- 

 supposed in such a nature. Nor does taking the 

 next step of passing to these persons bring us to 

 God, but only, at nearest hand, to men.^ 



But the inner logic of induction, secret and silent 

 though it be, does presuppose the reality and the 

 solidarity of conscious society, as an association of 

 beings united by a common rational intelligence, 

 and making common part in a common history of 

 sensible experience. Nor can the objective value of 

 inductive generalisation be thought in any other 

 way than as the benign consensus of the whole 

 society of minds, considering the facts of experience 

 in the temper of justice and truth. What we reach, 

 then, as the all but direct implication of induction, is 

 the reality of a imiversal rational society. We attain 

 to the reality of the ivJiolc society, such that every 

 really possible member of it must be real. 



The further question of the being of God is simply 

 the question,' then, of the possible range of individ- 

 uality in minds. Every act of thought is the act of 

 an individual ; and all reality, as finally coming back 

 to thinking being, is thus intrinsically individual. 

 Since the inductive act presupposes Nature to subsist 



^ See p. 31 and p. 41 seq., above. 



