414 ESSAYS LV PHILOSOPHY 



that of social Deity," he gives even this a purely temporal 

 colouring by speaking of this social God as " 7iever [italics 

 mine again] without filial spirits reflecting the glory of the 

 Eternal Reason." But, I repeat, I have taken every pre- 

 caution to prevent the reader from supposing me to mean 

 by " eternal " this popular error ; I have expressly warned 

 everybody that I do not intend by the " eternal reality " of 

 the individual his everlasting preexistence, nor any mere 

 //-^existence at all. Let me ask readers to consult what I 

 have printed on my pp. 351, 352 seq., and to compare with 

 this the statements on pp. 338, 339. 



Ill 



REAL PROOFS OF THE SYSTEM, AND TRUE ROLE IN IT 

 OF FINAL CAUSE 



Misled no doubt, at least in part, by the preceding mis- 

 conception, the reviewer next asks what " ladder we are 

 offered for a climb to this position " of individual eternity, 

 to affirm which " of all souls, of every individual member 

 of the human race," he says, "seems stupendously auda- 

 cious." This "audacity," like the other "audacity" of 

 making out all minds to be co-creators with God, he appears 

 to infer from his sense of the insignificance of most human 

 lives, as exhibited in their temporal history ; a sense that, 

 of late, it seems a good deal the fashion to feel, and in re- 

 gard to which, and its real baselessness, I think it sufficient 

 here to refer readers to the telhng exposure of it, though 

 in another connexion, that Professor James has made on 

 pp. 36-41 of his Ingersoll lecture, Human Immortality. 



When the reviewer attempts to answer this question 

 about the ladder I offer for climbing to this audacious 

 height, he goes astray again. He thinks the ladder is my 

 substitution of Final Cause for the time-honored Efficient 

 Cause, as the true mode of the causal relationship between 



