228 The University of California Magazine. 



preparing the way for the final emergence of the free and im- 

 mortal spirit.* 



If we carry the analogy of the relation between inner and 

 outer over to the entire world of nature, then God may be 

 conceived as the a7iima vnmdi^ and the world of things, while 

 remaining mere objects for us, as stubborn and refractory as 

 you please, maybe conceived as God's thoughts objectified, — f 

 a position that suggests Berkeley's famous saying that na- 

 ture is "Divine visual language," is God's way of talking to 

 man. God is regarded, in other words, as immanent in na- 

 ture; the physical and chemical forces are a part of the Divine 

 energy "in a diffused, unindividuated state." Gradually a 

 part of this part becomes individuated and self-active, at first 

 partially so, in plant and animal, at last completely so, in man 

 as a moral person. ;{: 



Professor Le Conte did not, however, rest content with 

 showing how the world might be conceived from the stand- 

 point of evolution so as not to interfere with our fundamental 

 religious beliefs, and thus leave the door open for faith to 

 bring them in. He held that the theory of evolution fur- 

 nished a positive inductive argument for the existence of 

 God, and for the immortality of the soul. Evolution discov- 

 ers a general trend of development, an upward and onward 

 progress, which clearly points beyond to the perfect goal. 

 The meaning of the whole process, and of every part of it, is 

 found in this perfect goal, which must therefore be as real as 

 any of the steps to which it gives meaning. 



Similarly in the case of the individual, the meaning of the 

 struggle from consciousness to self-consciousness, and of the 

 further struggles in the journey through life from conscious- 

 ness to moral consciousness, is lost if death end all, for then 

 man must be forever chasing an ignis fatuus, forever stretch- 



*Esp. op. cit., p. 300. The metaphors here used frequently recur in Professor Le 

 Conte's writings. 



top. cit., p. 2S3. 

 ^''Conceptions 01 God," p. 76. 



