230 The University of California Magazine. 



Infinite Benevolence, and that it is the very life of its being to 

 bring to life other beings, which, while springing from it, 

 shall be none the less independent and free, the responsible 

 agents of their own deeds. 



If asked to explain how this could be, and further, how a 

 free spirit could originate acts in a world ruled by divine law 

 and necessity, — as he held the world to be, — Professor L,e 

 Coute would shake his head and reply in his well-known, de- 

 liberate, emphatic way: "I do not know. It is a 77iystery, 

 but a mystery upon which we may not unreasonably hope 

 some day to have more light," 



In what I have said above I have confined myself strictly 

 to a statement of Professor L,e Conte's position, made, as far as 

 possible, in his own words. Brief as the statement is, it will, 

 I trust, make evident the fact that Professor Le Conte's was 

 a genuinely philosophical mind. We can onl}' regret that he 

 did not find occasion, amid the stress of other duties, to elab- 

 orate and develop more in detail his philosophical views, and 

 particularly his significant attempt to effect the "higher syn- 

 thesis" of monism and pluralism by regarding reality as orig- 

 inally One, but, at the same time, as a One whose very life- 

 purpose it is to acheive, through means of nature, a v/orld of 

 many spirits, each of whom is independent and free and ab- 

 solutely real, and, therefore, capable of communing with 

 Him, — a view which he summed up in the sentence; "Nature 

 is the womb in which, and evolution the process by which, 

 are generated sons of God."* 



This is a unique position which must henceforth be reck- 

 oned with by all who would comprehend this all-important 

 philosophical issue. 



*"The Conceptiou of God," p. 78. 



