182 PHILOSOPHY 



tinued (though not continual) decline of this later dualistic theory 

 before the steadfast front and unyielding advance of the older 

 monism. Thus persistent has been the assumption that harmony can 

 only be assured by the unity given in some single productive causa- 

 tion : the only serious uncertainty has been about the most rational 

 way of conceiving the operation of this Sole Cause; and this doubt 

 has thus far, on the whole, declined in favor of the Elder Oriental 

 or monistic conception, as against the Hebraic conception of extra- 

 neous creation by fiat. The frankly confessed mystery of the latter, 

 its open appeal to miracle, places it at a fatal disadvantage with the 

 Elder Orientalism, when the appeal is to reason and intelligibility. 

 It is therefore no occasion for wonder that, especially since the rise 

 of the scientific doctrine of Evolution, with its postulate of a univer- 

 sal unity, self-varying yet self-fulfilling, even the leaders of theology 

 are more and more falling into the monistic line and swelling the 

 ever-growing ranks of pantheism. If it be asked here, And why not ? 

 where is the harm of it ? is not the whole question simply of what 

 is true? the answer is, The mortal harm of the destruction of personal- 

 ity, which lives or dies with the preservation or destruction of individual 

 responsibility; while the completer truth is, that there are other and 

 profounder (or, if you please, higher) truths than this of explanation 

 by Efficient Cause. In fact, there is a higher conception of Cause 

 itself than this of production, or efficiency; for, of course, as we well 

 might say, that alone can be the supreme conception of Cause which 

 can subsist between absolute or unreserved realities, and such must 

 exclude their production or their necessitating control by others. 

 So that we ought long since to have realized that Final Cause, the 

 recognized presence to each other as unconditioned realities, or De- 

 fining Auxiliaries and Ends, is the sole causal relation that can hold 

 among primary realities; though among such it can hold, and in 

 fact must. 



For the absolute reality of personal intelligences, at once indi- 

 vidual and universally recognizant of others, is called for by other 

 conceptions fundamental to philosophy. These other fundamental 

 concepts can no more be counted out or ignored than those we have 

 hitherto considered; and when we take them up, we shall see how 

 vastly more significant they are. They alone will prove supreme, 

 truly organizing, normative; they alone can introduce gradation in 

 truths, for they alone introduce the judgment of worth, of valuation; 

 they alone can give us counsels of perfection, for they alone rise 

 from those elements in our being which deal with ideals and with 

 veritable Ideas. So let us proceed to them. 



Our path into their presence, however, is through another pair, 

 not so plainly antithetic as those we have thus far considered. This 



