n8 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



history and the theatre of our efforts. Over there beyond 

 the bounds of death is another world, where we shall live 

 again and where the Kingdom of God is now. Both 

 worlds are real, and for all practical purposes both have 

 their own laws. Doubtless God rules this world too. 

 He made it out of nothing, and could destroy it as a slip 

 of paper in the fire, but it is part of his plan to let it run 

 its course guided by the immutable laws of matter and 

 the free will of man. Our guidance in this world is the 

 empirical order as elaborated by science. Only on the side 

 of ethico-religious duty do we come into regular contact 

 with the spiritual order, and direct interventions of Provi- 

 dence in answer to prayer are irregular and uncertain. 

 The two orders issue, in theory, from one being, but in 

 practice they are two. They touch here and there and 

 mechanically interact, but in the main they are self-depen- 

 dent and equally real. Substantially, this form of .solution 

 may be regarded as the common property of Monotheism, 

 the tendency of which is always to conceive of the Deity 

 as Creator and Ruler set above and over, and so outside 

 the world, which is accordingly a separate entity. That 

 any such theory must make its account with the opposite 

 drive towards Monism, which would merge the world in 

 the Divine nature, is an interesting point. It is also the 

 source of many logical and moral incoherences and incon- 

 sistencies which need not detain us here. It is sufficient 

 to note the extent to which a distinctly dualistic system 

 is possible, and to observe that it is stronger in popular 

 practice than in the closer reasoning of theory. 



(5) In view of the moral incoherence of the world of 

 experience, the alternative to Dualism is to make th 

 spiritual world the one reality, wherein the world o 

 common-sense experience is either mere illusion or a 

 passing and temporary phase. Such is in fact the tendency 

 of the Brahmanic philosophy in its most thorough-going 

 form. 1 The real is One, and the Self is that One, and this 



1 Taking the VedSnta system as interpreted by Sankara as probably 

 the most logical interpretation of the Upanishads (see Mr. George 

 Thibaut's Introduction to the Vedanta Sutras Sacred Books of the East, 

 Vol. XXXIV. esp. pp. ciii. to cxxvii. 



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