INTRODUCTION 



had originated, even while he wrote the " Cos- 

 mic Philosophy," what his ingenuity and his 

 learning had enabled him to develop, namely, 

 the hypothesis as to the significance of infancy. 

 This thought, and that other thought regarding 

 the priority of mind over matter in our concep- 

 tion of the universe, combined to lead him to a 

 teleological interpretation of the process of evo- 

 lution. By perfectly natural steps he was here- 

 upon led to an interpretation of the Idea of 

 God and to a conception of the Destiny of Man 

 which brought him to the threshold of Con- 

 structive Idealism. This threshold he indeed 

 never crossed, partly because he had no time 

 for technical philosophy in his later years, and 

 partly because he retained to the end his pro- 

 found respect for the Spencerian arguments 

 against our right to define in precise theoretical 

 terms the actual and inner nature of reality. 

 He therefore preferred to conceive his own 

 later results rather as a sort of inevitable and 

 rational faith than as a doctrine capable of 

 close technical analysis. As a fact, by this 

 very process, he has led a much greater num- 

 ber of persons to retain their hope of an ideal 

 interpretation of the universe than could ever 

 have been won away from the tendencies of a 

 doubting age by any more technical exposition 

 of philosophy. 



cxxxviii 



