1 66 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 



real explanation of the eternal emptiness of happi- 

 ness, of the eii7mi of bliss which is so marked in the 

 popular representations of heaven. It is the ex- 

 planation also of the irrepressible tendency to de- 

 scribe God by negations, as the ineffable, infinite, 

 immutable, incomprehensible and unknowable, which 

 is continually making religion the half-way house 

 to agnosticism. 



But in reality this is a mere prejudice, though a 

 very pardonable one. To overcome it, we should 

 consider the parallel of the relation of the infra- 

 human to the human from the point of view of the 

 former. How unable would the amoeba be to 

 realize the higher activities of man, how inevitably 

 would the dim forecasts of its knowledge deny to 

 man the activities, whatever they are, that make up 

 the life of the amoeba ! To a less degree, the same 

 incapacity is displayed also among men. The un- 

 thinking masses also condemn the life of the thinker 

 as dull, empty, and uneventful, simply because they 

 cannot imagine how much fuller his heightened 

 consciousness makes it, how much more intense are 

 the pleasures and pains of the sage than those of 

 coarser minds that cannot react upon the subtler 

 stimuli. From such examples we begin to perceive 

 that the higher is not a negation, because the lower 

 cannot determine its positive attributes. Every step 

 in advance does indeed mean a dropping away of 

 some lower activities, until they have all dis- 

 appeared. But each step in advance also opens up 

 new activities, and fuller realizations of old activities, 

 which progressively increase the total content of 

 life, and make the higher life richer and fuller than 

 the lower. But these, of course, are not visible from 

 the standpoint of the lower. The lament, therefore 



I 



