374 - MAN AND GOD. 



obstacle. For we cannot infer from the unity of 

 the world's plan and working anything more than 

 iina7iimity or harmonious co-operation in its cause. 

 But if the world-process displays, as it surely does, 

 perfect unity alike in its conception and its execu- 

 tion, there can certainly be no philosophic reason 

 either for assuming a plurality of guiding intelli- 

 gences. Still less would our experience of combined 

 action in our world warrant such a hasty belief in 

 its efficiency as would justify us in substituting a 

 heavenly democracy for the monarchical rule of a 

 single God. And so it will doubtless appear prefer- 

 able to most minds to retain the unity of the God- 

 head, to which their feelings have grown accustomed, 

 in a case where the assumption of plurality could 

 not possibly serve any practical purpose. What is 

 alone important is that the conception of the Deity 

 sketched in this chapter should not be thought to 

 afford any support to polytheism, with its discordant 

 interferences and jealous animosities of conflict- 

 ing deities ; beyond that it is needless to dogmatize 

 prematurely upon a subject which possesses neither 

 theoretic nor practical importance. 



§ 31. We have completed the second great stage 

 of our journey by the investigation of man's relations 

 to his cause, and of the whence of life. We have also 

 traced the nature and origin of his present environ- 

 ment, and discovered that we are spiritual beings 

 living in a spiritual universe ; but the final question 

 of the ** whither^ ? " of life yet remains to be solved in 

 accordance with the results already attained, before 

 we can formulate a complete answer to the Riddle 

 of the Sphinx. 



