442 CONCLUSION. 



tution of an eternally active and adjusted whole. 

 Which of these diametrically opposed ideals is 

 being realized by our world of Becoming? is it 

 tending towards Being or Not- Being, towards Rest 

 or Perfect Activity ? And, according as we decide 

 for the one or the other of these, we shall arrive 

 at radically different theories about the v/orld- 

 process, resulting in totally different views of life. 



The one, which is the view which Pantheism can 

 escape only by a sacrifice of consistency, regards 

 the world-process as ultimately and essentially 

 illusory : the fitful struggles of the individual and 

 of the race alike are in the end absorbed aofain into 

 the restful quietude of non-existence : the Absolute 

 that was before the world began, and will be after 

 it has ceased, is All and Nought, unchangeable 

 and untouched by the phantom worlds which an 

 inexplicable fate produces, and inexorably sweeps 

 away. So Qidetism becomes the ideal of life, and 

 Nirvana its end : the highest and the only good 

 is reabsorption into the Absolute, in which life and 

 suffering cease together. Such is the ideal of Rest, 

 the ideal which from time immemorial has lurked 

 beneath the whole life of the East, for all its creeds 

 and all its mysticism ; and a strange and doleful 

 ideal it seems to put before us as the end of all the 

 activities of life ! 



The other ideal is an ideal of Activity, enhanced 

 and intensified until it becomes perfect and constant 

 and eternal, and transcends the motion and change 

 of imperfect effort. It asserts that life is essentially 

 activity ; that perfect life and perfect bliss are but 

 the consciousness of the harmonious exercise of an 

 activity that meets no check, and is broken by no 

 obstacle. And so it is an ideal not of Nirvana but 



