CHAPTER III. 



ON THE DEVELOPED CONCEPTION OF GOD. 



1. WITH difficulty will any of the past forms of idealism 

 be able to make head against the new materialism in 

 association with evolution. For excepting the theo- 

 logical idealism of Berkeley, idealism, in its later forms 

 English and Germanic is compatible witn the evo- 

 lution materialism. And Berkeley's proof of the ex- 

 istence of an Infinite Spirit resembling the human, but 

 vaster, is precisely the part of his system that sub- 

 sequent philosophy has found least acceptable. But 

 setting aside this part, the remainder of the Berkeleian 

 idealism is quite reconcilable with the extremest forms 

 of materialism, which asks only the phenomenal matter 

 that Berkeley freely grants in order to effect all its 

 purposes. Indeed, Professor Huxley distinctly allows 

 that the arguments of " pure idealism " are unanswerable, 

 and can be all the more easily shown to be irrefutable 

 the more completely we accept the materialist's position.* 

 But besides materialism and idealism, there is yet a 

 third monistic conception of the universe, at least as old 

 as the days of Spinoza a system which, though it has 

 been obscured, now by materialism, now by idealism, as 



* His words are : " The more completely the materialistic position is 

 admitted, the easier it is to show that the idealistic position is unassail- 

 able, if the idealist confines himself within the limits of positive know- 

 ledge." Life of Hume, p. 82. 



