346 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



one or other acquired temporary ascendency, yet has 

 ever reappeared again, and at the present moment seems 

 likely to prevail more and more, and, by drawing to 

 itself the truthful elements in materialism and idealism, 

 in the end to cut the ground from beneath the feet of 

 both ; deriving, moreover, as it has done, ever fresh life 

 and strength from the great scientific discoverers of the 

 past two hundred years, and certainly not least support 

 from those of our own generation. 



There is the conception which represents the Ulti- 

 mate Principle of the universe as something deeper,, 

 wider, greater than either matter as we know it or con- 

 sciousness as we know it; something of which matter 

 and thought are merely special forms, appearances, ex- 

 pressions the only ones, indeed, that we can know, and 

 that only by means of one of these themselves, but 

 which are, nevertheless, far from being exhaustive of the 

 transcendent nature of that One Eternal Substance and 

 Power at the bottom of these things that we know, as 

 well as of innumerable other possible presentations of 

 itself of which we can know nothing. 



This great conception, Spinozistic in its origin, has 

 been unfolding itself for more than two centuries past 

 in human thought ; has been working ever deeper into 

 the philosophic, poetic, artistic, theological, and even 

 lately into the scientific consciousness. It was the con- 

 ception of God in which the soul of Goethe, naturalist 

 and mighty poet, finally rested. It was the conception 

 of Schliermacher, the father of rational theology. Even 

 Kant, thinker and man of science though from the 

 practical reason he reached a different result from the 

 speculative side could find no other conception than this 

 of an Absolute Being, the final unconditioned Substance, 

 "the sum of all realities;" while at the present time, 



