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discovers a creative, and providential, and continually operative force 

 underlying all sentient and non-sentient phenomenal existences, and tend- 

 ing towards annihilation, — that is, the reproduction of that " primitive 

 harmony of the unconscious," where nature and conscious life are non- 

 existent ; when, I say, we try to represent to ourselves these " hypostatised 

 abstractions," we shall most certainly conclude that we are in a speculative 

 cloudland where there is no firm ground on which we can build either reason 

 or faith. 



All Pantheism, even the most poetical, and still more this pseudo-meta- 

 physical stuff, is antitheistic and atheistic in its ultimate issues ; but I should 

 myself refuse to call Schopenhauer and Hartmann Pantheists at all. They 

 might perhaps be termed " fatalistic Pandynamists" ; and when men who 

 are really searching after truth find that this permeating Sivafxic is 

 " blind will," or a sort of " unconscious mind," they will probably concur 

 with Professor Flint, that they " do not need to occupy time in criticising 

 fancies so arbitrary and self-contradictory." 



What we do need to consider in respect of any Pessimistic theories is, 

 what bearing they have upon natural and revealed religion. 



For myself, I think there is often an exaggerated idea of pain and death 

 as physical evils ; and in the animal and vegetable world, regarded apart 

 from man, I do not find that "cruelty" and "carnage "are of such signifi- 

 cance as to induce me to blame Nature, or G-od. In the field of physical 

 research we can not seldom perceive how death is but part of the cycle of 

 life, and how much that seems violent and calamitous is needed for the 

 general good. But when we turn from " physical " science to mental philo- 

 sophy and ethics, and to the personal and social factors of human life, we 

 see much to perplex and to sadden ; and our self-conscious nature, with all 

 the discursive and introspective faculties of our complex personality, makes 

 us susceptible to apprehensions, and fears, and hopes which will not be 

 soothed or satisfied by any mere physical theory of the universe, but reach 

 forward, hither and thither, with the questions. Where is happiness ? Who 

 will show us good ? In this moral (or spiritual) aspect of matters, " the 

 Pessimist view of existence can only be met by a religious view of exist- 

 ence." And have we not in all Pessimistic theories (whether of poets, 

 novelists, or philosophisers) a strong testimony to the truthfulness of those 

 views of human nature, and of its moral and spiritual needs, which the 

 Bible sets before us ? Everywhere there is a consciousness of evil ; every- 

 where there is an aspiration after happiness, — that is, after what is good and 

 harmonious. Everywhere there is some felt need for a remedial interposi- 

 tion ; and even amid variously formulised utterances of despair there is 

 recognisable a persistent hope of deliverance. 



All this corroborates the reasonableness of an anti-materialistic view of 

 the universe. 



Neither Hedonism on the one side, nor suicide on the other, can satisfy 

 our spiritual instincts ; and these instincts cannot be inherent in man as 



