SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY AS A PHILOSOPHY. 331 
These inductions are presented as philosophy, not as science, and are not, 
therefore, to be classed with the accepted inductions of science which reveal the 
laws of phenomenal nature. They are super-scientific, and bring us up to the 
level of mythology and theology, which find in gods, or God, the ultimate, abso- 
lute and infinite principle of nature. It brings us also up to the level where 
philosophy finds its real problem—this ultimate, absolute, infinite first principle 
which it is its function to explain. But when we look to this evolution philoso- 
phy for such explanation we are disappointed. It tells us that force is inscrutable 
and thus, instead of satisfying the yearnings of humanity, it falls into absurdity 
by explaining all that is known into the unknown and unknowable, and thus 
makes the mystery it set itself to resolve, deeper and darker than it found it. 
Nor is this all; any system of philosophy must be consistent with itself. Here 
we are told on the one hand that force is wholly inscrutable, and on the other 
that it possesses activity, a number of most general laws of action, to explain 
which, as producing evolution, is the purpose of this philosophy. Now, if all 
knowledge is relative, it is necessary to think that being possessing these, or any 
other qualities, by which it may be known is not inscrutable. Either it is not un- 
knowable, or it does not possess relations whereby it is known. 
Here again it might be dismissed as philosophy were it not that it has not 
exhausted its material. There are inductions unmade that even an ordinary mind 
can supply, and perhaps many may supply to the detriment of truth. Let these 
be supplied and see if it will help it out of its absurdity. 
Force being the ultimate principle in man and the ultimate, absolute and 
infinite principle in nature, both are the same, except that the one is special and 
the other general. Whatever qualities it exhibits in its special form, it must 
possess in its general form, for the general form being absolute and infinite must 
be the source of all qualities of the special form; there is no other source from 
which they could be derived, -and to hold otherwise is absurd. Therefore when 
the special form exhibits a mode of motion that constitutes what we know as 
intelligence, will and emotion, that mode of motion must be exhibited also by 
the general form, and the conception at which we thus arrive is that of force as a 
personal deity infinite and absolute. 
But if it be held that the mode of motion we know as intelligence in man is 
a modified form of motion resulting from the interaction of different forms of 
force, then there are deductions that apply. Let these be supplied and see if 
they will help this philosophy out of its absurdity. If force be the ultimate 
principle in nature, that of which all other things are composed, it seems neces- 
Sary to conceive it as having existed in a pure state before things were evolved 
from it. In that case it seems equally necessary to conceive that force determined 
to organize things, and that it established laws that governthem. To have done 
this manifestly required the exercise of absolute will and infinite intelligence. 
And as will and intelligence cannot be conceived except as associated with 
conciousness, we find ourselves brought again to the conception of force as 
personal deity, infinite and absolute. 
’ 
So 
