THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 315 



on the widest activity of our whole aesthetic being ? What were 

 Luther's mission and Wesley's but appeals to powers which even the 

 meanest of men might carry with them, faith and self-despair, but 

 which were personal, requiring no priestly intermediation, and which 

 brought their owner face to face Avith God ? What caused the wild-fire 

 influence of Rousseau but the assurance he gave that man's nature 

 was in harmony with the nature of things, if only the paralyzing cor- 

 ruptions of custom would stand from between ? How did Kant and 

 Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time with cheer, except by 

 saying, ' Use all your powers ; that is the only obedience which the uni- 

 verse exacts ' ? And Carlyle with his gospel of Work, of Fact, of Ve- 

 racity, how does he move us except by saying that the universe imposes 

 no tasks upon us but such as the most liumble can perform ? Emerson's 

 creed that everything that ever was or will be is here in the enveloping- 

 Now ; that man has but to obey himself — ' He who will rest in what he 

 is, is a part of Destiny '—is in like manner nothing but an exorcism of 

 all scepticism as to the pertinency of one's natural faculties. 



"In a word, ' Son of Man, atancl upon thy feet and I will speak 

 unto thee ! ' is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs 

 have helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the 

 greater part of his rational need. In se and per se the universal essence 

 has hardly been more defined by any of these formulae than by the 

 agnostic x ; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they are, 

 are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent, that it speaks to them and will 

 in some way recognize their reply, that I can be a match for it if I will, 

 and not a footless waif, suflBces to make it rational to my feeling ni the 

 sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd than to l)ope for the 

 definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, 

 and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more powerful of our 

 emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism, whose solving word in 

 all crises of behavior is ' All striving is vain,' will never reign supreme, 

 for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. 

 Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in 

 spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expec- 

 tancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not 

 given him." 



After the emotional and active needs come the intellec- 

 tual and aesthetic ones. The two great aesthetic principles, 

 of richness and of ease, dominate our intellectual as well 

 as our sensuous life. And, ceteris paribus, no system which 

 should not be rich, simple, and harmonious would have a 

 chance of being chosen for belief, if rich, simple, and har- 

 monious systems were also there. Into the latter we should 

 unhesitatingly settle, with that welcoming attitude of the will 



