346 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



philosophy throughout, and in a modified form it is 

 the view of many modern idealists. The great 

 universe into which we shall ultimately, consciously 

 or unconsciously, be resolved, is mind, and nothing 

 more nor less than mind. 



Here we reach the threshold of the Temple of 

 Knowledge, where, having offered sacrifice, if we may 

 put it so, we may enter and kneel before the shrine 

 of truth : where all Nature from that infinitude of 

 cBons past ere matter knew itself, to that infinitude 

 of aeons yet to come, when it will know itself no 

 longer, appears but as a passing thought in that 

 Mind that Is. This is Idealism in its most com- 

 prehensive form. 



As Huxley has remarked,^ " It is worth any 

 amount of trouble to comprehend the exact nature 

 of the argument by which Berkeley arrived at his 

 results, and to know by one's own knowledge the 

 great truth which he discovered — that the honest 

 and rigorous following up of the argument which 

 leads us to ' materialism ' inevitably carries us 

 beyond it." In the Dialogues between Hylas and 

 Philonous we find this great conception of the 

 world as a system of perceptions most charmingly 

 and most lucidly put forward : 



" See, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain," said 

 Philonous, " how it is forced upwards in a round 

 column to a certain height at which it breaks and 

 then descends to the basin from which it rose, its 

 ascent as well as its descent being governed by the 

 1 " Hume, with helps to the study of Berkeley." 



