muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility.  Those of you who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt—­a shrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit refutation.  But one must have lived some time with a system to appreciate its merits.  Perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate your first surprise at such a programme as I offer.

First, one word more than what I said last time about the relative foreignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute.  Those of you who have read the last two chapters of Mr. Bradley’s wonderful book, ‘Appearance and reality,’ will remember what an elaborately foreign aspect his absolute is finally made to assume.  It is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection of selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand these terms.  It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are permitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate worth more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic adjectives of ours applied to it.  It is us, and all other appearances, but none of us as such, for in it we are all ‘transmuted,’ and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.

Spinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being intimate with his God is universally recognized. Quatenus infinitus est he is other than what he is quatenus humanam mentem constituit.  Spinoza’s philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word quatenus.  Conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words ‘as’ and ‘qua’ bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with phenomenal diversity.  Qua absolute the world is one and perfect, qua relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same world—­instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in many aspects.

As absolute, then, or sub specie eternitatis, or quatenus infinitus est, the world repels our sympathy because it has no history. As such, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats.  All such things pertain to the world qua relative, in which our finite experiences lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest.  What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition?  I am finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up with the finite world as such, and with things that have a history.