the fact were established, as I incline to think it will be, sooner or later, I for one should be very far from murmuring about it. If matter, or extended substance, endowed with no other qualities than those of resistance-energy, kinetic or potential, transformable into chemical, thermo-dynamical, electric, or magnetic action-has become living in course of evolution, it is not the base thing which it appears to be in the philosophy of Condillac, Cabanis, and the French medicoatheistic school. No; that would be a violation of the axiomatic law of causation which I just now stated. Some hitherto latent energy sui generis, and distinct in nature as in manifestation from material energy, must have come into play; and the mysterious thing which we term matter is what Bain has called it, a doublefaced somewhat having a spiritual and physical side,” a compound of two natures, the lower manifesting itself earlier than the higher, as is natural.

SAVILE. This seems to approximate to Spinoza's doctrine, "Omnia, diversis tamen gradibus, animata sunt"—that soul and body are one and the same thing considered now under the attribute of thought and now under the attribute of extension. But the question arises at this stage of your argument, Can the same substance, being absolutely identical with itself or simple, manifest two distinct or opposed kinds of activity such as those of life and matter? I fancy your orthodox friends would say, No. Would they not be

down upon you with the syllogism, "Whatever is extended in space is measurable and divisible; but the conscious ego is neither measurable nor divisible. Therefore it is not extended in space."

ST. GEORGE. No doubt a school for which I have the greatest respect would so reason. I would reply that perhaps the major of this argument needs to be distinguished. Space is measurable and divisible. But the energy acting in it, is that not also measurable and divisible ? A spirit certainly the Infinite Spirit-might put forth an energy of resistance within a given circumference, and in that case clearly you might measure the force exerted on every square inch, although it would be due to an indivisible energy—to the Spirit in which there is no real division, but only the power of producing effects that are divisible and divided. Now, if this is so, we may refer all the phenomena of matter to simple energies producing resistance in space, and these energies may reasonably be conceived of as possessing other powers than those of resistance that is to say, as living. And then what we term matter would be only the resultant of the relations of a finite spiritual energy to space, and body would be merely the spatial relations of a spirit.

SAVILE. It is a bold speculation.

ST. GEORGE. Whatever it may be worth, this is certain: that all spiritualistic philosophers insist that a pure spirit is capable of exert

ing force; and what is that but to allow that a spirit can put on material attributes? What, then, if the universe cognisable by the senses were only the manifestation of spiritual being in space ? SAVILE. But what is space?

ST. GEORGE. I should be much obliged to any one who would tell me, for I do not see my way to any answer altogether satisfactory. A great authority holds that as a notion it is "the three dimensions of body or matter considered in the abstract." And I suppose we may say that as a reality it can only be energy manifesting itself under the three dimensions, and that as an imagination it is the possibility of energy so manifesting itself. But, whatever it is, I think we must allow that the spirit or the thinking substance may exert resistance under these dimensions, and so may appear as matter. SAVILE. Which is Berkeleyism.

ST. GEORGE. It approximates to Berkeley's view, I suppose, for of course he did not hold the absurd notion often attributed to him that matter is nothing, but that it is nothing distinct from spiritual energy, or that it is one form-the lowest-of such energy. My conclusion is that from a mere principle of extension you can get neither life nor mind; but that matter may well be a non-extended principle of energy manifesting itself under dimensions.

SAVILE. You conceive, then, if I rightly apprehend you, of your non-extended energy as unconscious life, moving on towards consciousness, as a latent ego destined to put forth conscious thought when the conditions of the environment allow of it?

ST. GEORGE. Yes. I believe that the old wall of partition between spirit and matter is cracking in all directions; I think I already hear the sound of the trumpets before whose blast it is doomed to fall. But I believe further that we shall come to recognise a thinking substance of which thought is the foundation, not the resultant-a view which, by the way, was practically admitted in the old scholastic system, where the potentiality of so-called matter to put on fresh qualities and to become spiritualised was allowed, although but slightly analysed. It seems to me very possible that created life may at first have been latent in things or have manifested itself only in the lowest energy, the material, and that, under whatever laws of evolution, one species may have grown out of another, until the instinctive or unconscious life was fully developed in the lower organisms. Again, taking the data of embryology, of infancy, of sickness and mental derangement, I infer that the mind or ego may remain indefinitely unconscious, latent, or undeveloped, according to conditions which are mostly beyond our ken-conditions which, however, so far as we do know them, may be moral as well as material. But though latent, the energy is indestructible; what i' requires is a favourable environment.

SAVILE. And here, I suppose, comes in the law of evolution.

ST. GEORGE. Precisely; the law in virtue of which things advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the less to the more determinate. This law being universal, it follows that the struggle for existence must ultimately issue in the harmonious distribution of all forces throughout the universe, so that defeat is rather to be called delay, as all things tend more and more to rise in the scale, and no force or principle can ever be really abolished. Combining the struggle with the result we obtain the so-called "law of spiral ascension," or the progress of things by a gradual development of what is latent in them. Forms tend more and more to become stable as acts grow into habits, and whilst the conscious becomes unconscious or automatic, a further height of consciousness is attained, as we may see in the musician to whom as Mozart becomes easy Beethoven becomes intelligible. Then every attainment is also a prophecy. But, with increase of power, from this potency comes an increased self-consciousness or development of the ego, as a personage, individual, self-balanced, master of its resources, characteristic, sui generis, himself.

SAVILE. Your thought seems to be pretty much this:

"I that trace Providence without a break

I' the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain truth—
That man is made in sympathy with man

At outset of existence, so to speak;
But in dissociation, more and more,

Man from his fellow, as their lives advance

In culture; still humanity that's born
A mass, keeps flying off, fining away
Ever into a multitude of points,

And ends in isolation, each from each :
Peerless above in the sky, the pinnacle,-

Absolute contact, fusion all below

At the base of being."

verses. Yes, There is but

ST. GEORGE. I thank you for quoting those fine Browning is right. That is the ascension of the ego. one real substance, the soul; and evolution, or the history of the world, is only the continued metamorphosis by which the ego comes to know itself. Nature is the allegory of spirit, and as each symbol develops an activity it exhausts a meaning, and, being itself a means, must disappear. Death is therefore natural and has its proper function, which is to sweep away the used-up material into the fire, where it may be made capable of further use. Matter as distinct from spirit is an abstraction, and if taken to be real an illusion, as those old Vedic sages saw: the mocking Maya, from which thought alone can release. In the universe there is but one aim to disengage the unconscious and the latent from its state of inertia, of mere potency, and to raise it to individual self-possession. But such self

possession can never be unless by the gradual assimilation of the infinite with the finite-the union of nature with its environmentor of the finite with the infinite, the same union looked at inversely. The result must unite individuals into a species, the multitude of conscious beings into a society, the creation with God. But it cannot abolish consciousness, and therefore in the fixed or everlasting harmony God will know Himself and all will know God, and the infinite in which they communicate will be their bond of union.

SAVILE. And the assimilation of finite with infinite is a neverending process?

ST. GEORGE. Yes, so long as it means progress too, and a more and more determinate and individual possession of life by each spirit; not the lapse of all into the unconscious, which would be simply a return, a degradation, or, in Browning's language, a stooping from the pinnacle to the base, and no fulfilment of a design, but rather the annihilation of a purpose. If, then, all things are to become spiritual, this cannot imply that they will some day sink to be material again. Phenomena are avowedly the means and not the end. Self-conscious spirit alone is the end; nor can we conceive of any higher expression of a really persistent force than that which makes it a consciousness, wherein abide past, present, and future, as known, loved, and acted upon. The final stage of progress, so far as we can discern it, must be a society of immortal beings, physically, morally, and intellectually perfect, united in the immanent Cause of their existence and action, who is revealed to them as such by the changes they have undergone.

"We

SAVILE. Tancred's lady has apparently well summed it up : had fins; we may have wings." Shall I shock you or are you past shocking?-if I say that the prospect does not much charm me? I agree with Voltaire, "On aime la vie, mais le néant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon."

ST. GEORGE. My dear old friend, just consider that our likings have nothing to do with the matter. "The nature of things will not be changed by your or my fond wishes." "Things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be. Why, then, should we desire to be deceived ? "

SAVILE. That is exactly what I do not desire, nor you either, of course. But I wonder whether we make sufficient allowance for the difference of our intellectual constitution? Let me hear you out, however, if you will be so kind. There are still two points which you must touch upon before your theory will be properly rounded off-the destiny of matter and the bearing of the problem of evil on the whole doctrine of progress.

ST. GEORGE. Physical science indicates that matter proceeds from the invisible and returns thither, developing in the intermediate

cycles an ever larger and higher capacity for the expression of vital energies. Thus it is imperceptibly condensed from elements to compounds; from hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, to the living organisms in which spirit manifests itself; and this unstable synthesis dissolves in the partial analysis of vital action and in the total analysis of death. But there are grounds for believing that death controls only the visible, and that there are invisible material energies by which the spirit can act after death. These energies make up the oŵμa πvevμatikóv, to use St. Paul's phrase, the spiritual body, which may be subject to endless transformations, raising it higher and higher until the spirit attains the vastest powers of acting in and through space. There is no reason why these powers should be suspended, annihilated, or made unnecessary to the soul's perfection; on the contrary, they should, according to the analogy of nature, persist. A soul now embodies itself in flesh and blood. Hereafter it may be the ruling principle of a star. If matter be the outside of spirit, then spiritual beings may be, must be, the centres of cosmic energy, and the material universe may be as lasting as the soul itself. Nay, more, it is reasonable to suppose that the creative or artistic instinct demands this for its contentment, and that immortal knowledge will be the mainspring of ever fresh realisation by the spirit in the world of sense. Yes, there is a true word in Lord Beaconsfield's joke. The wings of immortality are contemplation and action. The soul creates a world around it and embodies a world in the concrete. What reason is there why this should come to an end with death, if death be only the releasing of pent-up energies and not the dissolution of them all?

Then as to evil. It is commonly held that progress must change evil to good, and that it is only relative, only the negation of higher good as yet unattained. But, as I have urged, we must admit freewill upon the supreme testimony of consciousness. I say, therefore, that if a man submits to the law of moral development, which he may do by choosing and acting aright, he will finally be delivered from all evil. But if he rebels and will not submit to the elevating, the redeeming influences, he thereby falls under those which degrade, stupefy, and materialise. And as he would cease to be man had he no free-will-actu vel potentia-and moral good must imply moral choice, it seems inevitable that he should remain the slave of the lower life as long as he will not choose to break away from it. And death being a change of state, not of moral condition, what warrant have we for affirming that the process of degradation will not continue indefinitely? And science not admitting annihilation-nothing perishes does not this imply an eternal abiding in that from which the soul was meant to pass onward and upward? By what name, then, shall we call the vision of perfection not realised, nor now to