of what reality is; I agree with Professor Royce, and with Hegel before him, that reality, in its turn, must be the test of the genuine Ideal, — that “whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real.” I agree that the Ideal is ipso facto the Real; but I insist that the vital question is: Have we stated the Ideal? I insist, further, that the conception of God expounded with such lucid fulness by Professor Royce, and in various implications accepted by Professor Mezes and Dr. Le Conte, in its fundamental aspect at least, — that of the immanence of God in the world, — I insist that this falls fatally short of our rational Ideal, and is therefore, happily, only so far real as its limitations permit it to be; for, by every idealist of course, some truth, some reality, must be accorded to all genuine thought, — it is all true, all real, as far as it goes. But the great concern is, just how far such a thought as has been offered us this evening does go on the lofty way to the Ideal; just what relative truth, what measure of partial reality, we shall assign it. And so I may restate my comment on this conception of God by saying that, while on the one hand I see it come as far short of God’s verity and God’s existence as earth comes short of heaven, as the creation comes short of the Creator, nevertheless, on the other hand, when expressed as Professor Royce expresses it, it does attain to the real nature of the real creation, and, when expressed as Dr. Le Conte would express it, to the real nature of the phenomenal aspect in the real creation, besides.
In other words, the conception is a philosophical and real account of the nature of an isolated human
