follower of Darwin and of Spencer undertook to interpret the Philosophy of Evolution so as to impart to the Immanent Power, the “Omnipresent Energy” of the evolutionist, a tinge of the Personal God, and to transfigure evolutional Agnosticism into Cosmic Theism. Of this, the pervading theme was the substitution of a “quasi-personal God immanent in the world” for the traditional “God remote from the world.” Evolutionism joined forces with a semi-idealistic Monism, to extend the spread of the conception of a one and only Immanent Spirit.[1]
But whatever religious advantages this form of Idealism may have, — in the way of displacing Agnosticism and of recovering an Absolute that shall be personal so far as regards possession of self-consciousness and intelligent purpose, — or even in the way of winning an assurance of something for the human Self that may excusably be called everlasting life, — there still remains to be settled a question of far graver import for religion and for human worth; the question, namely, of Freedom, and of the moral responsibility and moral opportunity dependent on freedom. Can the reality of human free-agency, of moral responsibility and universal moral aspiration, of unlimited spiritual hope for every soul, — can this be made out, can it even be held, consistently with
- ↑ The pervasion of pure literature by this fascinating theme must not be overlooked in recounting the causes of its present prevalence. It has filled, especially, almost the whole realm of Poetry, from the days of Goethe. The English poetry of the century is alive with it: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, — it seems the ceaseless refrain of all their song. Nor, to turn to the essayists, may we forget Carlyle; nor, in his theistic moods, Emerson.
