and above all non-theistic, and all abstract theistic theories, the unsatisfactoriness of each successive one forcing thought to seek the truth just beyond, and yet implied in it, till concrete personality is reached and is seen to be the eternal presupposition lying back of and giving comparative worth to each imperfect one, and in which they are all abrogated and fulfilled. We may put the whole of philosophy in one sentence adapted from Augustine: Thou hast made our minds for Thee, O God, and they are restless till they rest in Thee. This is the goal of catholic philosophy, of corporate reason, which vindicates all the transcended steps of its progress to this ultimate ground of thought. This process of philosophy is just the reverse of abstract method. And the God of thought is the most concrete, catholic Real, reached not by a process of abstraction from particulars to a blank universal, but by a process of interpretation, an inclusion of particulars and their environment,—a totality in which all other categories live and move and have their being.
But if this is such a concrete General, it must show itself capable of yielding in turn that from which it has been inducted. If this is the interpretation of experience, it must also be its interpreter. If this is the ultimate standpoint of reason, it must be evident how it bottoms all that is; it must explain all thoughts and things as parts of a great process of creation, or of the self-revelation of God. It is not sufficient to say that "the real is the rational," if by the real we mean only a sterile universal. This would be of less worth than the deistic Deus ex machina. This First Principle must show itself as the metaphysics (μετά, in the midst of) of nature, man, and his institutions.
This reverse process of tracing the genesis and relative validity of the particulars from this concrete Reality is as difficult as it is necessary. Its relation to the current authority of physical and ethical law, state, church, Bible, spirit of peoples, prophets and lawgivers, is not immediately evident. How does it bottom them, render them relatively jure divino? Limits of space preclude more than a mere indication of the principle and method of this work, and of the validity to be expected.
