Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/128

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MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM
67

or coherently.[1] Still sharper inquiry at last makes it equally clear, too, that atheistic pantheism will carry idealism as consistently as it carries materialism, if doubtless less naturally. For although in the sum-total of the particular existences there must be recognised a gradation from such as are unconscious up to those that are completely conscious, and it would therefore be the more obvious step to read the series as a development upward from atoms to mind, still the mystery of the transit from the unconscious to the conscious cannot fail to suggest the counter-hypothesis, and the whole series may be conceived as originating ideally, in the perceptive constitution and experience of the conscious members of it. There is a marked distinction, however, between the idealism given by acosmic pantheism and the idealism given by the

  1. There might be added here, in connexion with acosmic pantheism, a third hypothesis — that, namely, of the simple “parallelism” or concomitance of the two attributes, extension and thought. This third hypothesis would land us either (1) in agnosticism, as with Spencer, or (2) in “absolute” idealism, as with Hegel, — in the Idee as the transcending synthesis of objective and subjective idealism. We should thus get two additional species of non-atheistic pantheism. [The real effect of the preceding note is doubtless a criticism of the twofold division in the text. The fact is, this division is a relic of the Hegelian monism by which the original paper was in one side pervaded; but let it remain standing, — in part as a piacular memorial! The exclusion of “absolute” idealism from the list of pantheisms meant the tacit assumption that it had transcended pantheism. But see foot-note to p. 74 below.]