Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/16

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PREFACE
xiii

an order organised by the self-active forms of consciousness that in their unity constitute the substantial being of a mind, in distinction from its phenomenal life.


II. Accordingly, Time and Space, and all that both “contain,” owe their entire existence to the essential correlation and coexistence of minds. This coexistence is not to be thought of as either their simultaneity or their contiguity. It is not at all spatial, nor temporal, but must be regarded as simply their logical implication of each other in the self-defining consciousness of each. And this recognition of each other as all alike self-determining, renders their coexistence a moral order.


III. These many minds, being in this mutual recognition of their moral reality the determining ground of all events and all mere “things,” form the eternal (i.e. unconditionally real) world; and by a fitting metaphor, consecrated in the usage of ages, they may be said to constitute the “City of God.” In this, all the members have the equality belonging to their common aim of fulfilling their one Rational Ideal; and God, the fulfilled Type of every mind, the living Bond of their union, reigns in it, not by the exercise of power, but solely by light; not by authority, but by reason; not by efficient, but