detail illegible, of the unity of the perfect Whole. Why
we hold this to be a true theory, we have set forth at
length in the foregoing series of lectures; and the
detailed proof of the general thesis concerns us here no
longer. But the spirit in which we are to apply our
doctrine to the theory of our knowledge of particular
facts, and to the interpretation of such facts, interests us
here in much the same way in which practical religion
is interested in the spirit that the faithful ought to
preserve amidst the cares and sorrows of daily life. What
is it to believe, as the faithful do, that God is in all their
fortunes? What is it to maintain, as our Theory of
Being does, that, amidst all the complexities of Nature and
man's life, we are dealing with fragmentary glimpses of
an Absolute Unity, of the type depicted in
our foregoing series of lectures? The two problems, in many respects,
resemble each other. What you already know of the
solution of one problem goes far to prepare you for the
other.
II
The scope and the proposed order of the present series of lectures may be more precisely indicated as follows: —
I shall begin our inquiry by a preliminary study of some of the conditions that are characteristic of our human type of knowledge. Knowledge, such as we have of particular facts, is only one special case of what we can and do conceive as the range of the possible forms of knowledge. Not only theology and philosophy, but also, as we shall see, the empirical sciences themselves depend upon conceiving of higher types of knowledge, higher
