s its stopping-place. The universe is unfathomable.
Human thought has a definite limit. The universe has no
limit. The universe is "unutterably mysterious"; and so also
is the human soul; but as far as the soul's complex vision is
concerned there can be no reality "behind the appearances of
things" except the reality of the soul itself. Thus there is no
"parent" of man and of the universe. But "the immortal companions"
of men are implied from man's most intimate experiences of life.
For if there were no invisible watchers, no arbiters, no standards,
no tests, no patterns, no ideals; our complex vision, in regard to
certain basic attributes, would be refuted and negated.

Every soul which exists must be thought of as possessing the
attribute of "emotion" with its duality of love and malice, the
attribute of "taste" with its duality of beauty and hideousness, of
conscience with its duality of good and evil, and the attribute of
"reason" with its duality of the true and the false. Every one of
these basic attributes would be reduced to a suicidal confusion of
absolute sceptical subjectivity if it could not have faith in some
objective reality to which it can appeal.

Such an appeal, to such an objective reality, it does, as a matter of
fact, continually make, whether it makes it consciously or
sub-consciously. And just as the soul's basic attributes of emotion,
taste, conscience, and reason indicate an implicit faith in the
objective reality of the ideas of beauty and nobility and truth; so
the soul's basic attribute of self-consciousness indicates an implicit
demand that the objective reality of these ideas should be united
and embodied in actual living and self-conscious "souls" external
to other "souls."

The most dangerous mistake we can make, and the most deadly in
its implications, is to reduce these "companions of men" to a
monistic unity and to make this unity what the metaphysicians call
"absolute" in its embodiment of these ultimate ideas.

In comparison with the fitful and moody subjectivity of our
individual conceptions of these ideas the vision of the immortals
may be thought of as embodying them absolutely. But in itself it
certainly does not embody them absolutely; otherwise the whole
movement of life would end. It is unthinkable that it should ever
embody them absolutely. For it is in the inherent nature of such a
vision that it should be growing, living, inexhaustible. The most
withering and deadly o