. Nor is the duality thus suggested any final
conclusion. For few, I imagine, would now contend that, in the last
result Matter and Force are fundamentally different things. In fact,
Monism holds the field; and though the evolution of human opinion is
very slow, it appears safe to predict that the triumph of that world
theory is assured.

[Sidenote: Idea of Creation Incongruous with Modern Knowledge.]

This result Is additionally secured by the increasing incongruity felt
between the immeasurable vastness of the Universe, even as known, and
the idea of creation out of nothing. When the Almighty could be
seriously pictured as constructing chambers for Himself and His heavenly
host above, the middle floor of earth for the children of men, and the
abyss for ghosts and devils, the notion that His word evoked that puny
structure from nothing might be invested by poets and prophets with a
certain grandeur. Each part of the work had an object as conceivable as
that of each floor in a house; and, according to petty human notions of
utility, nothing was wasted. But now, when our astronomers confront us
with countless millions of orbs, to whose extension In space no bound
can be proved, while some of them tell us that the whole immensity is a
desert of alternate fire and darkness, with no spark of finite intellect
except in our tiny earth, some of us, at least, cannot help feeling that
the notion of a personal divine worker calling this huge enigma out of
blank eternal nothing, is enormously and utterly incongruous both with
reverence and common sense.

And if the Pantheist in these days be asked, "What interpretation then
do you propose?" his answer is, "I propose none. I take things as they
are. In their totality they are unknowable, as, indeed, even science
finds they are in their infinitesimal parts." But we need not on this
account lose "the divinity that shapes our ends."

[Sidenote: Pantheistic Morality.]

[Sidenote: The Law of the Whole.]

For, between the infinite and the infinitesimal the human experience
realizes itself in surroundings which, when observed and reflected on,
make the impression of ordered relations of parts. By a necessity of our
finite and individual existence as centres of action--a necessity of
which we can give no account--we present those relations to ourselves in
forms of time and space. Then, when our experience is large enough and
ripe enough, being enriched and stimulated by the stored-up