next step, abstract ideas, cognizes
the world as a process of forces, and "things" are seen to be mere
temporary equilibria in the interaction of forces; "each thing is a
bundle of forces." But the concrete idea of the Persistent force sees a
deeper and more permanent reality underlying particular forces. It is
one ultimate force. In it all multiplicity of existences has vanished,
and yet it is the source of all particular existence.

This view of the world, on the stand-point of concrete idea, is
pantheistic. It makes out a one supreme principle which originates and
destroys all particular existences, all finite beings. It is the
stand-point of Orientalism, or of the Asiatic thought. Buddhism and
Brahminism have reached it, and not transcended it. It is a necessary
stage of reflection in the mind, just as much as the stand-point of the
first stage of reflection, which regards the world as composed of a
multiplicity of independent things; or the stand-point of the second
stage of reflection, which looks upon the world as a collection of
relative existences in a state of process.

The final stand-point of the intellect is that in which it perceives the
highest principle to be a self-determining or self-active Being,
self-conscious, and creator of a world which manifests him. A logical
investigation of the principle of "persistent force" would prove that
this principle of Personal Being is presupposed as its true form. Since
the "persistent force" is the sole and ultimate reality, it originates
all other reality only by self-activity, and thus is self-determined.
Self-determination implies self-consciousness as the true form of its
existence.

These four forms of thinking, which we have arbitrarily called
_sensuous_, _abstract_, _concrete_, and _absolute_ ideas, correspond to
four views of the world: (1) as a congeries of independent things; (2)
as a play of forces; (3) as the evanescent appearance of a negative
essential power; (4) as the creation of a Personal Creator, who makes it
the theatre of the development of conscious beings in his image. Each
step upward in ideas arrives at a more adequate idea of the true
reality. _Force_ is more real than _thing_; persistent force than
particular forces; Absolute Person is more real than the force or forces
which he creates.

This final form of thinking is the only form which is consistent with
the theory of education. Each individual should ascend by education into
part