the
question further must now be referred.

FOOTNOTES:

[60:1] +Kosmon tonde ton auton akanton oute tis theon oute anthropon
epoiese, all' en aiei kai esti kai estai pyr aeizoon haptomenon metra
kai aposbennymenon metra.+ Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. (_The
First Philosophers of Greece_, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28.)

[61:1] "La subdivision do la matiere en corps isoles est relative a
notre perception" (_Evolution creatrice_, p. 13).

[69:1] For a clear brief summary of the theory the reader may be
referred to a little work by Sir William Ramsay, F.R.S., entitled
_Elements and Electrons_, pp. 8-15.

IV

THE DOCTRINE OF ENERGY[81:1]

The problem of Metaphysics--the nature of Reality--still presses for a
solution. Agnosticism is but a cautious idealism--a timid phenomenalism.
That philosophy, however named, which proclaims that the experience of
life is nothing more than a vain show, a pantomime of sensations
distinguished only from ideas by their greater intensity and
distinctness, is not only a confession of failure. It is a denial of
fact.

To know the nature of the Absolute as such, to present the Absolute to
finite minds as it must be presented, if that be possible, to the
Absolute itself, must ever remain impossible to man. But it is equally
true that to attempt such a task has never been the urgent mission of
Philosophy. The distinction between the Ideal and the Real, between the
conceptual and the perceptual, is quite certainly and incessantly
recognised. Agnosticism can neither deny the fact successfully, nor
solve the speculative difficulties which its recognition raises up. The
Real and the Ideal, essentially distinct yet mockingly similar, for ever
blend and intermingle in the composite experience of life. Truly to
discriminate and unravel these,--validly to separate the Ideal element
which impregnates that Reality which we are for ever compelled to
postulate and recognise, still remains the great problem of
Philosophy--humbler perhaps and more practical, but not less profound
than any vain attempt to discover to finite conception the Absolute as
it is in itself. Therefore it is that the efforts of negative and
agnostic criticism to dispense with the recognition of Reality as a
necessary postulate of our activity are foredoomed to failure. They
leave us not a solitude which we might pretend to be peace, but a
seething sea of troubles urgently demanding a new attempt to reveal the
unit