h can resist, and while Subjective
Idealism stops short at the perceiving mind, Ideal-Realism
affirms the reality of objects and perceiving mind alike,
but regards them as mutually dependent, and as fused in the
activity of consciousness. Can the conclusions just summed up
and the metaphysical theory adopted be brought into helpful
connection?

Yes, if the human mind and the external world are made of the
same stuff--if the mind is invisible nature, and nature visible
mind. For Materialism cannot bridge the gap between matter
and consciousness; Subjective Idealism can never move out into
a real world. But if nature and mind are genuinely akin, as the
nature-mystic holds, there is no gap to bridge, no mind
condemned to hopeless isolation. Nature is then seen to be a
manifestation of the same mental factors which we discover
when we analyse our inner experience--namely, consciousness,
feeling, will, and reason. The nature-mystic's communion with
the external world takes its place as a valid mode of realising
the essential sameness of all forms of existences and of all
cosmic activities. Science is another such valid mode, art
another, philosophy another, religion yet another--none of them
ultimately antagonistic, but mutually supplementary. Some
mystics will say that the union of man with nature is actually at
any moment complete, but has to be brought into the light of
conscious experience. Other mystics, who hold dualistic,
pluralistic, or pragmatic views, will maintain that the union may
assume ever new forms and develop ever new potentialities. But
such differences are subsidiary, and cannot obscure the
fundamental doctrine on which all consistent nature-mystics
must be agreed, that man and nature are essentially
manifestations of the same Reality.

It is deeply significant to note that, at the very dawn of
reflective thought, a conviction of the essential sameness of all
existence seized upon the minds of the fathers of Western
philosophy, and dominated their speculations. The teaching of
these bold pioneers was inevitably coloured and limited by their
social environment; but it was also so shot through with flashes
of intuition and acute reasonings, that it anticipated many of the
latest developments of modern research. A study of its main
features will occupy us at a later stage, when _we_ come to deal
with certain of nature's most striking phenomena. The simple
fact is here emphasised that the earliest effor