fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to
overcome the 'problem of evil,' the 'mystery of pain.' There is no
'problem of good.'

But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of
contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object
whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so
incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all {83}
relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one
blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. Better face the
enemy than the eternal Void! This is why materialism will always fail
of universal adoption, however well it may fuse things into an
atomistic unity, however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity.
For materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the
impulses which we most cherish. The real _meaning_ of the impulses, it
says, is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever.
Now, what is called 'extradition' is quite as characteristic of our
emotions as of our senses: both point to an object as the cause of the
present feeling. What an intensely objective reference lies in fear!
In like manner an enraptured man and a dreary-feeling man are not
simply aware of their subjective states; if they were, the force of
their feelings would all evaporate. Both believe there is outward
cause why they should feel as they do: either, "It is a glad world! how
good life is!" or, "What a loathsome tedium is existence!" Any
philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by
explaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no
emotional pertinency, leaves the mind with little to care or act for.
This is the opposite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely
brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In
nightmare we have motives to act, but no power; here we have powers,
but no motives. A nameless _unheimlichkeit_ comes over us at the
thought of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the
objects of those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies.
The monstrously lopsided equation of the universe and its {84} knower,
which we postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled
by the no less lopsided equation of the universe and the _doer_. We
demand in it a character for which our emotions and active propensities
shall be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which th