finite experience
compounded and redeemed. There is no being but the absolute, the one
all-inclusive spiritual life, in whom all things are inherent, and whose
perfection is the virtual implication of all purposive activities.

"God's life . . . sees the one plan fulfilled through all the
manifold lives, the single consciousness winning its purpose
by virtue of all the ideas, of all the individual selves, and
of all the lives. No finite view is wholly illusory. Every
finite intent taken precisely in its wholeness is fulfilled in
the Absolute. The least life is not neglected, the most
fleeting act is a recognized part of the world's meaning. You
are for the divine view all that you know yourself at this
instant to be. But you are also infinitely more. The
preciousness of your present purposes to yourself is only a
hint of that preciousness which in the end links their meaning
to the entire realm of Being."[178:20]

The fruitfulness of the philosopher's reflective doubt concerning his
own powers is now evident. Problems are raised which are not merely
urgent in themselves, but which present wholly new alternatives to the
metaphysician. Rationalism and empiricism, realism and idealism, are
doctrines which, though springing from the epistemological query
concerning the possibility of knowledge, may determine an entire
philosophical system. They bear upon every question of metaphysics,
whether the fundamental conception of being, or the problems of the
world's unity, origin, and significance for human life.

FOOTNOTES:

[150:1] The post-Kantian movement in Germany--especially in so far as
influenced by Hegel. See Chap. XII.

[151:2] Cf. Sect. 203.

[152:3] _E. g._, the system of Fichte. Cf. Sect. 177.

[153:4] See Chap. XI.

[153:5] Spinoza: _On the Improvement of the Understanding_. Translation
by Elwes, p. 3.

[154:6] Spinoza: _Ethics_, Part V, Proposition XLII. Translation by
Elwes, p. 270.

[155:7] Descartes: _Meditations_, I. Translation by Veitch, p. 97.

[155:8] Leibniz: _New System of the Nature of Substances_. Translation
by Latta, pp. 299, 300.

[157:9] Burnet: _Early Greek Philosophy_, p. 42.

[159:10] No little ambiguity attaches to the term "monism" in current
usage, because of its appropriation by those who maintain that the
universe is unitary and homogeneous in _physical terms_ (cf. Sect. 108).
It should properly be used to emphas