hopeful for what is worth the hoping, that nature should discern ideals
and take some steps toward realizing them, than that ideals should have
created nature--such as it is! How much better a report can we give of
nature for its ideals, than of the ideals for their handiwork, if it be
nature! Emerson writes:

"Suffice it for the joy of the universe that we have not
arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems
not present so much as prospective; not for the affairs on
which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor.
Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty;
information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we
are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in
a tendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to
believe in the rule, not in the exception. The noble are thus
known from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of the
sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the
immortality of the soul or the like, but _the universal
impulse to believe_, that is the material circumstance and is
the principal fact in the history of the globe."[425:16]

[Sidenote: The Worship and Service of God.]

Sect. 217. If God be rid of the imputation of moral evil and
indifference, he may be _intrinsically worshipful_, because regarded
under the form of the highest ideals. And if the great cause of goodness
be in fact at stake, God may both command the adoration of men through
his purity, and reenforce their virtuous living through representing to
them that realization of goodness in the universe at large which both
contains and exceeds their individual endeavor.

[Sidenote: The Philosopher and the Standards of the Marketplace.]

Sect. 218. Bishop Berkeley wrote in his "Commonplace Book":

"My speculations have the same effect as visiting foreign
countries: in the end I return where I was before, but my
heart at ease, and enjoying life with new satisfaction."

If it be essential to the meaning of philosophy that it should issue
from life, it is equally essential that it should return to life. But
this connection of philosophy with life does not mean its reduction to
the terms of life as conceived in the market-place. Philosophy cannot
emanate from life, and quicken life, without elevating and ennobling it,
and will therefore always be incommensurable with life narrowly