t hesitate now, on the ground of intelligence at least, to classify
some of the humblest creatures next to man himself.[71] Nothing in
nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so prophetic of what is
beyond it, so supernatural. And as manifested in Man who crowns creation
with his all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word to describe
his knowledge: it is Divine. If then from this point there is to be any
further Evolution, this surely must be the correspondence in which it
shall take place? This correspondence is great enough to demand
development; and yet it is little enough to need it. The magnificence of
what it has achieved relatively, is the pledge of the possibility of
more; the insignificance of its conquest absolutely involves the
probability of still richer triumphs. If anything, in short, in humanity
is to go on it must be this. Other correspondences may continue
likewise; others, again, we can well afford to leave behind. But this
cannot cease. This correspondence--or this set of correspondences, for
it is very complex--is it not that to which men with one consent would
attach Eternal Life? Is there anything else to which they would attach
it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler,
anything which would represent a higher form of Evolution or offer a
more perfect ideal for an Eternal Life?

But these are questions of quality; and the moment we pass from quantity
to quality we leave Science behind. In the vocabulary of Science,
Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means mere everlastingness.
To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little to do with time. To
correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be
everlasting existence; to correspond with "the true God and Jesus
Christ," is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes
the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span
of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in
sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity, is all but excruciating to
Doubt. And many besides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded
consciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of Nature. Therefore we
must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the language of the
present, but quality of correspondence. When we leave Science behind,
this correspondence also receives a higher name. It becomes communion.
Other names there are for it, religious and theological. It m