"reigns with Christ," who, by lifting him out of his sins into harmony with God, has in very deed "put all things in subjection under his feet," has made the "angels minister to him as heir of salvation" and "all things work together for his good." Every rational being who is in harmony with God, the supreme Reason, is entitled by the prerogative of reason to use all irrational things and to receive the willing service of all rational beings in attaining his own perfection and good.

If, on the contrary, a man is living in antagonism to the truths, laws and ideals of reason, reason pronounces him unworthy of the good, worthy only of the evil.

The worthiness of good, thus adjudged by reason, is called merit and the unworthiness of good is called demerit. The word desert is common to both; as one deserves well or ill. Merit is sometimes used to denote the desert of evil; as we say, a criminal merits his punishment. The noun merit, however, is commonly used to denote the desert of good.

II. We necessarily believe that whoever chooses and acts in accordance with the truths, laws and ideals of reason will certainly attain the true good; he will not merely merit it, but will attain it. Every one who seeks will find.

1. This is involved in the fact that reason is supreme in the universe. Under the benign government of perfect reason ordering the universe in wisdom and love, every one whose ends and acts are accordant with reason must be blessed. If the universe is so constituted and governed that character and action perfectly wise and right may issue in evil, and character and action altogether unwise and wrong may issue in good, it would contradict our deepest moral convictions, subvert all moral law and confound all moral distinctions; the principles, laws and ideals of reason would have no reality, and the universe would be founded in unreason. If we trust reason at all, we must trust it as supreme. So trusting, we must believe that he who seeks ends which reason estimates as having true worth, will find the true and highest good. This is the rational optimism.

But, further, action in harmony with reason realizes the true good, because it insures perfection of the being and the harmony of the being with the constitution of things, and because the happiness peculiar to these issues spontaneously; and these constitute the essential good.

And thus all external conditions are made into relative good. If a man experiences pain, loss, disappointment, persecution, death, whatever evils may assail a man from without, by meeting them in wisdom and love he develops himself towards perfection, and so transforms the evil into good. Scientific lecturers picture an immense cylinder of ice moving with great velocity into the sun, and tell us that it would instantly be not only melted but burned, contributing to increase the heat and

brightness of the sun. So all evils make the man, whose life is in harmony with reason, wiser, purer and stronger, and so promote his good.

2. Thus, even in this life, every right act receives immediately and invariably its reward in securing to the agent his good or true wellbeing, and every wrong act its punishment by bringing on the agent evil.

3. The objection that the world is not governed by a righteous God, because good and evil are distributed with no regard to character, is founded only on a false conception of what the good is. It is wealth, and honor among men, and the like which are distributed without regard to character. But God is poor indeed if he has no good higher and more essentially good than these.

"Wealth on the vilest often is bestowed

To show its vileness in the sight of God."

God rewards his servants with the durable riches of righteousness. He forms them into his own likeness; quickens them to love and serve like Christ, and thus makes them capable of godlike joys and the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven. That kingdom he that is not born of God into the life of love cannot enter, cannot enjoy, and, for so our Lord says, cannot even see.

4. The true good as estimated by reason is the highest good. Although it is impossible empirically to determine what course of action will yield the greatest intensity, continuity and duration of enjoyment, yet we can determine it by the rational standard. Whoever follows implicitly the guidance of reason and conscience knows that he is insuring his own highest good, even when for the time being his action subjects him to privation and suffering. This is evident from the whole course of the foregoing discussion.

52. The Feelings Pertaining to the Idea of the Good.

I. The feelings pertaining to the rational idea of the Good presuppose the idea. I am not speaking of enjoyment, which belongs also with the natural emotions; but of feelings pertaining to the rational idea distinctively. We do not derive the rational idea of worth from our feelings, but the feelings presuppose the idea and are occasioned by it. This is analogous to the relation of the feelings to the other rational ideas, and needs only to be mentioned.

II. There are two subdivisions of this class of feelings.

First, the motives and emotions of self-respect, the sentiments of worthiness and unworthiness, of the noble and the ignoble, of honor and

shame, the feeling of conscious dignity. Such feelings appear in scorn of all that is base and mean, in sensitiveness to honor, in aspiration for all that is noble. Paul gloried in the reproach and cross of Christ, esteeming it honorable to suffer for the truth.

A second subdivision consists of prudential motives and emotions. Man is so constituted that he desires happiness rather than misery, wellbeing rather than its contrary, these being the only objects compared. When in the light of reason he sees what his welfare truly consists in, his conviction that it is the true good will lead him to wish for it, even though, taking all that interests and attracts him into the account, he does not choose it. This prudence is a motive to which appeal may always be made even in the most sinful man, inducing him to seek his true good.

This class of feelings is often called self-love; self-respect, the feeling belonging to the first subdivision, is the man's interest in his own dignity and honor and pertains to worth, the rational element of the good. Prudence, which constitutes the second subdivision, is the interest which a man takes in his own happiness in the whole of his being. It pertains to the empirical element of the good. The two are manifestations of self-love.

53. Practical Importance in the Conduct of Life.

A correct knowledge of the good is essential to the right education and progress both of the individual and of society. Man may forego the gratification of a present desire because it is at the moment overpowered by a stronger. But if this is all, he is living the life of impulse, which is the life of a brute. In early infancy little higher than this appears; and the same reign of impulse is a prominent characteristic of savages. Manhood reveals itself and begins its true development only when man begins to control his desires by reason; only when from the darkness and mystery of his being the man emerges in the majesty of reason upon the dark and stormy waves of passion, like Jesus walking on the sea, and commands obedience. Progress both of the individual and of society begins in learning with intelligent forethought to forego the gratification of present impulse for future welfare. But if the forethought has regard only to degree of enjoyment, no real improvement is insured; for the sources of enjoyment are determined by the subjective state of the man. If the sources of his enjoyment are earthly, sensual, devilish, his quest of greater pleasure will only strengthen his existing preferences; his discoveries and inventions will only give new skill and power in seeking the same sordid ends, will develop skill and power, but not well-being; and the civilization result

ing, where "wealth accumulates and men decay," will intensify and multiply evil and not good. The progress of the individual or of society towards real well-being is possible only as men discriminate among objects of pursuit and sources of enjoyment, according to their true worth, and so learn to value and seek better things.

CHAPTER XII.

THE ABSOLUTE: THE FIFTH ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION.

54. The Absolute.

THE fifth ultimate reality known through Rational Intuition is the Absolute; and this is accordingly the fifth ultimate idea of the reason. I. The Absolute is that which exists independent of anything prerequisite to its existence; or, it is that which exists out of all necessary relations. The Absolute is the Unconditioned.

II. The belief that Absolute Being must exist is a rational intuition necessarily arising in the effort to complete the processes of thought in any line of investigation. For example, in knowing what is caused we necessarily believe that uncaused being must exist. If we admit the reality of force or energy in the course of nature and believe that every beginning or change of existence has a cause, then we necessarily know that there is a power which is not an effect, which persists in all changes, and is the unconditioned ground of the entire series. Otherwise power or force disappears, the course of nature ravels out, and all that is left is empty antecedence and sequence without real power or energy. So Spencer says: "The axiomatic truths of physical science unavoidably postulate Absolute Being as their common basis. The persistence of the universe is the persistence of that Unknown Cause, Power or Force which is manifested to us through all phenomena. Such is the foundation of any possible system of positive knowledge. Deeper than demonstration-deeper even than definite cognition-deep as the very nature of the mind, is the postulate at which we have arrived. Its authority transcends all other whatever; for not only is it given in the constitution of our own consciousness, but it is impossible to imagine a consciousness so constituted as not to give it Thus the belief

which this datum constitutes has a higher warrant than any other whatever." Thus we are not shut up to determine between the Absolute Being and an infinite series of finite causes, but between the Absolute Being and any cause or power whatever. A series of causes is

* First Principles, 22 74, 76, 77, pp. 256, 258, 98.