in some respect, this conclusion has not come home. But that, in general and in the main, life is illusory cannot be rationally maintained. And if, in general and in the rough, our ideas are answered by events, that is all surely which, as finite beings, we have a right to expect. We must reply then, that, though illusions exist here and there, the whole is not an illusion. We are not concerned to gain an absolute experience which for us, emphatically, could be nothing. We want to know, in effect, whether the universe is concealed behind appearances, and is making a sport of us. What we find here truer and more beautiful and better and higher—are these things really so, or in reality may they be all quite otherwise? Our standard, in other words, is it a false appearance not owned by the universe? And to this, in general, we may make an unhesitating reply. There is no reality at all anywhere except in appearance, and in our appearance we can discover the main nature of reality. This nature cannot be exhausted, but it can be known in abstract. And it is, really and indeed, this general character of the very universe itself which distinguishes for us the relative worth of appearances. We make mistakes, but still we use the essential nature of the world as our own criterion of value and reality. Higher, truer, more beautiful, better and more real—these, on the whole, count in the universe as they count for us. And existence, on the whole, must correspond with our ideas. For, on the whole, higher means for us a greater amount of that one Reality, outside of which all appearance is absolutely nothing.
It costs little to find that in the end Reality is inscrutable. It is easy to perceive that any appearance, not being the Reality, in a sense is fallacious. These truths, such as they are, are within the reach of any and every man. It is a simple matter to
