The kind of philosophical breadth of view for which I am now pleading is not, I assure you, the same as mere vagueness, merely lazy toleration, of all sorts of conflicting opinions. Nobody is more aware than I am that the errors and false theories of the philosophers are facts as real as are the manifold expressions which they give to truth. I am not pleading for inexactness or undecisiveness of thought. What I am really pleading for, as you will see in the sequel, is a form of philosophic reflection that leads to a very definite and positive theory of the universe itself, the theory, namely, which I have just suggested, a theory not at all mystical in its methods, nor yet, in its results, really opposed to the postulates of science, or to the deeper meaning at the heart of common sense. This theory is that the whole universe, including the physical world also, is essentially one live thing, a mind, one great Spirit, infinitely wealthier in his experiences than we are, but for that very reason to be comprehended by us only in terms of our own wealthiest experience. I don’t assume the existence of such a life in the universe because I want to be vague or to seem imaginative. The whole matter appears to me, as you will hereafter see, to be one of exact thought. The result, whatever it shall be, must be reached in strict accord with the actual facts of experience and the actual assumptions of human science. The truth, whenever we get it, must be as hard and fast as it is manifold. But the point is that if the universe is a live thing, a spiritual reality, we, in progressing towards a comprehension of its nature, must needs first comprehend our own life. And in doing this we shall pass through all sorts of conflicting moods, theories, doctrines; and these doctrines, in the midst of their conflict and variety, will express, in fragmentary ways, aspects of the final doctrine, so that, as I said, the truth will be the whole.
