though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an accomplice.  And this is why character cannot be really bettered by any peddling process.  Moralists and preachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, of a new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such a principle necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and a new interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world.

Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once referred to a metaphysic.  His creed is the heart of his character, and it beats as a pulse in every action.  Hence, when we deal with moral life, we must start from the centre.  In our intellectual life, it is not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need of endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes the universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible.  As a moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but must have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive.  As there are natural laws which connect man’s physical movements with the whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations which connect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relations are always direct.

Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moral agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, the need of a philosophy becomes evident.  Instead of condemning ideal interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish products of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of the human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets are really striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a more sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged to perform in some way or other.  Man subsists as a natural being only on condition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of his natural life, and the laws of his natural environment.  From earliest youth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, and that he can play with the elements with safety only within the sphere lit up by his intelligence.  Nature will not pardon the blunders of ignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction.  And this truth is still more obvious in relation to man’s moral life.  Here, too, and in a pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence.  Deep will only answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on the things that are highest.  And, on the other hand, the misconstruction of life’s meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action nugatory.  Byronism was driven “howling home again,” says the poet.  The universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as carrion, as Carlyle said.  There is no rest in the “Everlasting No,” because it is a wrong view of man and of the world.  Or rather, the negative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair, through the “Centre of Indifference,” till he finds a “Universal Yea”—­a true view of his relation to the universe.