A postulate of thinking this is indeed, and more than that—it is a postulate of living. If under all the variety and apparent discontinuity of the universe there does not lie One all-pervading and unifying Power, then meditation and action are alike vain, for none can tell the hour when some incursion of the unknown may not shatter our cosmos into chaos, or leave us in a new universe with the edifice of our past experience, the familiar home of the spirit, lying in ruins around us. Every one assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that there is such a Power, that the universe is One, that however mysterious, however little known or understood it may be, it is not essentially deceptive or incalculable. The savage and the philosopher alike assume this, and act upon the assumption. It is perhaps possible not merely to assume but to prove it. For let us try to imagine what would be the case if it were not true. If the Principle, the ultimate Reality of the universe, be not one it must be at least dual. There must be not less than two principles. Now there are only three ways in which these two principles—and what we say will hold good for any greater number—can be related to each other. They must either (1) be identical, or (2) they must be complementary, each possessing something which the other is lacking in, or (3) they must negate each other and be mutually contradictory and exclusive. But two absolutely identical principles, if we can conceive such a thing, are indistinguishable from one. Two or more complementary principles, again, make up, when taken together, but a single whole, as in the Christian Trinity. Therefore if the universe be really dual, its two principles must negate and contradict each other. Now these two hostile principles must either be equal in force or one must be more powerful than the other. In the latter event, seeing that they divide between them the sum total of existence and thus stand in naked and essential antagonism, with no place for evasion, and no auxiliary or modifying forces to call in, it follows of necessity that if one surpassed the other by even the smallest conceivable excess, it must, in eternity, master it and reduce it to impotence. So by this road we come back to unity again. If, however, we suppose our two forces to be co-equal and co-eternal, we have to ask ourselves what we mean by supposing them to be antagonistic. Antagonism can only arise when there is action. But two equal forces acting in direct contradiction to each other must mutually cancel each other, and the result is zero. On such an hypothesis the universe could never have come into being. It may also be pointed out that the hypothesis itself seems to be irrational. For action means the production of a change of some kind, change in the nature or situation of objects. But if one of our forces is producing changes of a certain kind and the other producing changes of another kind, then they are not contradictory but complementary. The only real antagonism between two ultimate principles must consist in one of them being identified with action, change, life, the other with immobility and death. But a principle of immobility and death, if there could be such a thing, could not also be a principle of action, not even of destructive action, for to act at all would be a contradiction of its own nature. It would begin and end in total inaction, and the field would be clear for the other Power, just as if nothing else existed. It follows that, in the living and moving universe around us, there cannot be any such thing as an active principle of destruction and death. We are obliged to perceive Being under the guise of Becoming and Becoming under the guise of Change and Progression. This is a process taking place in the visible and temporal order of things and capable, under certain conditions, of partial arrest or retrogression. But the Whole, regarded as a whole, can be and can contain nothing but life, and must under all its diversity (which is an aspect of life) be One. It is this unity which alone can make intelligible and rational the diversity of which every study of life must treat. It is my endeavour in the present work to bring into clear light some important aspects of this unity, as revealed in the inter-relations of the parts of which, to our eyes, it seems to be composed.[15]
CHAPTER II
THE WHEEL OF LIFE
I heard them in their sadness say
The earth rebukes the thought of God;
We are but embers wrapped in clay,
A little nobler than the sod.