The results of the preceding efforts are expressed in him. His system consisted in a psychological analysis of the human consciousness, which led him to believe, that spiritual truth is revealed to the reason, or intuitional and impersonal power, apart from the limitations of sense, or of the ordinary critical faculties; that the true, the beautiful, and the good, are perceived by it in their absolute, unlimited essence; and that the revelation of the infinite is the basis of all intellectual truth, of all moral obligation, and offers the clue to the criticism of religion, the solution of the problems of history, and the construction of a philosophy of the universe. Its chief effect on literature, the permanent contribution which it has made to human improvement, is to encourage the historic study of every branch of phenomena, and especially to exemplify it in the history of thought. Asserting that human society is a gradual progress of development and of improvement, it regards every age as manifesting some phase of truth, or of error, and contributing its portion of knowledge to the student. Humanity is regarded as a divine revelation: its social and intellectual changes as manifestations of the Eternal. From this account, brief though it be, the relation will be evident which such a philosophy and the historic method of eclectic discovery would have towards religion. As a system of psychology it is potent, as a means of reasserting the dignity of human nature against the material and selfish ethics of a preceding age, and of reconstructing the basis of ethics and natural religion: but as an ontology, it is in danger of unconscious pantheism; of identifying God with the universe, and regarding Him merely as a name to describe a process, instead of a person. As a philosophy of humanity, it identifies the natural revelation in history with the supernatural; finds in the psychological faculty of intuition, not merely the basis for, but the explanation of, the phenomenon of inspiration;(883) and in its view of religion is essentially antidogmatic, regarding religion as imperfect and progressive; the idea universal, the symbol transient; and allows the psychological truthfulness of all creeds; and regards Christianity as only the most refined species of them, as one of the transient forms that the religious sentiment has adopted, and as destined to give place to philosophy; beneficial to humanity, but not constituting it. This philosophy therefore, though containing so many noble elements, ended in the view which we have already seen to exist in the Gnostic and German rationalism, that Christianity was not to be final, the one solitary and final religious utterance of God to man.(884)