Thus, although from a temporal and finite standpoint Ravaisson can speak of progress, it is doubtful if he is justified in doing so ultimately, _sub specie æternitatis_. To solve the problem in the way he presents it, one would need to know more about the ultimate value and significance of the personalities themselves, and their destiny in relation to the Divinity who is, as he claims, perfect harmony, beauty and love. It was this point, so dear to an upholder of personality, which had led Renouvier to continue his discussion of progress in relation to history as generally understood, until it embraced a wider field of eternal destiny, and to consider the idea of a future life as arising from, and based upon, the conception of progress. It is this same point which later perplexes Bergson, when he recognises this self-conscious personality as the ultimate development of the évolution créatrice, and so constituting in a sense the goal of the spirit, although he is careful to state that there is no finalism involved at all. Ravaisson stands for this finalism, however, in claiming that there are ends. He does not see how otherwise we could speak of progress, as we should have no criterion, no _terminus ad quem_; all would be simply process, not progress. _“Détachement de Dieu, retour à Dieu, clôture du grand cercle cosmique, restitution de l’universel équilibre, telle est l’histoire du monde.”_ Such is Ravaisson’s doctrine, much of which is akin to, and indeed re-echoes, much in Christian theology from St. Augustine, with his idea of an eternal and restless movement of return to the divinity, to the Westminster divines in their answer to the important query about the chief end of man, which they considered to be not only to glorify God but to enjoy Him for ever. This last and rather strange phrase only seems to have significance if we conceive, in Ravaisson’s manner, of beauty, truth and goodness as expressions or manifestations of the Divinity to whom the world-process may freely tend. For Lachelier the universal process presents a triple aspect, mechanism which is coupled with finalism and with freedom. These three principles are in action simultaneously in the world and in the individual. Each of us is at once matter, living soul and personality—that is, necessity, finality and freedom. The laws of the universe, so far from being expressed entirely by mechanical formulae, can only be expressed, as Ravaisson had claimed, by an approach to harmony and beauty, not in terms of logic or geometry. All this involves a real progress, a creativeness, which differs from Ravaisson’s return, as it were, to the bosom of God.