Thus there is in each object an immanent idea; but this is fused with the sensuous form, and presents itself to conscious human thought as an objective manifestation of the Real. There is an organic interpenetration of the sensuous and the spiritual; and it is by virtue of this interpenetration that the human reason can go out into the external world and find itself there. As Emerson well puts it--"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organised." The nature-mystic is not without authoritative support, even on the Idealist side, in his demand that individual objects shall be allowed some grade and measure of reality. Spinoza, for instance, allows that each individual thing is a genuine part of the total Idea. Hegel also grants to individual things a certain "self-reference," which constitutes them real existences. The nature-mystic, therefore, may be of good cheer in asserting that even the most transient phenomenon not only "participates" in an immanent Idea, but embodies it, gives it a concrete form and place. He thus substantiates his claim that communion with nature is communion with the Ground of things. CHAPTER X ANIMISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN After this metaphysical bath we return invigorated to the world of concrete experience dear alike to the common-sense thinker and the modern investigator. Do the facts of life, as ordinarily presented, or as systematised in reflection, at all point in the direction of the doctrine of immanent ideas? It will be seen that this question admits of an affirmative answer. But the term "idea" must be taken as embracing psychic existence in its entirety--that is to say, feeling and will, as well as reason. The dry bones of reason must be clothed with flesh and blood. The appeal is to actual experience. Let Walt Whitman give us his. "Doubtless there comes a time when one feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realise a presence here--in clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning, nor aesthetics will give the least explanation."