The reader will have probably noticed that one consideration of the greatest moment has been left untouched. I have spoken of matter and consciousness as of two separate things, and of the former as prior to the latter. This is a form of thought imposed upon us by the space and time relations by which our being is conditioned. But it is evident that the interaction of the two cannot be fortuitous. We cannot suppose that matter pursued its long course of evolution, refining and subtilizing at every stage to admit more and more of the activity of consciousness, in total disconnexion with that consciousness. The two must be co-ordinated in some higher synthesis. Could we escape from the limitations of our thought we should see them, therefore, not as two, but one, and we should see that the meanest form of being has an aspect in which it belongs to eternity. CHAPTER VIII THE ETHICAL CRITERION “Things have life—God is life.”—Spinoza. “I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”—Rabbi Bar-elahin. The view of the meaning and purpose of cosmic development set forth in the preceding chapters must clearly have a bearing on the principles of human conduct. Men above a certain stage of culture do not live by blind instinct. They endeavour to harmonize their lives with some conception of the _ratio essendi_ of the world in which they find themselves, and in so doing they are most truly men. The Stoic expressed this attempt in the simple formula, ‘Live according to Nature.’ But nature is not simple, and the endeavour to interpret nature has led to some very divergent ideals of human conduct.