But this hypothetical soul of the ethereal element would be just as
definitely expressed in a bodily form as are the personalities of
men, beasts, plants and stars. It is impossible to avoid, now we are
at the end of our philosophic journey, one swift glance backward
over the travelled road; and it is impossible to avoid asking
ourselves the question whether this universal material element
which confronts every individual soul and surrounds every
individual body may not itself be the body of an universal living
personality? Is such a question, so presented to us for the last time,
as we look back over our long journey, a kind of faint and
despairing gesture made by the phantom of "the idea of God," or is
it the obscure stirring of such an idea, from beneath the weight of
all our argument, as it refuses to remain buried? It seems to me
much more than this.
The complex vision seems to indicate in this matter that we have a
right to make the hypothetical outlines of this thing as clear and
emphatic as we can; as clear and emphatic, and also, by a rigid
method of limitation, as little overstressed and as little
overpowering as we can.
The question that presses upon us, therefore, as we glance
backward over our travelled road, is whether or not, by the logic of
our doctrine of personality, we are bound to predicate some sort of
"elemental soul" as the indwelling personal monad belonging to
the universal material element even as any other soul belongs to its
body.
Does it not, we might ask, seem unthinkable that any portion of
this universal element should remain suspended in a vacuum
without the indwelling presence of a definite personality of which
it is the expression? Are we not led to the conclusion that the
whole mass and volume of this material element, namely the
material element in every living soul, the material element which
binds all bodies together, and the material element which
composes the objective mystery, must make up in its total weight
and pressure the _body_, so to speak, of some sort of universal
elemental soul?
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