We are parts of a great whole now, and we shall remain parts of the same great whole forever. We have never been and shall never be transcendental selfhoods or metaphysical egos, or any kind of things in themselves. Our personality is real life, it is actual being. As such it is bound up in the universal life of the One and All and no particle of it will be lost. We need not fear death, for the air we breathe is immortality. EDITOR. FOOTNOTES: [43] Italics are ours. Kant affirms the italicised question. [44] The problem of “The Origin of the Mind” having been the subject of a former paper need not be discussed here. See _The Monist_, Vol i, No. 1, p. 69-86, and _The Soul of Man_, pp. 23-46. [45] It is scarcely necessary to mention that mediæval Realism is different from modern Realism. [46] Aristotle’s idea of matter being potential existence is a fiction. Fictions of that kind are useful for certain purposes, but we must not forget that they are fictions. We might just as well introduce any other system of fictions. For instance we might with certainly not less propriety look upon the idea in the mind of an artist as potential reality while its appearance in a material shape is conceived to produce actual reality. [47] The term “absolute” is for that reason neither meaningless nor redundant. It denotes a certain method of viewing things, but is not an objective quality of things. [48] See the chapter “Soul Life and the Preservation of Form” in _The Soul of Man_, p. 418. [49] The abandonment of the ego as a metaphysical being is not, as it appears to many, a surrender of the soul or of its immortality. That the immortality of the soul from the standpoint of modern psychology is preserved, that it appears in a new light, grander and nobler than before, and that this conception of immortality is of an enormous practical importance, have been the main incentives of Mr. E. C. Hegeler in founding _The Open Court_ and _The Monist_. LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE I. FRANCE. The recent work of M. F. PAULHAN, _Le Nouveau Mysticisme_, places us in the presence of a feature of modern life, if not extremely important, at least very curious. We assist at the formation of a new spirit. But what is it? What is its value? A reply to this question would exact a long and minute analysis of all social facts. M. Paulhan does not flatter himself that he has exhausted it, and he offers us only portions, although excellent and instructive, of the required work. He shows us in rapid review, the dissolution of the ancient world, the intellectual and moral anarchy which has to-day reached its highest possible point; he seeks, in the ruins amidst which we tread, the constructive elements of a new order of things, and makes an effort to foresee what it will be.