This doctrine is illustrated by using it to secure the essence of two philosophical questions, materialism vs. theism and the one _vs._ the many. If we suppose for an instant, he suggests, that this moment is the last moment of the universe's existence, there will be no _difference_ between materialism and theism. All the effects that might be ascribed to either have come about. "These facts are in, are bagged, are captured; and the good that's in them is gained, be the atom or be the God their cause." (p. 677). "The God, if there, has been doing just what the atom could do--appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak, and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more". Future good or ill is ruled out by postulate. Taken thus retrospectively, there could be no difference between materialism and theism. But taken prospectively, they point to wholly different consequences. "For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, though they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have evolved.... We make complaint of |materialism| for what it is _not_--not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes.... Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; theism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough for anyone who feels it.... "[And] if there be a God, it is not likely that he is confined solely to making differences in the world's latter end; he probably makes differences all along its course. Now the principle of practicalism says that that very meaning of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience if the conception be true. God's famous inventory of perfections, as elaborated by dogmatic theology, either means nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments of our lives, things that we could not feel and should not do were no God present and were the business of the universe carried on by material atoms instead. So far as our conceptions of the Deity involve no such experiences, they are meaningless and verbal,--scholastic entities and abstractions, as the positivists say, and fit objects for their scorn. But so far as they do involve such definite experiences, God means something for us, and may be real". (pp.678-680).