In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds from this simple creed: _Reality in all things_. So runs the creed's supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally familiar to us: _Reality without form or residence_--real as a spirit, not a programme, and: _Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet all things working together for what is real_. With this creed clearly in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before. We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all things must be "relative"--this we saw before, but have we ever quite understood [p.201] stood the meaning of relativity?--and must be relatively _at once real and unreal_. Perhaps I am still adding little, if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the relative _ipso facto_ puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines: All service ranks the same with God-- Whose puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last or first. All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and unceasing.