Sometimes, no doubt, the process is more violent and catastrophic than this metaphor naturally suggests. Then occurs in the moral world the analogue of the earthquake, the lava flood, and the tidal wave, which shatter mountains and sweep cities to destruction. Men’s outlook on the universe suffers sudden revolution: the obvious becomes incredible, and the incredible obvious; whole societies lose their balance, and stately systems are tumbled in the dust. More often, however, the movements of belief are gradual. They resemble the slow rise or fall of ancient coast-lines, where, by imperceptible degrees, sea turns into land, or land into sea. So, without shock or clamour, man smoothly modifies his point of view, till, gazing over the spaces he has traversed, he greatly marvels at the change. But we must look forward as well as backward. The spaces still to be traversed far exceed those that have been traversed already. We can set no limits to the intellectual voyage which lies before the race. Even if we arbitrarily limit the life of men to that which is possible under terrestrial conditions, we must anticipate transformations of belief comparable in magnitude with those which already divide us from primitive mankind. How, in circumstances like these, can we hope to sketch, even in outline, an enduring system of philosophy? Why should we succeed where under similar conditions the greatest of our forefathers have already failed? If, then, we cannot attain to a scheme of belief which, whatever be its shortcomings, is good (so far as it goes) for all time, we must be content with something less. We must put up with what I have called in these lectures “a point of view.” We must recognise that our beliefs must be provisional, because, till we approach complete knowledge, all beliefs are provisional. We cannot claim that they are good “so far as they go”; but only that they are as good as we are at present able to make them. And we must recognise that the two statements are profoundly different. Now, if I were asked what categories or conceptions such a “point of view” required for its expression, I should answer Providence and Inspiration—categories for which systematic philosophy has so far found no great use. These terms, it must be owned, are now a little the worse for wear. Defaced and battered by centuries of hard usage, they have suffered the fate which the current coin of popular discussion cannot easily avoid. But they have merits negative and positive, which make them peculiarly apt for my present purpose. In the first place, they do not suggest a philosophy of the universe. They openly evade the great problems of theological metaphysics. No one, for example, would employ them in discussing the essential nature of an Absolute God, or His relation to time, to the act of creation, to the worlds created. They belong to a different level of speculation.