4. _Grounded in the Immanence of God._--But back of all finite phenomena, we may still ask for an ultimate explanation of the possibility of any reciprocal action even between spirits. And it is, perhaps, this ultimate explanation after which the idea of a mystical solidarity of the race is blindly groping. Unless one chooses to accept reciprocal action as a necessarily given fact in any universe (and this position, I think with F. C. S. Schiller, may be reasonably defended),[19] he must somewhere in his thinking ask for its final explanation. And most of those, who try to think things through, feel this pressure. And metaphysics, we do well to remember with Professor James, "means only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently."[20] As Lotze puts it: "How a cause begins to produce its _immediate_ effect, how a condition is the foundation of its direct result, it will never be possible to say; yet that cause and effect _do_ thus act must be reckoned among those simple facts that compose the reality which is the object of all our investigation. But there is an intolerable contradiction in the assumption that, though two beings may be wholly independent the one of the other, yet that which takes place in one can be a cause of change in the other; things that do not affect each other at all, cannot at the same time affect each other in such a manner that the one is guided by the other."[21] This question is fairly thrust upon us by the facts of the social consciousness. How can it be that we do so influence one another? how is our reciprocal action metaphysically possible? The answer of theistic philosophy to this question is found in the being of God. Upon the metaphysical side, theistic philosophy affirms that we can ascribe independent existence in the highest sense only to God. All else is absolutely dependent for its existence and maintenance upon him. The kind of reality that we demand for man is not that he be _outside_ of God, independent of him; this would not make man more, but less. Every thorough-going theistic view must have this at least in common with pantheism, that it recognizes everywhere a real immanence of God. We are, because God wills in us. This metaphysical relation of the finite to the infinite, to be sure, is not to be conceived spatially or materially; nor, least of all, is it be so conceived as to deny a real self-consciousness and a real moral initiative to the finite spirit; but it does involve the absolute dependence of all the finite upon the will of God. As to our _being_, we root solely in God. And the unity and consistency of the being of God are the actual ground of our possible reciprocal action. Only so is that contradiction of which Lotze spoke avoided. We are not independent of one another, because we are all alike dependent for our very being upon God. And we are thus members one of another, ultimately, only through him.