Immediate knowledge tells us only that God is, not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, he must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in his relation to these, he is the One Spirit who pervades reality and thought. Hence there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of him and our mediated knowledge of reality.

If the spiritual values of human existence at its highest term of development and achievement do not endure, amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal universe, there seems to be no stable or coherent meaning in existence. Then the universe is irrational--indeed it is no universe at all.

Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science.

A system of philosophy, or metaphysics, is a union of a world view and a life view in one harmonious, complete, integral conception. In so far as any man strives to attain, by rational inquiry, a consistent and comprehensive view of life and reality, he is a metaphysician.

The state is the nursing mother of human culture.

This is the very heart of true morality--not to struggle, not to fight with any weapons, for one's self alone--but to struggle and to fight for the common interest, to wield the power of brain and good right arm if need be for one's family, for the ordered community of life, for the state, for moral principles, humanity, and the common good.

Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.