possess a positive though abstract knowledge. And, in attempting to deny or to doubt the result we have gained, we find ourselves once more unconsciously affirming it.
The Absolute, though known, is higher, in a sense, than our experience and knowledge; and in this connection I will ask if it has personality. At the point we have reached such a question can be dealt with rapidly. We can answer it at once in the affirmative or negative according to its meaning. Since the Absolute has everything, it of course must possess personality. And if by personality we are to understand the highest form of finite spiritual development, then certainly in an eminent degree the Absolute is personal. For the higher (we may repeat) is always the more real. And, since in the Absolute the very lowest modes of experience are not lost, it seems even absurd to raise such a question about personality.
And this is not the sense in which the question is usually put. “Personal” is employed in effect with a restrictive meaning; for it is used to exclude what is above, as well as below, personality. The super-personal, in other words, is either openly or tacitly regarded as impossible. Personality is taken as the highest possible way of experience, and naturally, if so, the Absolute cannot be super-personal. This conclusion, with the assumption on which it rests, may be summarily rejected. It has been, indeed, refuted beforehand by previous discussions. If the term “personal” is to bear anything like its ordinary sense, assuredly the Absolute is not merely personal. It is not personal, because it is personal and more. It is, in a word, super-personal.
I intend here not to enquire into the possible meanings of personality. On the nature of the self and of self-consciousness I have spoken already,[1] and
- ↑ See Chapters ix. and x. Compare xxi. and xxiii.
