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SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Space and Personality
BY
ARCHIBALD ALLAN
//
PARISH MINISTER AT CHANNELKIRK
Author of" The History of Channelkirk" (Thin, Edinburgh)
"The Advent of the Father" (MacLehose, Glasgow), etc.
OLIVER AND BOYD
EDINBURGH: TWEEDDALE COURT
LONDON: 33 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
1913
33
2>ebicatet>
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
ALEXANDER ALLAN
AND
JEAN BOWMAN
Qft
PREFACE
THAT our consciousness of space is also our primary, ultimate,
and absolute consciousness of Being, is the thesis of the following
chapters. It has occupied much of the writer's meditative
leisure for many years, and conviction of its truth has deepened
the longer it has been pondered. To him it is the Truth, the
whole Truth, and the Truth that alone is Whole. Consequently,
the aim of the book is to deal not merely with Being and Non-
Being, but with Being- Whole ; and therefore, while Ontological
in its scope, it may be more correctly characterised as Holo-
logico-Ontological.
The sketch is thus necessarily, in the nature of things, very
imperfect. It is offered as a suggestion, and has no pretence to
be exhaustive. The author has not attempted to make the path,
but merely to indicate where the path might be made.
It was begun in July 1909, and finished in March 1910. But
capable and trusted critics who read it in typewriting, were
wholly adverse to its publication, though doubtful if they had
understood it. The book was then re-written between August
1910 and March 191 1, in order to render it more intelligible, and
afterwards sent to a publisher who returned it. It was once
more entirely revised and put into its present form under the
suspicion that imperfect exposition, and the abstruse nature of
the subject which is the besetting difficulty of all philosophical
work, were doubtless the hindrance to its acceptance. But after
all, it still presents to the author himself a very amateurish
aspect, and it must appear far more so to trained philosophical
thinkers. He is only confident of having tried his best, in a
first venture into the philosophical field, to say plainly what he
sees.
An apology is due for many repetitions, most of them having
vii
viii PREFACE
been considered essential to an effective advancement of the
leading principles discussed. As the standpoint is new, it has
been felt that a certain restatement of essential and fundamental
facts was here and there legitimate, in order to a clearer
apprehension of the particular line of reasoning immediately
under treatment. When one contemplates a wide landscape, as
a whole, the central features in it are unavoidably repeated in
the varying survey, as the point of sight is changed and the
perspective refocussed.
In presuming, in the course of the work, to differ from great
writers and revered authorities, the author trusts that he has
done so as grateful pupils sometimes differ from masters and
superiors whom they highly esteem.
The argument is sustained throughout in the conviction
that, in future, Theology, or our highest ' God '-Knowledge,
which, fundamentally, is the consummation of all knowledge,
must co-ordinate and identify itself with Philosophy, yet upon
higher ground than Philosophy has assumed in the past ; and
that both so identified must move forward on the foundations
of that higher Science which, unlike all that at present falls
under that designation, will feel compelled to accept Space-
Being as the sole and only possible postulate and idiom-fact of
Whole-Reality.
ARCHIBALD ALLAN.
THE MANSE OF CHANNELKIRK,
OXTON, BERWICKSHIRE, SCOTLAND,
January 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE SOUL
SECT. PAGE
1. General belief in an Everywhere Being . . . . i
2. The basis of this belief in human personality . . i
3. Study of space is fundamentally the study of personality . . 3
4. Psychology versus Philosophy and Theology ... 4
5. The 'Soul' : ancient and modern speculations regarding . 5
6 Hume on Personal Identity ...... 7
7. Kant's "Ding-an-sich" ..... i
8. Hegel's Being, No f king, and Becoming . . . .12
9. Prof. Pringle-Pattison on "Spirit." Process the ultimate con-
sciousness in Hegel and Bergson . . . .16
10. Interactionism : Parallelism : and Epiphenomenalism . . 19
ii The cardinal lack in all theories of the 'Soul' . . .20
12. Symbolism of Plato's "Cave" . . . . .21
CHAPTER II
THE ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE
13. The Sphinx ........ 24
14. Thought : Experience : Existence ..... 24
15. The standard of truth as to Reality . . . . .25
16." The content of the Fact "I" . . . . .27
17. Psychology and the space-consciousness . . . .29
1 8. Space- Consciousness deepest in all philosophers . . .29
19. Plato- Socrates and Chaos ...... 30
20. Science and the Void ...... 32
x CONTENTS
SKCT. PAGE
21. Mathematics and Zero-quantities ..... 34
22. Philosophy and the gravitation to the space-consciousness . 34
23. Theology and the Nothing-consciousness .... 34
24. Kant and the notion of empty space . . . -35
25. Hegel and concrete Being ...... 36
26. Prof. Pringle-Pattison on Spinoza's 'emptiness 3 . . 37
27. Prof. Wm. James on Nothing and Something . . -39
28. The value placed upon the consciousness of Space . . 39
29. All Being stands on Space . . . . . .41
30. Philosophy astray after Hume . . . . .41
3f. Space-consciousness has been excluded from philosophy and
psychology ....... 44
32. Test of Truth or Reality . . . . . -45
33. Criteria of Reality according to Prof. F. H. Bradley and Herbert
Spencer ........ 46
34. Consciousness of Self as Space the sole test of Reality . .48
35. Degrees of Truth ....... 50
36. Space not Appearance. ' Is ; a consciousness of Whole-Being . 50
37. The space-consciousness sustains the Reality of All that Is.
(Sect. 71) 5i
CHAPTER III
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY
38. What-we-are, Space-Being, Is, Whole-Being . . -55
39. Whole-Being our philosophical start-point . . . .56
40. Difference and Unity : Experience : The Senses and Space . 56
41. Methods adopted by the great philosophers . . .64
42. Space not an ultimate of conception . . . .66
43. Space has no ' Qualities ' .66
44. Hegel's Being and Nothing discussed . 68
45. Human Thought trends towards the space-consciousness . 72
46. Permanence and Impermanence . . . . 73
47. Perception and Conception ... 73
48. Newton's perception of a falling body . 74
49. Space and Object, How realised as Whole . . 76
50. Perception and Sensation . .76
5 i. Concepts, Why limited to Objectivity 78
52. Space as ' Form' to Kant . . 79
53. Space-Being the Fact of Facts for Science 81
CONTENTS xi
PACK
54. " Qualities" not necessary in consciousness of Being . . 81
55. Knowledge which is independent of conceptions . . .83
56. Is-Consciousness the true affirmation of Being . .84
CHAPTER IV
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM OUR CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS
57. Transcendence of Personality ..... 86
58. Fluxional conceptions of God, Universe, and Man . . 86
59. The Unknown ....... 88
60. The Concept, Man ....... 89
61. Error of conceiving Man as Unit- Being . . . .91
62. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the unitising Concept . . 93
63. Life and Cause ....... 95
64. The fallacy of Division in Being ..... 96
65. ' Spirit ' only rational on the basis of Space-Being . . .96
66. 'God' concept as Unit-Being : its defects . . . .97
67. Conclusion on the concept, Man ..... 100
68. Human mind never satisfied with conceptual knowledge . . 101
69. Space-Being and the Object never divided in Being . .103
70. Two contents of the ' I '-judgment. (Sects. 282, 413) . .103
71. Basis of the certainty of Reality ..... 104
72. Contact ........ 105
73. Absolutising Relativity. (Sect. 124) . . . .106
74. Knowledge as Holological ...... 107
75. Continued Being : why conceptually impossible . . . 108
76. Space as quantified . . . . . . .no
77. Motion conditioned in space-being . . . . . 1 1 1
78. Permeation does not account for creation . . . . 1 1 1
79. Consciousness of Whole-Being absent from ancient and modern
philosophy. (Sect, ill) . . . . .112
80. Unit-being: Total-being: Whole-Being . . . 113
81. Bacon and his method ...... 115
82. Fundamental experience of the new-born never transcended . 118
83. Induction as much as Deduction rests on abstraction . .119
84. The concept of Space fallacious in both Descartes and Kant . 120
85. The defective concept of Personality .... 122
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
SPACE AND CONCEPTUALITY
SKCT. PAQK
86. The elimination of the concept . .123
87. The false assumption in conceptualising Absolute Being . 123
88. Physical conditions which forbid a continuum of sensation . 125
89. The basis of the concept. Kant's Space-Form . .127
90. Memory and Identity of Being . .129
91. Consciousness of the closed and wide-open concept. (Sect. 71) 134
92. Mechanism of all determination . 135
93. Analysis and Synthesis ... .141
94. Defect of a synthetical unity. (Sect. 95) . . 142
95. Fichte and the impersonal * Ego J . . M4
96. The conceptualised 'personality' impossible, save as a con-
venience . ' . . . .145
97. German Philosophy makes shipwreck on Absolute Unity . 147
98. The concept of Unity and the Christian Religion . .147
99. Profs. J. Ward and E. Caird on Self and Not-Self. (See sect. 269) 148
100. Prof. A. Seth Pringle - Pattison on Self, 'a principle of
isolation' . .150
CHAPTER VI
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING
101. Differentiation and the uses of Philosophy . . .154
102. Herbert Spencer and differentiation . . . 155
103. His unscientific method ...... 158
104. Prof. Alex. Bain's " double-faced unity " . . . .159
105. Hegel's order of exposition . 160
106. How division, as a concept, is possible .... 160
107. Discreteness and Continuousness . . . . .161
108. The illusion of taking from anything its 'qualities' . . 162
109. Space-Being cannot be conceived as Divided . . . 163
1 10. Space and Time as treated by the Hon. B. Russell . . 164
in. Consciousness of Whole-Being not found in the systems of Kant
or Hegel ....... 166
CONTENTS xiii
SICT. PAOK
112. \IOLV never connotes whole, but only ' all ' or * every ' . .167
113. Kantian and Hegelian origin of the 'Categories' . . 168
114. * Discrete' and ' Continuity,' as relatives, sublated in our Space-
Consciousness . . . . . .168
115. No absolute reality predicable for truths of Mathematics and
Mechanics . . . . . . .169
116. Berkeley on Space . .170
1 17. The * Point' of Mathematics and the ' Ion' of Physics fictional . 172
1 1 8. Why we cannot conceive an absolute beginning or ending . 173
119. The mathematical method and the 'Soul ; . . 175
120. The 'Laws of Thought' . . . . . .176
121. Our Ultimate 'law' of Thought in the ' I '-consciousness . 178
122. Certainty of Impersonality, and uncertainty of Personality in
Kant ........ 179
123. Both life and death necessary to reveal man . . .180
124. Fallacy of Absolutising the Relative. (Sect. 73) . . .182
125. Its pessimistic effect on Theology, Philosophy, and Science . 183
126. The space-consciousness alone gives satisfaction in Geology,
Astronomy, History, and the Drama . . . .184
CHAPTER VII
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY
127. Space-being the basal consciousness of our conception of 'God' 186
128. The supreme principle commanding Physics . . .187
129. The tendency in science to unitise the universe . . .188
130. ' Forms of energy ' and Forms of ' personality ' . . .188
131. Ancient conceptions of elemental energy . . . .189
132. Gravitation towards the space-consciousness . . . 189
133. Rest and Motion : the force which sublates all forms of force . 190
134. Consciousness of motion, or process, as experience . . 191
135. Experience of motion and energy transcended in a resultant
experience ....... 192
136. Why scientists do not realise Whole-Energy . . 193
137. No consciousness of limitation or qualification in Whole-
Energy ...... .194
138. Our consciousness of being whole with Nature . . . 196
xiv CONTENTS
SECT. 1>A(;K
139. Consciousness of Matter and Motion sublated in a higher
experience of Whole-Being . . 19
140. Heredity and Environment 197
141. All Flows through All . .198
142. Common experience of living and dead . .199
143. No dividing line between what-we-are and the energy of gravita-
tion ..... . 200
144. Life conditioned and environed by non-vital elements . . 201
145. Response in Nature . 202
146. Whole-Being believed but not yet rationalised . . 202
147. Scientific Energy and philosophic Thought are one Motion . 203
148. Scientific trend towards unity for the Universe . . .204
149. Indifference of science and philosophy to space-consciousness . 205
150. The necessity of the space-consciousness .... 207
151. Energy as chief characteristic of universal being. What is
meant by Whole-Energy. (Sect. 169) . 208
152. Space-Being greater force than Gravitation . .210
153. Meaning of Space- Being as Resisting Force . .211
154. Why we have no consciousness of motion in what-we-are . 211
155. Why we conceive space-being to be 'empty' . .213
156. Will in man as Force . . . . .213
T 57- Whole-Being an inherent consciousness not depending on dis-
coveries in Nature . . . . . .214
158. Light and Gravitation . . . . .215
159. Locke on space-resistance . . . . . .215
160. Whole-Inertia . . . . . . .216
161. Whole-Permanence ....... 217
162. Time. . . . . . . .218
163. Something and Nothing negated by our space-consciousness . 219
164. Space-Being the root of deistic attributes .... 219
165. All forces imperfect save that of Space-Being . . . 220
166. Space-Being sustains Cosmic Being .... 222
167. ' God '-conception depends on space-consciousness . . 222
168. Is Energy Self-Directive ? . . . . . . 223
169. Why science never reaches the conception of Whole-Energy as
Self-Directive Energy ...... 224
170. Energy as Law ..... . 225
171. Absolute Freedom, and Absolute Limitation sublated in Space-
Being ........ 227
CONTENTS xv
CHAPTER VIII
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. IS. ALMIGHTY.
OMNISCIENCE. OMNIPRESENCE. INFINITE. UNITY.
VALUE. GOOD. SUBSTANCE. CAUSE. BEAUTY, OR
GLORY
SECT. PAOB
172. The basis of our conception of 'God.' Is: Almighty: Omni-
science : Omnipresence ..... 230
173. Infinity ........ 234
174. The mathematical 'infinite 3 never transcends Unit-being or
Quantity. ....... 236
175. The space -consciousness alone gives the true Infinite, tran-
scending all Relativity ...... 240
176. Hegel on ' Infinite Thought' ..... 241
177. Unity ........ 244
178. Whole- Value or Worth ...... 247
179. The Good ........ 249
1 80. Substance-Absolute ....... 252
181. Quality and Quantity ...... 253
182. Cause and Effect ....... 257
183. Beauty- Absolute, or 'Glory' ..... 260
184. The Point and Circle as forms of beauty .... 260
185. The function of Art ....... 263
1 86. Space-Beauty ....... 263
187. The eye and space-personality ..... 266
1 88. The Beautifully Good, or Whole-Beauty . . . .266
CHAPTER IX
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS THE FUNDAMENTAL ONE IN
THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS
189. Religion and Space-Being ...... 272
190. The Three fundamental conceptions in Theology . . 273
191. The ultimate basis of any Religion .... 275
192. Personality and Impersonality sublated in our consciousness of
Space-Being . . .275
6
xvi CONTENTS
SECT. PAGE
193. The concept 'Personality' in Religion convenient but un-
essential ........ 276
194. Tennyson on his 'personality' ..... 277
195. Man interprets 'God' in both terms of Personal and Impersonal 278
196. In the space-consciousness we have the highest guarantee
of 'God '-Knowledge ...... 280
197. Faith in acceptance of existence ..... 280
198. Hegel's explanation of the content of the terms * God,' and ' I ' . 281
igSA. Kant's argument on the Existence of a Supreme Being . 283
199. Thinkers such as Carlyle and Newman conceive ultimate
Being as ' The Abyss ' . . . . . .288
200. God conceived impersonally by Jesus .... 290
201. Allah-God in Mohammedanism personally conceived . . 290
202. Quismet-God impersonally conceived . . . .291
203. Grecian Religion. Gods personal and impersonal . . 292
204. Pantheism. The Pan-Being never identical with Space-Being 294
205. True and false Pantheism ...... 295
206. Brahmanism and Buddhism ..... 295
207. The God-Consciousness of the Hebrews .... 298
208. Persian view of God ...... 303
CHAPTER X
THE CHERUBIM
209. Symbolism of the Cherubim. Early history . . . 305
210 Deistic consciousness of a people mirrored in Sacred Symbols . 306
211. Cherubim the chief symbol in Hebrew worship . . . 307
212. They are conceived with God only and have no reference
to man ........ 308
213. They emblemize Formless Being ..... 308
214. Ezekiel's description of the Cherubim .... 309
215. Ezekiel's method compared with that of the Vedanta-Sutras . 311
216. Creation furnishes primal material for a God-Conception . 312
217. The Sky and the Cherubim . . . . .312
218. Sky-space and Absolute-space connoted by Cherubim . . 313
219. The Yahwistic Consciousness of God . . .314
220. Eden as common home of God and Man . . . .315
221. The principal aim of J ... . . 317
222. The consciousness of the Cherubim barrier from Life . . 318
CONTENTS xvii
SECT. PAOB
223. The curse on the Ground the principal curse . . .318
224. Sky-Space conceived as Cherubim separating God from Man . 319
225. Hence Tower, Ladder, and burnt-offering to reach God, and the
conception of His "coming down" . . . .319
226. The Cherubim the symbol of Death-Zone .... 322
227. The sublation of both Cherubim and God in Whole-Space-Being 323
228. The consciousness at work in the Yahwist account . . 324
229. The consciousness of the Priestly Code .... 324
230. Space-Darkness ....... 326
231. Ark and Temple : Cherubim antecede both in time . . 328
232. "And He drove out the Man" : a world's despair . . 329
233. The Cherub : the Burning Bush : the Child . . . 330
234. Prof. I. Benzinger on the Cherubim . . . 331
235. The Deep, the primal consciousness in the Priestly Code . 332
236. The consciousness of the Fourth Gospel .... 333
237. History does not witness to ultimate truth. (Sects. 450 and 471) 333
238. The space-consciousness in the John Prologue . . . 334
239. Differentiation of the 'Word' and ' God' .... 335
240. The Creation is Begotten not made .... 335
241. Life; with no correlative of Death .... 336
242 Personality of God, Man, and Creation transcended as concepts 336
243. Originless Being without predicates, and equal to Darkness . 337
244. That which does not appear ..... 337
245. Being is primarily Dark-Being ..... 338
246. Personality is begotten of the Impersonal . . . 339
247. The John-Order; of Being ...... 339
248. The importance of the John Prologue .... 341
249. Summary of the Yahwist Consciousness . 342
250. Summary of the Priest's Consciousness .... 342
251. P. does not see Evil as the cause of differentiation . . 343
252. No Cherubim consciousness in the John Prologue . . 344
CHAPTER XI
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS
253. The space-consciousness alone can embody our God-con-
sciousness ....... 346
254. Personality subsidiary in philosophy, science, and religion . 347
255. The Jesus-Consciousness the largest revelation of the content of
the human Consciousness , . . , 348
xviii CONTENTS
SECT. PAGB
256. Its independence of all extraneous verification
257. Its unique influence on common thought . . - 349
258. Philosophy has ignored His consciousness . 35
259. Her consequent imperfect interpretation of Consciousness
260. The apparent identity of His and her consciousness . . 35 l
261. Why the Jesus' consciousness persists against all other interpre-
tations of consciousness ... . 35 2
262. His consciousness in its great outlines : Personality : Cosmic
and Ethical Process . -353
263. Personality as processional both for God-Personality and Man-
personality ..... . 354
264. Father-personality not ultimate personality . 355
265. The God-Names of Jesus . . 35 6
266. His personal-God sublated in God-Being impersonal . . 356
267. No division between 'Divine' and 'Human.' Why the God-
Name changes ..... . 357
268. Prof. Ed. Caird on "The germ idea of God" . . -359
269. "The root and basis of religion." Self: Not-Self: and God.
(Sect. 99) . .361
270. ' God ' never our ultimate consciousness .... 363
271. 'God 'and the 'Unknown'. ... . 364
272. The fallacy in our theory of Knowledge . . . 365
273. Knowledge and Faith ...... 366
274. Whole-Knowledge. (See sect. 172) . . . 366
275. Whole-Purpose .... 367
276. The vastitude of Jesus' consciousness as compared with the
greatest ........ 368
277. His consciousness of God and Man vital to all progress . . 369
278. His own consciousness of Himself .... 370
279. Is Jesus nameable ? . . . . . 37 1
280. His consciousness of Man widens to identity with God . . 372
281. All men find themselves in Him ..... 373
282. "I am "and the philosophical "Self". (Sect. 413) . . 374
283. Jesus' vision of the Course of Time .... 375
284. The consciousness that transcends Life and Death . . 380
285. The cloud-sign of Jesus . 381
286. The cloud-consciousness basal in modern Thought . . 382
287. The Fallacy in the heart of modern Philosophy . . . 382
288. Kant and the nothing-consciousness . 383
289. Futility of interpreting 'God' or 'Self save through the con-
sciousness of Space-Being ..... 384
290. Jesus' method sublates Personality in Impersonality, and Im-
personality in Whole-Being . . . . 385
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER XII
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY
SECT. PAOB
291. How we conceive Personality, Hegel's definition . . . 389
V 292. Personality neither free nor isolated, but processional . 391
293. Principal characteristics of personality .... 393
294. Jesus negates all such characteristics .... 393
295- Will 394
296. Procession of will-power ...... 396
297. Substance : indivisibility : singleness : unit-person . . 400
298. Feeling ; thinking : conation : Life .... 401
299. Bishop Westcott on Father and Son as identical in will and
action ........ 402
300. Transcendence of personal Life ..... 403
301. Transcendence of the name of the personal Jesus . . 404
302. Transcendence of isolation as personal .... 406
303. Jesus abolishes all concepts of personality in affirming What-He-
is as Space-Being ...... 407
304. Buddha's eightfold path a process and negation of personality . 408
305. Jesus and Buddha. (Sect. 470) ..... 409
306. The lack of the category of Life in Eastern and Western
philosophy . . . . . . .410
307. The postulate "Spirit" in Jesus' consciousness . . . 412
308. The 'Personality' of Literature and Philosophy is in the
"Flow" 413
309. Jesus' concept "Father" includes the Cosmos . . .415
310. The basis of identity of * Nature' and * Father' . . . 416
311. 'Nature' unknown to Jesus. 'Father' alone is His name for
the Cosmos ....... 417
312. 'The Father,' for Jesus, not the ultimate concept of
personality . . . . . . ,418
313. No Name of God has exhausted the God-consciousness in Man . 419
314. The 'Divine'' is only what we can conceive to be highest and
best ... ..... 420
5. Personality, with Jesus, though negated, is still widened upward 420
316. Transcendence of the Father-Personality . . . . 422
317. Unity and Trinity as God-Concepts .... 423
318. God and Nothing . . . . . . 424
319. The spurious dualism of 'God' and 'Nothing' . . . 425
320. Jesus, negating every concept of personality, finds God as
Space-Being . . . . . . .426
xx CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIII
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY
SECT. PAGE
321. The Father the ultimate conception of Objectivity . . 427
322. The term Life, as relative to Death, cannot give a consciousness
of Whole-Being ....... 428
323. Bergson on ' vital impulse ' ..... 428
324. Life and Space as bases of the concepts of ' Father ' and ' Spirit ' 431
325. All personality of Son, Father, and Spirit transcended . .431
326. The ' I am' consciousness not the same as in Exod. iii. . . 433
327. Jesus distinguishes between ' Father ' and ' Spirit ' concepts . 434
328. He has not taught to pray to the Spirit .... 435
329. The Father can be seen but not the Spirit . . . 437
330. The 'Spirit 5 is emphatically 'Holy' in Jesus' words . . 439
331. Each Unit-God-Being is subsumed in Whole-Space-Being . 439
332. The ' Godhead ' of the Creeds ..... 440
333. Unit-Being cannot be predicated of God- Being . . . 440
334. Space-Being the basis of all Jesus ' Knows ' . . 442
335. The policy of heaven ...... 444
336. Content of the 'Spirit' term is " Everywhereness," or Space 445
337. The order of Jesus' Consciousness is Son, Father, and Holy
Spirit ........ 446
338. The Holy Ghost as the ultimate source of Life, and Father of
Jesus .447
339. The Holy Ghost as conceived by the Early and Medieval
Church . . . . . . . 448
340. 'The Spirit' is Jesus' supreme name for God-Being . . 449
341. Time sublated in the Holy Spirit ..... 450
342. Father and Son sublated in the Holy Spirit . . .451
343. Jesus' vision of His Church ...... 452
344. Jesus' conception of Ascending God-Being, and its symbolism . 454
345. Jesus' consciousness common to all . . . .455
346. Our consciousness of Space-Being as of Spirit is the same as
" abiding forever " ...... 457
347. Son, Father, and Spirit, as categories of God-Being . . 457
348. The Ancient Consciousness "All Flows" .... 458
349. Where moderns surpass the ancients in this Consciousness . 459
350. The consciousness that all change works for Good-Absolute . 460
351. What Change or Process means in Jesus' Consciousness . . 460
CONTENTS xxi
CHAPTER XIV
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS
SECT. PAGE
352. Jesus' consciousness of the transcendence of Personality . 464
353. A study of His Ethos begins conveniently from Father-Being . 465
354. Jesus finds personality in all things .... 466
355. But in the space-consciousness the concepts personality and
impersonality are ineffective ..... 467
356. General tendency to personalise the impersonal : Prayer
exemplifies ....... 468
357. Due to our consciousness of space-being same with what-we-are
and with all things ...... 469
358. What-Ought is identical with What-Is .... 470
359. Huxley's view of the Cosmic and Ethical process . . 470
360. Nothing in the Cosmos claims to be self-determined . .471
361. But the ideal of Perfection in Man is self-determined . .471
362. Mistake in assuming process to be necessary in order to perfect
being ........ 472
363. Ancient view of the Fall from Perfection .... 473
364. The defective data in Prof. Huxley's argument. The fountain-
head of self-sacrifice ...... 473
365. Cosmic process and Ethical process in man, identical . . 474
366. Jesus assumes this throughout His teaching . . . 475
367. His method an ever- widening one according to circumstances . 476
368. He includes and absorbs in His Ethic all other standards of
conduct ........ 478
369. Degrees of excellence always being transcended . . . 478
370. Excellence of personality merges in higher personality as each
personality is transcended ..... 479
371. Common Being the common basis of common excellence in
heaven and earth ...... 480
372. This revealed best in The Beatitudes .... 480
373. All relativity absent in such ultimate Ethos . . .481
374. Absolute perfection solely self-affirmed on the basis of what-we-
are ........ 481
375. Perfection by "Golden Rule," "New Commandment," or any
* Command ' defective ...... 482
376. The "Ten Commandments" ..... 482
377. The " Golden Rule "...... 482
378. The order of superiority in the Ethical content of Jesus' Con-
sciousness ....... 483
xxii CONTENTS
8CT. PACK
379. Blessed are the poor in spirit ..... 484
380. Blessed are they that mourn . . . 486
381. Blessed are the meek .... . 488
382. Blessed are they that hunger, etc. . . . 489
383. Blessed are the merciful ... 49 1
384. Blessed are the pure in heart . . . 493
385. Jesus gives supreme place to His Beatitudes . . 494
386. Ethos and Whole-Being ... -495
387. All process a realisation of this consciousness . . 495
388. The process of realising Being as Beatitude is for man by
Repentance ....... 495
389. For the Cosmos it is realised by sublating both life and death 496
390. Space-being gives no consciousness of either life or death. It
is ........ 497
391. Every concept of change, motion, or process is transcended in
our space-consciousness ... . 49&
392. What holds true for the wheat-grain is true for the birth of the
'soul' ........ 499
393. Life which affirms itself as space-being .... 499
394. The Ethos of Jesus founded upon consciousness . . . 500
395. The nexus between Life here and Life beyond Death . . 501
396. The Cosmic process both self-assertive and self-negative . 501
397. The reason for persistence in man of" Immortality of the Soul" 501
398. Being and Beatitude as our Whole-Experience . . . 502
399. The ' New Commandment' ..... 502
400. The Golden Rule and other standards of conduct . . 502
401. Jesus taught nothing not verifiable in human consciousness . 503
402. Kant's Categorical Imperative : its defective basis . . 504
403. Jesus fully exemplifies His own Ethos .... 504
404. Space-consciousness of Being also consciousness of Whole-
Beatitude ....... 505
405. Whole-Freedom ....... 505
CHAPTER XV
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS
406. The absolute Ethos of Jesus transcends questions of Good and
Evil . . . . . . . 507
407. The wheat-grain: the 'born again,' and the Cosmos have the
same process in Space-Being ..... 507
CONTENTS xxiii
SECT. PAOB
408. Personal illustrations of the Space-consciousness. The Last
Supper . ... 509
409. Jesus' aversion to be declared the cause of His miracles . .510
410. Cause cannot be attributed to that which appears . . 511
411. Jesus transcends the relativity of Good and Evil . . . 512
412. Is relativity of Good and Evil absolutely true? . . -513
413. The 'I am j is judgment which yields two contents. (Sects. 70
and 282) ........ 514
414. Relativity of Good and Evil, etc., not absolutely valid . . 515
415. Claim of Self: Justice: Law: based on Relative being . . 516
416. Why the Father-conception must be transcended in Jesus'
consciousness of Absolute Perfection .... 517
417. Jesus' view of Being and its characteristics unique . . 518
418. Good and Evil: Righteousness and Sin . . . .519
419. Jesus found Cosmic Good to surpass the highest righteousness
of man . . . . . . . .519
420. Goodness on a higher ethical plane than righteousness . . 520
421. Jesus' standard of Absolute Excellence, or Resultant Goodness . 521
422. Jesus negates the ethical judgments of the world . . . 521
423. Hate father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, and one's
own life ........ 523
424. The loftiest judgment of the world sustains His negations . 524
425. The space-consciousness alone rationalises His and His Father's
negations ........ 524
426. Jesus negates the ethical values placed on Life and Death . 525
427. Jesus disclaims originating His conception of Good. He
avows it Cosmic . . . . . .526
428. Jesus unites Goodness and Righteousness : Cosmic Good is
Father Righteousness . . . . . .527
429. Why Jesus employs the term " Father " . . . .528
430. The Father Realisation of God never before really known to the
world ........ 529
431. Jesus however transcends Father-Goodness in Space-Goodness 530
432. Good or Evil cannot be predicated of God-Being . . 531
433. Jesus as Relative-Good and Whole-Good .... 532
434. The process by which Jesus conceives Absolute Good . . 533
435. The ' I am ' judgment negates all relativity of Good and Evil . 534
436. The origin of Evil as of Good found in human judgment only . 535
437. The * Last Judgment ' . . . . -537
438. The relative judgments of Righteousness and Sin . . 538
439. Judgments of relativities cannot be referred to Absolute Being . 538
440. Jesus the ultimate reference for sin, or for its negation . . 539
xxiv CONTENTS
SECT. PAGE
441. The last of all judgment upon the earth .... 539
442. Judgment from the Son transcended in the Father . .541
443. Jesus aims to abolish all judgment-condemnation from the earth,
as man has conceived it . . . . .541
444. To do so He makes Himself sole judge of Man, and then as
Father judgeth no man ..... 542
445. Justice and Judgment incompatible with Jesus' Absolute Ethos . 542
446. These have been expedients in the history of man . . 543
447. Jesus aims at whole-perfection for the world . . . 543
448. Jesus' vision of Personified Evil fallen as Lightning . . 544
CHAPTER XVI
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM
449. Relativity of Sin, and the Sinless consciousness . . . 546
450. Historicity and the ultimate consciousness of Truth. (Sects. 237
and 471) . . -552
451. Bishop Westcott on the * I Am' statements in St John . .554
452. Jesus as Psychologist and Philosopher . . .554
453. The Incarnation . . . . . -555
454. Jesus as ' Human' and 'Divine' . . . . -556
455. ' I Am ' our highest expression of Being .... 557
456. Transcendence of God-terms rational . . . 558
457. The Sinless Consciousness . 558
458. Jesus' leniency with sinners ..... 560
459. 'Who say ye that I am?' ...... 560
460. The Nicene Council . . . . . .561
461. Substance and Unity limitative . . . . .561
462. Being and the ' I am ' statements ..... 562
463. Test of Truth and transcendence of Time . . . 563
464. Jesus' Timeless experience ...... 564
465. Transcendence of Life and Time ..... 564
466. The I-consciousness self-sufficient ..... 565
467. H. Spencer and J. S. Mill on Reality as certified . . .565
468. The apple, the Universe, and the 'I Am' . . . .567
469. "Before Abraham was" . ... 568
* 470. Buddha-Personality. (Sect. 305) . . . . .569
471. History defective for Truth. (Sects. 237 and 450) . . 569
472. Creation and abolition of Sin . . . . .571
473. "Except ye believe That-I -Am" . , f , .571
CONTENTS
XXV
SECT.
474. ' I Am ' means more than ' 1 exist '
475. Life and Death necessary to reveal what-man-is
476. Apparent double consciousness in man
477. " Whither I go, ye know the way ''
478. ' I Am ' knows neither Time nor Eternity
479. The Atonement ....
480. The fundamental principle in Atonement .
48 1 . Jesus' final command to the Church
482. Jesus' gift of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost
483. At-one-ment is ontological before ethical .
484. Repentance and the Space-Consciousness
485. " Know Thyself " ....
486. "Power on earth to forgive sins" .
487. " Until seventy times seven "
488. Jesus and Judas ....
489. Highest Good in an Imperial Crime
490. Life not an absolute value .
491. All-Kenosis is All-Pleroma
492. God Immanent or Transcendent .
493. The changing conception of * God '
494. The noblest endeavour of the human mind
495. The Saviour of the world .
PAGE
571
572
574
575
575
577
578
579
580
583
584
585
585
586
586
587
587
588
588
590
59i
591
INDEX
593
SPACE AND PERSONALITY
CHAPTER I
THE SOUL
1. Deep in the general convictions of men lies the belief that
some Great One lives, moves, and has his being in the vast
expanse which we call Space. The Greeks designated this
Great One by the name of Pan, thus personalising Universal
Nature in a fable which, says Bacon, " is perhaps the noblest of
antiquity, and pregnant with the mysteries and secrets of
nature." The Persians, also, according to Herodotus (i. 131),
were accustomed to call "the whole circle of the heavens by
the name of Zeus," an expansive personalisation of space which
finds a profoundly sympathethic reflection in the experience of
those Israelites who, on ascending a mountain with Moses,
"saw the God of Israel : and there was under his feet as it were
a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven
for clearness" (Exod. xxiv. 10).
Wherever, indeed, man has found himself, in any time, or
in any part of the earth, he has inevitably felt conscious there
of some being, personal or impersonal, good or evil, god or
demon, in every space around him. Under innumerable desig-
nations, this Everywhere-Thing has maintained a power over
the awe- felt cognitions of the entire race of mankind.
The phenomenon is a very interesting one from the fact
that Space and Personality are thus invariably associated
together, albeit in the most general way ; and also, that man,
wherever in space he may find himself, always finds 'person-
ality,' not himself, which he cannot divorce from that space.
2. Whereupon, spontaneously, the question arises as to the
i A
2 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
basis which must exist in the human mind for such a universally
accepted consciousness, and as to the possibility of reaching
some rational datum which should co-ordinate Space and
Personality in a generalisation of identity, and so justify to
our intelligence that strong affirmation of the Omnipresence of
God which, as a matter of faith, is asserted by all the great
religions. That such a faith exists is attested by all the
forms and utterances of devotion, and one somehow instinct-
ively leans to the view that whatever is so rooted in faith
must surely grow up out of, and blossom under, the fruit-bearing
forces of reason.
Clearly, if the Deity be everywhere, and Space be also
the Everywhere-Thing, then the All of Space and this Deity
must have identity at least in extension. But this conclusion,
though considerable, is far from what we seek. For this Deity,
where reason is concerned, must be looked upon as chiefly
an abstraction of the human mind, variable in the thought of
every age and of every man ; and as Space is not admitted to
have any personality, as we understand that term, such an
identity of these great conceptions could not logically, or scien-
tifically, give us a satisfactory personal identity. The utmost
result we could obtain by such data would be that a personal
Deity was Everywhere in an impersonal everywhere space.
This of course is the ordinary content of the popular creeds
of religion, but on such a basis it does not appear that we
could intelligently ascribe personality to either space or the
Deity. Some kind of individuation might be construed for
either, answering to Fate, Necessity, Chance, and similar entities
of the fancy, but both the ancient and the modern consciousness
ascribe personality to the Deity at least ; and why worshipping
men should find a personal Everywhere-Deity when the Every-
where-Thing we call Space is denied personality, and even
individuation, seems to be a problem requiring a fuller know-
ledge of what personality means for its better elucidation.
Personality indeed can only be assured to reason on behalf
of anything, through the affirming consciousness of each person,
a consciousness in which reason moves and acts, and, con-
sequently, before the conception that space is personal can be
brought under the categories of reason, it must be shown to
be personal in the consciousness of each individual. We see
THE SOUL 3
how the conception has persisted in the common consciousness
of the race, so as to confirm in the convictions of some of the
most advanced nations a consciousness of Deity and Space
as constituting One Object of worship ; and if such a conception
lies in the racial consciousness, and in the consciousness of
peoples, it must necessarily have seat and centrality in the
consciousness of the individual. Therefore we seem warranted
in enquiring whether or not the identity of Space and Personality
be a fact sustained by the concurrent consciousness of every
human being.
3. The study of space thus rests ultimately, as indeed do
all other studies, on the study of personality. But personality
is really the grand enigma, " so difficult is it even for the
strongest," as Carlyle says in his " Burns " Essay, " to make
this primary attainment, which seems the simplest of all, to read
its own consciousness without mistakes ; without errors, involun-
tary or wilful." This means that if consciousness is to be
made and all authorities are agreed that it must be made
the sole authority and foundation of all we are to believe
and think, then we have to ask, Among the countless pre-
sentations and representations of our personal consciousness,
which of them are we to select finally as the Primal, or as the
Germans might say, the Ur-consciousness ?
Ancients and moderns alike assume that man is 'personal.'
But what actually have they concluded the true content of a
' personality ' to be, after a final analysis of that consciousness ?
What, in short, are we to consider ourselves conscious of when
we say " I " ? The answer is one which psychology should
answer. But at no period of the history of psychology have
so many different statements of the content of this " I "-
consciousness been formulated as in our own and recent
generations. Does this " I " give us an affirmation of unity
or duality, soul and body, mind and matter, or simply of Soul?
And if just Soul, what is its content? Are we to accept the
statement that we are conscious of this Soul-content as being
' Spirit,' or an * Ego ' with an unknown somewhat beyond ?
What is certain in the assertions of psychology regarding the
consciousness of ' personality ' ? Apparently, none whatever.
There is abundant introspective analysis by the most approved
4 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
scientific methods; every neuk and cranny of the conscious
" I " is investigated and pondered, but the delivered judgments
on what is found there are varied and conflicting. The majority
seem to maintain that the content of this " I " yields incontest-
ably a duality of Subject and Object, Thinker and Thing-
thought, with the corollaries of ' Mind ' and ' Matter,' and
innumerable co-relatives associated with these. But this
affirmation never appears to satisfy psychologists themselves,
who leave the impression on the anxious reader that Unity
and not Duality of content ought to be the final result of their
explorations through the " I "-consciousness. They seem to be
conscious that such a Unity does really exist, but, so far, the
data of discovery at their disposal does not warrant its
scientific proclamation.
4. Philosophy, as a consequence, is ever practically at war
with Psychology, and Theology more aggressively so, for while
the philosopher diligently rears the architectonic structure of
his " Unity," and the theologian confidently founds upon his
"faith," the psychologist calmly points out to both that they
build in vain until all can be verified in the facts of conscious-
ness ; and these facts, he firmly maintains in turn, are fixedly
dual and only dual in Spirit and Nature, Self and Not-Self,
Being and Non-Being, Mind and Matter, and all the relative
'others' of the active Intellect. Accordingly, Unity cannot be
psychologically predicated of Being.
The same conflicting state of matters prevails with regard
to Space. From the days of the early Greek philosophers,
the Milesians, down to the latest learned expositor of Mind,
the reality or non-reality of space has been the subject of
earnest but unsatisfactory debate. This again seems to point
to psychological shortcomings, or a psychology, at least, which
has neglected to take into its sum of data the whole of the
facts which are given us in consciousness. For our consciousness
as to the reality of Space is always immeasurably deeper than the
reasoned conclusions of systematic psychology. There seem to be
voices crying from within us for which no organon exists by
which their message may be interpreted through Life and
Reason. A comprehensive view, indeed, of the achieved
results of psychology and philosophy with regard to what
THE SOUL 5
we are to accept as true concerning both Space and Personality,
begets in one, at first glance, a conviction that if these results
are all that such powerful sciences have to offer to mankind
on so great themes, then either Consciousness itself is at fault,
and not to be trusted, or else that all the facts which Conscious-
ness yields have not been taken up into their expositions. We
confess at once that our leanings are towards the latter con-
viction, and if it be true, then there exists a genuine necessity,
in the interests of the highest things, to seek, however im-
perfectly, for another path. No man who professes to have
at heart the future well-being of mankind, can contentedly see
Religion coldly divided from Philosophy, and both from Science,
with the most calamitous results to human society following
ultimately, without making some sacrifices towards redemption.
And notwithstanding that in every department of human
thought and devotion there is groaning and travailing in pain
together until now over this intellectual disintegration, it does
not appear that despair need be our only portion, for wherever
there is Life there is also, as all past history proves, the Light
of men. Inevitably, every human life holds in it not merely
" birth and death, an infinite ocean," but also " a seizing and
giving the fire of Living," and the unrevealed "gleam, the light
that never was." In this, as in all mundane experience, the
difficulty is not in having a battle to fight, but in wisely
accepting a victory already won. For neither Time nor
Eternity has required to wait till we should overcome it.
5. Let us then, as far as our necessity compels, examine the
net content of that consciousness which we possess when we
think or reflect upon our Self, Soul, I, Ego, or Spirit. Every-
one has such a possession, and everyone has a certain content
of thought regarding it. The philosopher as well as the fool
begins with this experience. Consequently, there is little dis-
cernible divergence of opinion regarding this fundamental
content in the common mind. The vast mass of reflecting
people undoubtedly accept to-day the same position which both
Socrates and Plato occupied with reference to the individual
" Soul." We are to remember, however, that these great minds
were bent upon an ethical rather than a"n ontological explana-
tion of human existence, and as a consequence, they simply
6 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
entertained without any prolonged enquiry the presence of a
" soul " in every man as an undisputed fact. There is indeed
evidence enough of hesitations on their part as to how this
" soul " comes into the body at first, where it goes at death,
what may be its highest good, how it best can attain to this
chief good, what relation it holds to the body, and such like
considerations, but they accept the fact of a true thing called
a " soul " as being enclosed for a time within the human frame,
in much the same way that we all accept the fact that there is
a kernel enclosed within the shell of a nut. They hold,
generally, that this " soul " is self-intact, that it can leave the
body which defiles it, be ferried over streams in a boat, stand
clearly in the presence of its judges, walk about fields, undergo
pains, and experience all the changes associated with our
mundane existence. They visualise the " soul," in brief, as
most people do yet, viz., as something in our body which is
concrete and substantial, while being at the same time
immaterial, simple, indivisible, incapable of growth or decrease,
and free.
This popular view of the " soul " was not only held by the
ancient philosophers, but was likewise, as the late Prof. W.
James has shown in his Psychology, the belief of the Middle
Ages, and was further accepted by Hobbes, Descartes, Locke,
Leibnitz, Wolf, and Berkeley, and is yet defended by the entire
modern dualistic or spiritualistic or common-sense School. A
more detailed account will be found in Prof. Bain's Mind and
Body^ chap, vii., and in Lotze's Metaphysic^ Book III., chaps, i.
and v. And without doubt, for all ordinary purposes of thought
and devotion, as well as for the uses of literature, it is quite a
convenient and comfortable view. It gives to the introspective
gaze a substantial object on which to rest, similar to what is
granted to the eye in nature, with a sense of substantial
endurance irreducible by death which is pleasing to every one
who contemplates that dreaded event. But it is a view which,
both to philosophy and to psychology, and still more to science,
is impossible and inadmissible. It can only be regarded as an
assumption, made in loyalty to ourselves, and as one that
satisfies our just curiosity to know what it is that thinks, feels,
and wills within us. Philosophy cannot entertain such a con-
ception because the absolute unity which is her consuming
THE SOUL 7
passion, demands that both * body ' and ' soul ' be sublated in a
' reality ' which must be * beyond the difference ' of all matter
and mind. Psychology which makes it her exclusive business
to analyse the mental world as science does the realm of
matter, confesses bluntly that nothing can be found in man's
'personality' answering to the conception of this popular "soul."
There is undoubtedly a true verification of a vast consciousness
in us, she maintains, of thinking, feeling, and willing, and even
a consciousness of some Thing which can be spoken of as
1 that which ' thinks, and feels, and wills. And we may agree to
call this Thing " Soul," spirit, or Self. But we may call it
anything, says the late Prof. James, "what you like Ego,
Thought, Psychosis, Soul, Intelligence, Consciousness, Mind,
Reason, Feeling " (the last of which he himself preferred), but
" the only self we know anything positive about is the empirical
Me, not the pure I." He avers that " the critic who vouches
for that reality " (and he did not doubt its reality), " does so on
grounds of faith, for it is not a verifiable phenomenal thing"
(Psychology, i. 363).
This, of course, is to confess that the matter surpasses the
capabilities of his science. He admits this fact. " If," he says,
" the passing thought be the directly verifiable existence which
no school has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is
the thinker, and psychology need not look beyond " (Psychology,
i. 401). But as every person, not excluding perhaps even
psychologists, refuses point blank to regard his thought as
himself, the whole matter rests in the unknown as before.
HUME.
6. It was Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, who first
inaugurated a scientific scepticism regarding the popular faith
in a " soul " as a concrete consciousness. Doubtless, countless
others before his time had favoured the denial of a 'soul' as
well as the denial of a * God.' There are always vagrant minds
who have as little difficulty in casting off the burdens of faith
and reason as other vagrants have in shedding the burdens of
civilisation. Hume's task may be regarded as one that had
lain heavily on the sensitive minds of our great ones of both
East and West. The "Sacred Books of the East" are as full
of this inquiry as are the religious books of the West. For the
8 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
problem of the " Soul " is a world-problem. And it is common
knowledge that both Bacon and Descartes had modified the
' soul '-conception of popular thought before Hume took up the
subject. Bacon adopted the ancient view that the ' soul ' is
really dual in its composition, there being " the rational soul "
which is divine, and given by the breath of God, and the
"irrational soul" which we have in common with the brutes,
and which is derived from the 'dust.' (See Plato's Phaedrus :
Timaeus: and Phaedo, passim; and Tertullian's De Animal)
Descartes, who trusted less to theological notions than did
Bacon, in considering this particular topic at least, with the
firmness begotten of the scientific habit, boldly placed
the ' soul ' as the unit-organ in man, in the pineal gland in
the back of the brain. But Hume, wisely shaking off both the
conventionalities of theology and such Descartean demonstra-
tions in psycho-physiology, took the higher and more laborious
way of "entering himself," as he expresses it, examining
neither bible nor brain but only that conscious Something
in man which both have been created to serve. When he had
done so, exploring this Platonian cave of all the mysterious
forms and motjons^he frankly asserted that he found nothing
there ! Like PioTtfiffi when he entered the holy of holies in the
temple of the Jews at Jerusalem, he found the arcanum empty !
Hume did find some things there, but he denies that he found
what he was assured by all he might expect to find his Soul.
" For my part," he declares, " when I enter most intimately
into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time
without a perception or other, and never can observe anything
but the perception." And such a * perception ' could not be
accepted by Hume, as his " Soul." And he was doubtful, after
his manner, if anyone on trying the experiment, would be more
successful. Of such a one he thought, " he may, perhaps, per-
ceive something and continu'd, which he calls himself, tho' I
am certain there is no such principle in me " (On Personal
Identity).
Now we should not misunderstand Hume. He is not
denying the actual existing thing which we are conscious we
are. He is simply affirming that there is nothing in the
THE SOUL 9
consciousness of any person which corresponds to the popular
soul-idea. And we are safe to say that this psychological
diagnosis has been confirmed as thoroughly true by every
candid psychologist worthy of the name since Hume's day.
All have followed him in courageously abandoning a mentally
false position. Hume did not attempt " to rob men of their
souls" as it has been phrased, but to rob them of the untrue
conception of the Soul which both theologians and philosophers
had all along accepted. His reason was a clear one. It is not
within the powers of mind to think the kind of soul which our
consciousness desiderates. We demand a Continuum for
our 'soul/ but Hume proved that before we can have a con-
ception of a continuous unchangeable substratum equal to that
which is named the ' soul,' we must first have " the continuous
existence of the perceptions of our senses." He first postulated
in his system that our senses give us " Impressions," and that
these " Impressions " in turn give us " Ideas." Consequently,
it was impossible to have a continuous idea of the soul, for the
reason that we never have a continuous perception or * impres-
sion ' of anything.
Nevertheless Hume did little in his own day, and less has
been done since, perhaps, to shake the marvellous consciousness
of unity which all possess as to the real beings we are. We
also think that he carried his scepticism beyond its just
boundaries when he asserted that " the identity which we
ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one," and that
further, " Identity is nothing really belonging to these different
perceptions, and uniting them together, but is merely a quality,
which we attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas
in the imagination, when we reflect upon them." The over-
whelming consciousness in all men which maintains the unity
of what we call ' soul ' or ' self,' cannot be disposed of in this
way. There are facts in that consciousness which were hid
from the eyes of Hume.
What we have to emphasise here, however, is the fact that
the belief of the ages in a 'soul' or 'self was by him keenly
questioned and firmly passed from. Hume made a valuable
contribution to a great problem, and he did so in the scientific
way, for it was genuine experience, and an experience which
everyone can verify for himself.
10 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
KANT.
7. It was this basis of experience which Kant accepted. But
he did not accept Hume's conclusions from the data given in it.
Hume did not think he was warranted by the facts of his
consciousness in believing that there was an identity existing
in him of such sufficient factual unity as to be worthy of being
individuated by the term * soul ' or ' self.' In his view, what we
do when we think of our ' soul,' is to effect a kind of illusive
combination of our perceptions in our imagination and reflec-
tion, and then to characterise this union of ideas as our identical
self or personality, though in actual fact, there is never more
within us except particulars, perceptions (* conceptions,' as we
now call them), impressions, ideas, and such like. Thus Hume
summed up our knowledge of the ' soul.'
Kant received this as a true experience, and assumed that it
yielded a true knowledge of the self as far as the ' particulars '
were concerned, but he maintained that such knowledge did not
exhaust all we are conscious of in the matter of the ( self.' This
'self or 'soul' was, he declared, a Ding-an-sich, a thing-in-
itself, and quite by itself, and completely apart from these
1 particulars.' It lay above and beyond the sphere of ideas.
Therefore it could not be known. He remarks, " The internal
sense, by means of which the mind contemplates itself or its
internal state, gives, indeed, no intuition of the soul as an
object." " I have therefore no knowledge of myself as I am,
but merely as I appear to myself. The consciousness of self is
thus very far from a knowledge of self." " We cognise our own
subject only as phenomenon, and not as it is in itself." Kant
thus limited all knowledge to the sphere of phenomena, and
placed the "Soul" absolutely outside of that sphere. Still,
beyond this sphere of the knowable there was that of experi-
ence upon which all knowledge is based, and Kant held that we
have certain a priori conceptions which in turn are a priori
conditions of the possibility of such experience. "The whole
aim of the transcendent deductions of all a priori conceptions is
to show that these conceptions are a priori conditions of the
possibility of all experience." In other words, experience is
necessary to knowledge, but there is something necessary to
experience. For experience itself is based in the intuitions of
THE SOUL 11
space and time which become the ' form ' of all our cognitions,
and these ' forms ' in turn rise out of the ' something ' of which
we are conscious when we say " I." Beyond the ' forms ' of
space and time, however, all is blank. Within that blank
dwells the " Soul," the " I," the " Self," but we can only say so
by a kind of faith-consciousness, a belief completely void of all
cognitional content. It is on the same level as an algebraic x.
It is the Unknown, the Noumenon, the Ding-an-Sich. The all-
important point remains, however, that although unknown as it
is, yet it is, and is in and through all our ' impressions and
ideas/ and is what knows and experiences. It is therefore One,
and we are always conscious that it is identical with our * self,'
or, theologically, our " Soul " (Critique of Pure Reason, passim).
Kant in this way restored the " soul " to mankind of which
Hume had apparently deprived it, but he also forever rent it
from all unity with Nature. Thought and Being could never
be One, for this " Soul " of man was alone by itself, a thing-in-
itself, and though in thought it was not of thought, but severely
by itself, and was the Noumenon. Standing over against it,
divided by a great gulf fixed, were Nature, or the Heavens and
the Earth, the body itself, and even Thought, Feeling, and Will.
These were merely phenomena, and could not be one with the
Noumenon. Men were apparently content to have the restora-
tion of the ' soul ' on these terms, even although the Universe
remained cleft in two. It seemed agreeable that the spiritual
and the natural should thus be shown to be perfectly apart and
in their own proper places, with ' God ' transcending all things,
and not one with anyone or anything, as the Man of Galilee
had affirmed.
This famous deliverance of Kant, pleasing, profound, and
impressive as it proved, wrought disastrous consequences in the
end. For it was evident that if the ' soul ' could not be known
then neither could * God.' Neither could the origin, or origins
of the Cosmos be objects of our cognition. Kant, as a matter
of fact, became the unintentional founder of modern Agnosti-
cism. He himself indeed was at great pains to show that God
could never be known. (See 198 A.) He Who knows every-
thing is Himself Unknown a doctrine which has been well-
voiced in our time through such writers as Spencer, Huxley,
Sir Leslie Stephen, and many others.
12 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
HEGEL.
8. And it was in this philosophical condition that Hegel
found the Human Mind. For other thinkers who immediately
followed Kant altered nothing of Kant's foundations. But with
Hegel we enter upon a new field of vision, and other horizons
bound the mental world. Hegel accounts for the " soul " by
seeking to account for everything. Kant and Hume had dealt
with the * particulars ' and ' phenomena ' of our individual con-
sciousness. Hegel abandoned this method and sought his data
in the absolute. Instead of working from the content of the
human consciousness outward to the Absolute, he began his
philosophy by sweeping, so to say, all Existence entirely bare
of content. With Hegel, not even ' In the beginning ' is spared.
What remains is the clearest vision of the absolute IS, or rather,
is-ness, as Dr Stirling has it (Secret of Hegel), and this, Hegel
names BEING. Then having swept the ALL clean of content,
and deprived Being of every predicate, we are necessarily com-
pelled to accept this pure Is-ness as ' Nichts ' or Nothing.
When we have done so, Hegel then asks us further to consider
this Nothing as identical with BEING, for it is. That is to
say, " BEING and NOTHING are the same."
With Hegel, then, we take up a position which surrounds
both Hume's ' particulars ' and Kant's * noumenon ' and
' phenomenon ' in a wider predicate of Being. ' God,' Self,
Nature, are submerged, and swallowed up in BEING, and this
BEING and what we call NOTHING are identical. The identity
of the ALL is complete. The cleft universe of Kant disappears,
and his bewildering ' Manifold ' with all its seething categories
and interminable relatives and co-relatives ceases from troubling
in the grave of all cognition. Hegel plants one foot on
* Noumenon ' and the other on ' Phenomenon/ and proclaims
every a priori intuition to be no more ! The ALL is ; and it is
ONE.
If now we should ask, as little confident of this Unity as of
Kant's Duality, whence then the differences of things ? are we
to be deprived of all difference ? Hegel replies No, for the
same Identity always yields us BEING and NOTHING likewise.
They are the same, but they yield also difference. And this
principle of ' identity in difference, and difference in Identity,' he
THE SOUL 13
believed to be the grand potential which was able to solve all
the perplexities and mysteries of Existence. For, from this
principle, we could easily discern Creation, as it is usually
understood, acquiring the necessary potentiality of BECOMING,
and from this again as BECOME, we could then see all things,
ourselves and the rest, first take adumbration and form, and so
become further what they appear to be in our thought and
consciousness. What we regret is that Hegel never explained
how he procured the motional force which set out from Being
and Nothing in its Becoming.
We are almost tempted to say that Hegel's method is one
not unknown to Algebra. For example, Something assumed to
be absolute is unknown, but we want to know it. Let, then,
BEING stand for this unknown. 'BEING' is a mere symbol: an
x in the problem. Call it ' NOTHING.' These terms are, he
asserts, " empty abstractions " (' Seyn und Nichts leere Abstrak-
tionem Sind'). He even scorns them in his regal way. But
they fulfil the same purpose that.r does in an algebraic problem,
viz., they posit that something IS. Now this is an immense
gain. Actually, it is everything ; for it is not merely a par-
ticular such as ' God,' Soul, Nature, Mind, Universe, or Matter.
It includes all these. It is the pure Absolute.
But by that fact it cannot be thought by any thinker. For
thought must first become conception, and no conception can
hold the Absolute, any more than a teacup can hold the ocean.
Teacup, conception, and ocean, are all finite and relative things.
But IS, is just the same as if we could think NOTHING. That
is to say, it is beyond Thought.
But if x, which is equal to IS, includes All, then it includes
all that has become to our consciousness ; and out of this posited
IS, seeing that it is All, must have come ' God,' Soul, Universe,
and All. They must have Be-come. From the Absolute they
have come into the realm of thought. From BEING and
NOTHING, therefore, we have 'Becoming'; or, the Unknown
^r-thing is realised as possessing a content of knowledge for
the human mind. " For," says Hegel, " becoming is the first
concrete thought, and therefore the first notion : whereas Being
and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion of Being there-
fore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming : not
the mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more
14 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
than Nothing which is empty Being. In Being then we have
Nothing, and in Nothing Being : but this Being which does not
lose itself in Nothing is Becoming" (Logic, Wallace's Trans.,
p. 167).
But we have not yet reached the full content of the
^r-thing : IS : the Absolute. We only know what BECOMING
is. It is "the first concrete thought and therefore the first
NOTION." But we cannot say ' first ' to an Absolute.
BE-COMING, therefore, must be only the first possible historical
thought, and therefore the first possible historical NOTION.
But if this 'BE-COMING' is real, then the .r-thing must also
be real, for BE-coming has come out of the ^r-thing, the only
origin it could have. And now regressing in thought with this
fact, BECOMING being concrete thought, and therefore real
NOTION, it follows that therefore the ^-thing, which up to this
point has been assumed as equal only to the abstractions BEING
and NOTHING, may now be considered as an ^r-thing which is
equal to real concrete thought, and therefore real concrete
NOTION, the real concrete Absolute. And BEING and NOTHING
being only abstractions, assumed for purposes of reasoning, may
now be cast away, and " Absolute Notion " be substituted
instead as the final word on the mystery of the ages.
For out of this " Absolute Notion," or as it was preferred
later, the " Absolute Spirit," Hegel declared the All to proceed.
And so by his method he believed that he had carried out " the
unity of knowing and being, and so of a priori and a posteriori,
to complete identity," or, had accomplished that Unity of Being
which Kant left rent in twain. And accepting Hegel's position as
true, Prof. E. Caird is able to say : " It follows that the objective
world is and can be nothing but the manifestation of intelligence,
or the means whereby it attains the fullest realisation of itself.
Thus it is proved that there is a spiritual principle of unity a
principle of unity which is renewed in every conscious self
underlying all the antagonisms of the world, even its apparent
antagonism to spirit itself. For such a self, therefore, there can
be no absolute limit, or irreconcilable division, within or with-
out" (Hegel, p. 185).
But it is just here, in the postulation of an " objective world,"
where Hegel fails to substantiate his case. His Thought and
Notion never give us a certainty in our consciousness that Life
THE SOUL 15
and Spirit, with all that the objective world means in our con-
sciousness of it, are contained in them. The IS which he posits
to begin with, calling it BEING and NOTHING, is never raz/to our
consciousness in the same way that we are conscious of our own
reality. He calls it " Absolute," but it is a mathematical or
logical absolute, an x : and, search as we please, we never find
the consciousness of our Self in it. No one finds the conscious-
ness in it which enables him to say with every certainty, " This
is I ; I am this."
It seems to be the old trickery of words. Put Thought to
its sports and it will say, "If anything is absolutely everything,
then it must necessarily include Nothing as well as Something.
Then let Being be this Everything. Therefore Being is equally
Nothing as Something. Therefore Being and Nothing are the
same, and also Being and Something are the same. Therefore
Nothing and Something are the same." But this never settles
the question which is always raised by consciousness, viz., What
is the " anything " that is absolutely Everything ? Do we find
the consciousness of reality, and especially of our own reality,
in this " Absolute Notion " in which Hegel subsumes Every-
thing? He traces Reality back through the "first concrete
thought" BECOMING. That should mean that we are conscious
of having Be-come. But no mortal ever yet has been conscious
of this process. We are conscious that we are, but we are
never conscious of having become, or yet of becoming. We only
believe this. If we ever had such a consciousness of becom-
ing, Hume's old puzzle that we never know the process from
Cause to Effect would be falsified. We are convinced that the
1 BECOMING ' of Hegel is as much an abstraction, an ' empty
abstraction/ as are his symbol-words BEING and NOTHING. It
is not concrete ; otherwise we should find its concreteness
certified by our consciousness of ourselves in which it should
take its thought-origin. Consequently, when this 'first concrete
thought ' is found to be not concrete, the * Notion ' which he
evolves out of his ' BEING ' falls with it.
Hegel therefore fails to connect his ' Begriff/ his Absolute
Notion, with the ' objective world ' of our consciousness, and
fails still more in identifying its reality with the consciousness
of reality which everyone has of himself. No more, we think,
does he prove, as the Master of Balliol declared, that " there is
16 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
a spiritual principle of unity ... in every conscious self, under-
lying all the antagonisms of the world," for the term " Spirit,"
like BEING, NOTHING, and BECOMING, has not the slightest
consciousness of reality underlying it in our consciousness of
ourselves. Who is conscious of anything in himself that he
can name " spirit " ? No one. Hegel assumes the very thing
he sets out to prove. We ask, " What am I ? " He says,
" Notion." And we have seen that this is reached through the
"concrete" BECOMING which is not concrete, but an abstract
symbol merely, and gives to no Self a consciousness of reality.
But again when we ask, " What is this Notion ? " Hegel answers,
" Spirit," without the slightest proof of any kind. Still, con-
fident that he must be right, we reflect upon what we are, in
order to discover if we possess a real consciousness of this
' spirit ' in us, and we find that it is not there. What we do
find is the old crowd of Anschauungen and Vorstellungen^
' intuitions/ ' perceptions,' and ' ideas/ but not the least
verification of a * spirit.' We conclude, therefore, that it is a mere
theological importation, and as illusive as Hume's ' self.' We
do not doubt the ' principle of unity/ however, for this is given
in our consciousness, but its ' spirituality ' is a characterisation
which is unwarranted by the facts of consciousness, which
anyone can verify for himself.
9. Prof. Seth Pringle-Pattison justly says with regard to
this defective point in the Hegelian System, " Hegel speaks in
strictness, from beginning to end of his system, neither of the
divine Self-consciousness nor of human self-consciousness, but
of Self-consciousness in general neither of the divine Spirit
nor of human spirits, but simply of ' Spirit.' The process of
the world, for example, is viewed as the realisation of spirit or
self-conscious intelligence. But spirit is an abstraction ; intelli-
gence is an abstraction, only spirits or intelligences &R. real. It
is the same even when we come to absolute spirit a case which
might seem at first sight to leave no loophole for doubt" . . .
" * absolute spirit ' has no more necessary reference to a concrete
Subject than the simple 'spirit' or intelligence which preceded
it." " If we scrutinise the (Hegelian) system narrowly we find
Spirit or the Absolute doing duty at one time for God and at
another time for man " . . . " We never have the two together,
THE SOUL 17
but sometimes the one and sometimes the other a constant
alternation, which really represents two different lines of
thought in the system, and two different conclusions to which
it leads. But the alternation is so skilfully managed by Hegel
himself that it appears to be not alternation but union "
{Hegelianism and Personality^ pp. 159, 160, 164).
We may then conclude that the net contribution from
Hegel, as far as the 'Self or 'Soul' is concerned, is nil. It
was so to be expected. For Hegel does not appeal to con-
sciousness, the consciousness of each individual man, but to
logic ; and the convictions which are generated in us by his
reasoning are logical convictions, and have no basis in the
testimonies of that ( principal of unity ' which we consciously
name our Self. Consequently, on such ground, when there
is no deeper assurance given to the Self, the Self is never
fundamentally certain of anything, itself included, however
ably the reasoning may be perfected.
Hegel really left the actual sphere of experience in his
search for the ' soul.' He felt what most speculative thinkers
have felt since his day, that to find the " Soul " is to find the
All. And consequently he brooded over the conception of
Universal Existence. A conception of Being consumed him.
But he wanted to encompass it by mere Thought-Grip : an
instinct which has profoundly sacred antecedents. For both
Hindu and Scandinavian long ago visualised Existence as
encompassed by Form, in the likeness of a serpent upholding
the ALL by grasping its tail in its mouth ! Hegel's originality
consists in his conceiving this ALL-enclosing Thing as abstract-
ing itself from itself until there is no remainder ; Existence
vanishing with it ! Being then Becomes from what is not left I
Hegel's conception never transcends Process. No sooner is
all abstracted by such consumption, than the ALL which has
so regressed upon itself and into itself returns again from
itself by Becoming. And Becoming constitutes, he says, the
Concrete, and ' the first concrete thought.'
His Ultimate consciousness of Being is that of Process ; and
regarding this finding we must always emphasise the fact that
no testimony of our consciousness ever supports it as an
ultimate. Hume was right in this. We never can find in
our consciousness any trace of Cause proceeding over into
B
18 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Effect. Process of Being is never indeed of consciousness at
all, but of inductive thought. It is conception and not Being ;
and as Hegel began with it, so he ended in it.
Modern thinkers do not rise higher than this conception of
Process of Existence. Bergson may be taken as our latest
example. Unlike Hegel, however, he finds no need to abstract
the ALL before the ALL begins to be. He stands upon scientific
postulates only ; and ' absolute origins ' therefore do not come
within his purview. He contemplates the ALL-THING as evolv-
ing and developing itself by a process which is self-contained
and self-determined. If the ALL ever ate itself up, what Science
now clearly beholds is the reversal of the process, and the
uncoiling of itself out of itself through 'impulses' which are
self-subsistent and self-sufficient, and which, in the grand
aggregate of its particulars, is to be universalised in terms
of Cosmos and Nature ; ourselves, ' souls ' and bodies, being
bound up in the universality. Bergson asserts that Evolution
is Creative: Process is also Being. And consequently the ALL
is still creating itself. Neither God, the Universe, nor man
is yet finished !
And again we feel ourselves on sand ; for we have not the
faintest testimony in our consciousness that we are under
such a process. We have no consciousness, we repeat, of
becoming, but only and solely of being what-we-are. Bergson,
like Hegel, closes in a concept but not in a consciousness of
Being. However, he avoids absolutising his concept in one
completed ' Notion,' as Hegel did, and leaves us with an
unfinished broadening vista of Being going ever onward yet
more to be. ' I ' is assumed to be incompleted ' Am.' Being is
also assumed to be absolutely dependent upon this Process ;
this 'creative evolution.' And, as a result, Consciousness
herself is gravely impeached in respect of her ultimate affirma-
tions of Reality or of what Is, and stands condemned at the
bar of Scientific Inductive Reason. For Is, nor less nor more,
is her fixed and final testimony.
So it would seem that we now stand at the highest elevation
of philosophical thought just as feebly certain regarding the
Personality of man, as when Plato dreamed and Hume doubted.
And the ablest minds of our own time are just as discouraging.
We have quoted, for America, the late Prof. W. James. For
THE SOUL 19
Britain, Prof. F. H. Bradley assures us, after a studious
analysis of the Soul-question, universally praised, that, "in
whatever way the self is taken it will prove to be Appearance,"
" appearance and error ; " and he thus concludes " our search
has conducted us again not to reality but mere appearance "
(Appearance and Reality, pp. 104, 120).
10. Thus baffled to resolve the difficulties of the Soul-
problem on a basis of thought, modern students seem disposed
to try the category of Life in its explication. Experience, that
is to say, which is wider than thought, offers a broader founda-
tion for a possible scientific inclusion of both body and soul, of
both the " Me " and the " I " consciousness in the unit-presenta-
tion of Personality. Hence it is conjectured that light may be
found in the theories known as Interactionism, Parallelism, and
Epiphenomenalism. The question attacked by all three is
the relation of the brain to its thought. And every such theory
must confront the further question of the deeply-rooted con-
viction of the survival of the ' soul ' after death. The Inter-
actionist accepts the fact that mind and brain interact upon
each other, but that the connection amounts to nothing more
than one between cause and effect, and the unity is merely
one of intellect and volition. The Parallelist holds that neither
mind nor brain can influence each other. There is only a
parallel existence, * yet, on the other hand, they are represented
as being so closely related that to every change in the mental
series a change in the physical series exactly corresponds.'
The Epiphenomenalist sees a causal relation between mind
and brain, but avers that causation comes all from the substance
of the brain, our conscious states being solely due to the
molecular changes in the brain. The 'soul' in such a theory
becomes a mere mental shadow. The problem has been still
further complicated by the acceptance by some savants of
the Telepathic theory, whereby it is said one mind can com-
municate thoughts and feelings to another. One body is seen
to act upon another body ; why should not mind act upon
mind? But assuming that it did, the unit-relation between
mind and body is not thereby established. The spheres of
body and ' soul ' seem as far apart as ever : like interacting
with like but not with unlike.
20 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
n. The cardinal lack in all such theories of the Soul, from
the earliest times till now, is a common basis for both the
* material ' and the ' immaterial ' of which there is a con-
sciousness in the identical thinker. And unless this basis
exists in fact and not merely as a product of thought, the
* soul '-problem must forever remain unsatisfactory to both
psychology and science. And as this * soul '-fact is the assumed
basis of theology, until such a basis is forthcoming it is
clear that the world of knowledge stands broken in fragments,
while all the time a consciousness is rampant in every thinking
mind that that world is one whole. Our consciousness is
constantly at variance with all our theories of being, no
matter whether our knowledge is mental, moral, or material.
The intense irritability which pervades every sphere of cog-
nition follows as a consequence. It does not help us to
assume, with some, that personality is a ' development '
(Garvie), with a suggestion that the basis of unity may be
found in the principal of Evolution ; nor with others that our
personality is not wholly embodied at present, but is being
so, Incarnation being suggested as the uniting fact (Lodge);
for neither of these suggestions gets rid of the persistent con-
sciousness of duality which still abides its assertion. What
evolves, and what incarnates, are accompanying interrogations
which complain for a fuller answer. Both are mere processes
in a Something which proceeds, and which uses either the
* material ' or the ' immaterial ' as it willeth, and easily unites,
in our consciousness of it, both what we call ' personality ' and
1 impersonality.' What we are really in search of is not mere
motions or processes of things, even though these should be
gigantic enough to involve the Cosmos. Our anxiety is not
to think things together, as if in despair, in order to amend
by a force of unity what has been left unfinished in their
creation. We want to interpret the conscious Wholeness of
Being, whereof no possible part or difference is predicable, in
order to realise for the All that indivisibility of Being which
is so strongly emphasised in our consciousness of What-we-are,
the ' I.' In this * I '-consciousness no possible part or distinc-
tion, cleavage, or relativity between its parts, or any necessity
to unite such together in a ' unity beyond their difference, 1 is
ever predicable; and our consciousness of Absolute Being
THE SOUL 21
should harmonise with this consciousness of whole I-Being.
Philosophy has permitted herself to be persuaded that Being,
in its very nature, is cleft and differenced ; and seems to accept
the Real and the Unreal to be as absolute in actual Being
as they are in logical differentiation ; and it is this invincible
scepticism regarding the true consciousness of Whole-Being
which requires to be combated at all hazards.
12. In glancing thus from our little height across the vast
expanse of human speculation regarding the ' Soul/ we confess
that Plato's Cave ever haunts us as reflecting its form and
symbolism upon every systematic exposition of Being subsequent
to his time. Empirical as sense and images of sense can
make it, it seems to constitute a home base for all the idealism
of the ages. Simple and natural, it yet focusses and attracts
that spirit of curiosity which is the fountain of all philosophical
enquiry. Limitation of objectivity, conceptual narrowness of
materialisation, are given in the Cave itself; epitomising the
Cosmos. Within its confines, universal principles which afford
basis for all movements of Nature and human nature are
active and tragic. These motions, which yet are ' inanimate,'
are exhibited in the ' shadows ' on the wall. They also represent
those mysterious motions of feeling, thinking, and willing, which
are, and are not, what-we-are. Their shapes, being * personal,'
arouse our interest, and we marvel at the unit-destiny which
each ' person ' shares with the ' burden ' it carries. Existence
is here thirled to Duty ; Being and Ethics rise upon our
vision. The flames of the * fire ' suggest life and passion. (See
Plato's RepiMic, chap, vii.)
Plato, following Socrates, and Aristotle following Plato,
turn away from the wide grandeur of heaven and earth.
Thought, not Nature, is the Cave they enter. The Concept,
not the Percept, alone charms them. Form, Matter, Substance,
Cause, are conceived to reveal the secrets of Being. So do they
limit the entrance to the Cave. So do they compel all the
thought - oppressed and weary to pass within its gloomy
limitations. The world comes, in its greatest minds, to stare
at the * shadows ' that move forever across the wall with their
burdens. And the sense of severance, differentiation, and chasm,
seems to open appalling suggestions for the being of universal
22 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
creation. For by entering the Cave and staring long at the
shadows, even the Christian Mind itself, long after Plato, could
see nothing but divided ' persons ' for her God, and the
'burdens' of existence awful and terrible. Bacon came, still
long after, and thought by reversing the burdened journey of
the personal ' shadows ' across the wall, making their burden
inductive rather than deductive, to solve the mystery of the
Cave. Descartes could not consent to have the Cave itself
included in the same unity of existence with the 'persons.*
The 'minds' and the 'matters' could not have anything
more than approximate unity ! Kant entered the Cave and
emphasised all its objectivities, but with his power of penetrat-
ing the 'shadows' themselves, and of seeing through the thick
darkness, he transcended wall, persons, burdens, shadows, and
all, and insisted that Something, an ;r-being, lay unrevealed
within and beyond the wall, of which no one had the least
possible conception. It was in a space - by - itself. Hegel,
uttering his grim ' mehercule,' resolved to unmask the .r-being
from its transcendental hiding-place, and therefore smote the
walls of the Cave of mystery, and scattered its ruins under the
fury of his logical blasts, and so made end of all Appearance,
declaring the remaining ' Nothing' and ' Being' to be One !
Thus the progress of the human mind arrived, after long
pilgrimage, at the conclusion, " We are such stuff as " Nothing !
And without possessing the smallest sympathy with the great
Hegelian contribution, built up on the demolished site of the
Platonian Cave, we must venture to think that the world will yet
thank him with all its heart for having erased that Cave to
its Nothingness. It, and all it stands for, has been the bugbear
of all Thought, and has allured the sincerest to miserable
impotence, and sloughed eyes that were made for gazing upon
the glories of earth and sky, rather than upon ghosts of
wretched conceptualities, dead before born. Hegel is the
greater philosopher that he accepted this Nothing -conscious-
ness as his sole basis of Thought, bursting all walls of objec-
tivity. The pity is that he concentrated his mighty intellect
upon the 'stuff' rather than upon the "We." For no mortal
will ever be able to find himself, i.e., his actual ' I,' as one
with Hegel's 'Stuff,' his Nothing- Being, his 'Notion.' His
grand work was really in demolishing the objectivity of the
THE SOUL 23
Cave, and liberating the mind of the world. The very
fecundity of the philosophical maternity, since Hegel fell on
sleep, proves the new freedom and the unshackled speculative
powers which he emancipated from the thought - thrall of
the Greek Past. As we go forward with our argument, we
shall have complaints enough against his system, but we trust
never to forget that, philosophically, we are as dust beneath
his feet, and that, but for Hegel, the resting-place which we
believe we have found for ourself in the All that Flows
onwards forever, had remained outside of our experience. It is
also our profession here, that to the Master of masters alone is
due whatever of light and truth we have been able to unfold
throughout this imperfect sketch, but, with that sacred name
set far apart from every name, our obligations are principally to
Hegel and to the able minds who have translated and
expounded his philosophy.
What Hegel left us, then, for our study of the * Soul/ is
that consciousness of Space which the simulacrum of Plato's
Cave and all it implies, hid from every eye till he thrust
aside its Objectivity absolutely. But this consciousness of
Space no philosopher appears to have found of the least
consequence to himself; for although Hegel laid it bare, he
himself was never tired of deriding it as " abstract," " empty,"
" non-being," and, practically, a miserable stray * shadow ' from
the old Cave walls, and of no use or value in interpreting the
mysteries of absolute Being. Consequently the writer is fully
aware of the presumption incurred in saying that this same
consciousness of Space, when intelligently considered, contains
the most important facts for philosophy, science, and religion ;
and that it is this wonder of wonders which gives the true key
to Being, contemplated as indivisibly whole.
CHAPTER II
THE ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE
13. Here, then, we stand before the Sphinx, Queen-Spirit
of Philosophy, with bowed spirit and dumb prayer, imploring
for light. Stony and still, only her eyes direct. What seeth
She ? Her vision is the Boundless : a clear, unshadowed gaze
upon the Utmost from the Inmost : regressively piercing within as
progressively flashing without: scanning the inner Self while
ranging through the Cosmos everlastingly. True vision must
needs include both. For its path is the Absolute ; eye and soul
being but temporary mediates. Could we but stand for a brief
moment in the line of the lambent stream of living Truth which
flows forever from, and through, her stony imperial personality,
as she gazes right onwards across desert and dawn, " with calm
eternal eyes ! " It were far from vain. But, as from of old,
only through sacrifice can we attain. And She cannot accept
less than all. We require to give up, to lose ourselves in her, if
we would find that her flint is our own flesh, and her personality
our own personality, with a common life pulsing through a
common heart beneath every Appearance, and Love and Truth
exultant together with the joy of the sons of the morning.
14. So did Hume well to intimately enter into himself, or,
in Kant's words, " to undertake the most laborious of all tasks
that of self-examination." It is the essential act towards
formulating an answer to the grand quest of the " I." There is
light gleaming on that path which has drawn the impassioned
wonder of every age. " Know Thyself," said the wise Voices
of the Past, pondering long. And the greatest, perhaps, of the
Moderns has re-echoed the emphatic council, " Read conscious-
ness without mistakes." So much the Sphinx-Spirit of philo-
24
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 25
sophy discerns and experiences. It were indeed a consummate
experience. And towards a realisation of it, as our sole trust-
worthy guide, much encouragement appears to be given to the
philosophical tyro by the confluent opinions of the stalwarts in
the battle. " If," says J. S. Mill, " all past experience is in
favour of a belief, let this be stated and the belief openly rested
on that ground." " Existence, on the whole," asserts Prof. F. H.
Bradley, " must correspond with our ideas " ; while Prof. H. Jones
assures us that " Our thought is essentially connected with
reality." " Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of
things, so far as they go."
If, then, these things are in accord with Fact, the stupendous
Spatiality which we conceive as ' Nature ' which includes, at
least, the ALL that our senses give to us cannot be the Illusion
which it is sometimes assumed to be. Truth, Reality, must
exist for us. "Experience," "Existence," "Thought" ought
not they to be true?
Thought ! Experience ! Existence ! How profoundly true
they seem. But do they determine themselves as perman-
ently, absolutely true ? Are they not under the power of ever-
lasting flux and change? Thought gravely affirmed by one
century becomes the joke of the next : Experience seems a
rope half-spun, Life and Death plaiting with the everlasting :
and as for Existence, * heaven and earth shall pass away.'
All Flows , as the ancients said. If so, then whence,
and whither? Thought, Experience, Existence, do not they
appear to be but ships on an ocean? The ocean seems to
determine them. They but seem to interpret a deeper Deep
of Reality.
15. Then, in the words of Prof. Bradley, " Is the standard of
our decisions regarding the universe true or false in reality?"
A question which is the crux of the whole matter. For nothing
under the heavens nor above them can be of the slightest value
to us, ultimately, if it lack the assuring power of reality, or
Truth.
Now, it seems to be a question of interpretation only, for
the consciousness of such reality or Truth is in us all. Hence
our distress about it. But it appears to be a consciousness
unborn. It never comes to the Natural levels. It seems
26 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
attested by everything in 'Matter' and by everything in
4 Mind ' ; the heavens declare its glory, and the earth asserts
its goodness ; yet, like the dove, it finds no place of permanent
abiding, and ever returns to the ark of its wanderings.
How do the philosophers interpret this uncertain Certainty ?
Bradley affirms that "there is no reality at all anywhere except
in appearance, and in our appearance we can discover the main
nature of reality." Again, " The reality itself is nothing at all
apart from appearances." " Reality appears in its appearances,
and they are its revelation, and otherwise they could be nothing
whatever" (Appear, and Real., pp. 550-1). Prof. J. Ward asks
still more insistently, "Why should appearances not be
reality? Nay, what else can they be? How can reality
appear, shine forth, and yet remain totally and forever beyond
the knowledge of those to whom they appear ? " (Natur, and
Agnost., vol. ii., p. 276). Herbert Spencer states it that our
standard of the reality of a thing is the inconceivableness of its
negative^ and dignifies this dictum with the name of ' Universal
Postulate ' (First Prin. of Psych.}. J. S. Mill in controverting
it, declared that " the real evidence for the supposition is not
the inconceivableness, but the uniformity of experience" And
he adds, " Now this which is the substantial and only proof,
is directly accessible."
But nothing of all this interpretation ever lifts us above
Thought and conceptual experience. We conceive we have
the Real in the Appearance, and the Appearance in the Real,
and we are not able to conceive a thing to be anything other
than what it is, and this seems to make up a kind of * uni-
formity of experience ' for us. The dove returns with a leaf,
but it returns to the old wandering ark. Such thought and
experience are themselves in the Flow of the All, and have
no common rock of ages. Such conclusions rest on Thought.
We want rather to be assured of that by which such Thought
is determined. Let us remember that experience is only a
totalising expression for Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting,
smelling, thinking, feeling, willing, etc. ; for our sensations and
representations ; or for all that we mean when we say, each for
ourselves, Matter and Mind. But such experience never con-
veys the conviction to anyone of its being self-determined,
self-directed, and self-sufficient. It has a general air of totality,
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 27
and so of uniformity ' ; but what determines its totality and its
uniformity?
Hegel comes to our help considerably, though not perfectly
to our satisfaction. " This principle of Experience carries with
it the unspeakably important condition that, in order to accept
and believe any fact, we must be in contact with it, or, in
more exact terms, that we must find the fact united and
combined with the certainty of ourselves. We must be in
touch with our subject-rrratter, whether it be by means of our
external senses, or, else by our profounder mind and our
intimate self-consciousness" (Logic, Wallace's trans, p. 12).
"In order to accept and believe any fact," ... "we must
find the fact united and combined with the certainty of
ourselves." In short, the witness to the reality of anything
is the witness which is based on the certainty given in the
consciousness, " I AM." Nothing is so certain to us as
ourselves, and this is out - and - out the most assured Truth
we possess. It is also, clearly, the quintessence of all our
Experience.
16. Let us now ask, Does the consciousness that 'I Am,'
equally affirm the truth of the fact that You are? that the
Earth is? that the Cosmos is? Can I have the same un-
doubtable conviction that you are that which the earth and
Cosmos are, as I have of what I myself am ? Actually,
before I can have such a certainty, I must be first convinced
of what I myself am. Everything seems undecided until
this primary fact can be settled. The reality of what-you-
are rests on the consciousness of what-I-am myself. It is
asserted that we have a real consciousness of ourselves. This
is said to be " Self-Consciousness," or, Consciousness of Self.
What actual Reality, then, does this ' Self of our ultimate
consciousness render to our convictions ? It is called a Fact.
What is the content of that Fact ?
We have said that our consciousness of ourselves is the
quintessence of all our Experience, and by such testimony
we all undoubtedly have a certain vague consciousness of
the existence of a form of being which we contentedly call
our "SELF," or "SOUL." But in reality, and as also a
matter of experience which is far less misty and vague, when
28 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
we " enter ourselves," and focus our reflective powers of
concentrated Attention upon this ' being ' when we seek to
analyse and attempt to grasp what this veritable region of
our consciousness actually amounts to, with all its fulness of
Anschauungen and Vorstellungen^ together with its vast latent
potentialities of generating and evolving Religions, Literatures,
Arts, Sciences, and Philosophies, we are surprised to find that
the ultimate residuum of Being left to us as certified true
or real, is not a consciousness of a' Thought, a Feeling, a
Will, a Memory, or a Fancy ; is not the ' particulars ' of Hume ;
nor the ' Noumenon ' and ' Phenomenon ' of Kant ; nor yet the
* Notion ' or ' Spirit ' of Hegel. Neither is it the ' molecule '
of Science, nor its * atom,' nor its * ion,' or ' electron,' or ' electric
charge'; nor is it the 'self of philosophy, nor the 'soul' of
theology. We have not the faintest experience of such things.
What we truly and really experience is a consciousness of
SPACE. The Motions we name Feeling, Willing, Thinking,
are there, no doubt, in abundance. But beyond all conscious-
ness of every motion is the ultimate consciousness of SPACE.
Human language, at least, fails to give us any other term
by which to denote it. In strict ultimate accuracy, it is
impossible otherwise to denote it. For we cannot put it
under any category of conscious thought save that of itself,
viz., Space. No other term conveys its concreteness and
naturalness and absoluteness. If we say, Spirit, Soul, Self, Ego,
Substance, Quantity, Quality, Nous, Number, any thing, it
is just as vague and unreal as Kant's * Noumenon ' or Hegel's
' Notion.' Not one of them ever comes into our actual
experience. There is no satisfactory interpretation, by either,
of the genuine consciousness of What-We-Are. No conscious-
ness is given of undoubtable Reality. But this consciousness
of Space-Being is a veritable experience, and it is always the
ultimate consciousness for our Being. What-I-Am, therefore,
must necessarily be characterised as Space, if it must be
characterised at all, seeing that this category alone exhausts
the true consciousness I have of the Reality I am. No other
term comes near it in its exhaustive power of interpretation of
the conscious ' I.' Affirmatively, then, to the question, What is
the most Real in our experiential consciousness of What-we-
are ? the answer must be, Space : or, if we express the same,
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 29
thing negatively, we can only say that it is impossible to think
differently of What-we-are and Space.
17. We are quite aware that this reading of consciousness
may be deemed inconsiderate and unscientific, seeing that it
implies a challenge to Psychology, than whose expounders no
class of students of the mental realm stands higher in our
respect and admiration. But when psychologists, without
exception^ give such unmistakable evidence of being themselves
uncertain of, and dissatisfied with, their own readings of
consciousness, even an amateur research, though based on
independent study, cannot be condemned as wholly pre-
sumptuous and unreasonable. Besides, if we are wrong in
our conclusions as to our ultimate consciousness, here named
Space, the entire argument which we have tried to build on
it can be easily disproved by a different interpretation of that
great fact. For ourselves, meanwhile, " Ich kann nicht anders.
Gott helfe mir."
1 8. We shall now endeavour to show that this Space-
Consciousness is the deepest consciousness in all the great
philosophical writers, some of the accredited representatives
of whom we can only quote, and lies at the base of the three
great spheres of Human Knowledge embodied in what we
designate Religion, Science, and Philosophy, albeit it is
universally neglected and discarded as a datum worthy of
consideration in the problem of Being. But as the whole of
the following chapters are devoted to proving this Space-
Consciousness to be the ultimate one in all human thought
and consciousness, the present chapter may be regarded as
merely outlining our field of investigation. The question
under immediate consideration, viz., The Ultimate standard
of our decisions regarding the universe, will be treated at its
close on the basis of the data which we shall then seem warranted
to assume.
We state our position, then, as affirming the sole content
of the consciousness of what-we-are, in its ultimate expression,
as being only nameable as Space. And our first instinct is-,
of course, to revolt from such a statement. For Space connotes,
to all ordinary Thought, a mere Nothing, a Null, a Zero-
30 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
content, a thing of no value, and of no manner of account for
anything. And what we believe to be our ' Soul,' of all that
we accept and believe, is usually held to be the absolutely
opposite and negative of all this. In our experience, What-we-
are counts Everything. Most certainly. We do not seek to
destroy, but to fulfil. We only endeavour with the poor
abilities at our command, to show that we are all still more
than we have valued ourselves to be, by the addition of that
Space-value which we have regarded as Nothing ! And the
consciousness we all have of Space is certainly a consciousness
of greater content-value than we ever possess of anything we
call something else.
In the most general terms, then, we may say that in
every department of human thought, there is found a kind
of irresistible trend, a sort of gravitation, as true in Thought
as in Physics, towards an ultimate consciousness which, with-
out exception, is so reduced in content as to be indistinguish-
able from the content we name NOTHING. Every fact, every
process of reason, when followed to its utmost possibilities,
goes home to a postulate of Nothing, or so-called * Emptiness,'
in our consciousness of it. * All Flows ' towards this goal.
From the earliest hints of ancient thought down to the most
modern statement of our mental content, the VOiD-Conscious-
ness presents itself to every enquiring mind, and solicits
an audience. It arrives first and it waits last, but being the
humblest of the humble, being 'Nothing,' it is respectfully
denied consideration. The storm of thundering Reason rushes
onwards, bearing on high her mightiest, who search the star-
ways for the eternal Unity, the unspeakable Absolute, or the
awful Ultimate, and seem oblivious that that very eternal
'Void' which gives both thinkers and thoughts a place and
possible being, may be the Resultant of all they seek. It is
most assuredly of no account in their age-long quest.
19. When, for example, we seek for the ultimate consciousness
of such a mind as that of Plato-Socrates, certain Conceptions are
set before us, and no mere conception ever satisfies us. These
conceptions of this great Greek consciousness, in their ultimate
expression, are styled Self-Existent ' Ideas ' or Forms. They
antecede, it is believed, the Universe, or the Cosmos. Yet it is
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 31
always notable that in the formation of this Cosmos there are
two, and not merely One, creational factors engaged. These
Two, are the aforesaid ' Ideas ' and a co-eternal CHAOS. A
divine architect then takes these Ideas and fashions the Cosmos
according to them, but he has to contend, at the same time,
with a pre-existing power called Necessity, which is represented
by the irregular motions of the Primitive CHAOS. This Chaos,
better understood by the modern mind under its meaning of
1 GAP ' or ' VOID,' is clearly the Space-Consciousness asserting its
presence in the Platonian scheme of the ultimation of exist-
ence. Nevertheless, although the ' Ideas ' appear meagre,
limited, and subordinate in the presence of the vaster CHAOS
with its mysterious, irresistible, and irregular motions, Plato
ends his quest by exalting the ' Ideas' and ignoring the 'GAP'
or VOID in the ultimates of his philosophy. We are left
with a treasure of ' IDEAS ' and Motions, that is to say,
determined conceptions ; and the true ultimate consciousness,
or that of SPACE, is passed by. He seems to have felt that
Thought must needs rest its foundations upon Something, and
Chaos, being but wide, wasteful Gap, Void, or Nothing, was
impossible !
His Timaeus undoubtedly reveals that space was to him the
colossal enigma. But it was never more to him than a concep-
tion, a 'receptacle' ('UTTO^OXV), a kind of incubator of all things.
Yet he in no way regards space as identical with his own
being. He rather conceives it as the essence of difference. It
was that which made everything far to everything, and itself
farthest off to all.
That is to say, Plato and the ancient thinkers found it no
more easy to ignore the Space-Consciousness than do the
moderns. The power of scientific fact presses all thought
nearer and nearer to it irresistibly. There is indeed, in our
own days, a peculiar yearning desire in all speculative researches
to discover that Unity of Being, that absolute, that ultimate
of all ultimation, which will necessarily be 'something,' but
which must yet on no account have a content of ' substance,' of
'determination,' or the faintest shadow of Objectivity. The
very word ' matter ' is abhorred in such speculations. We
should naturally conclude at once, then, that this is the Space-
Consciousness, not yet perished in its patience, insinuating an
32 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
entrance to the convictions of man ; but Space is not Some-
thing but ' Nothing,' and the quest is for * something ! '
20. Scientific thought at the present time almost dispenses
with space. The power of thought is concentrated on 'ions,'
as of old the ancients concentrated upon ' atoms,' and space
is put out of all consideration. Modern Science seems to
have put Space outside of the Real. Intent upon ' Process !
Space, which never seems to proceed, is relegated by
science to that fairy region of ' form ' which Kant created, and
is simply and only nothing ! The abysmal Void was very
terrible and awful to the ancient Mind. No fact of
scientific reality appeared to approach it in supreme im-
pressiveness of being. To Leucippus and Democritus, in the
fifth century before Christ, " space was as real as matter," says
Prof. Burnet. It was certainly a fact of vast significance
afterwards to the philosophical Epicurus, and to the poetical
Lucretius. To the moderns this is extinct thought. Yet it is
evident to everyone that the film which divides the modern
scientific Ultimate from the ancient Ultimate is one of the
most diaphanous description. Since Clerk Maxwell's treatment
of the ultimate thing as * electric charge/ the imperceptible
something-nothing called ( Ether' has come as near to being
spelt * Void ' as thought and expression will permit. What we
are certainly cognisant of in the trend of scientific investigation,
in its present state of advance, is a deliberate approach to the
consciousness of Space as the ultimate scientific reality.
As a matter of fact, the consciousness of space or void can
never be annulled in the scientific mind. This is shown in
the way scientific men express their conclusions on ultimate
being. For example, the Ether or luminiferous medium has
been conceived as absolutely incompressible. But light is
propagated through it in waves. And it seems inconceivable
that a wave should originate in an incompressible medium.
Then we have Lord Kelvin expressing his opinion that it is
infinitely improbable that ether should be infinitely incompres-
sible. And it is evident that it is consciousness of space or
void that compels such a view, as one wholly different from a
consciousness of this ether-medium. No doubt, if Maxwell's
theory regarding the electric nature of light be correct, vibra-
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 33
tions might be propagated conceivably " apart from any elastic
properties that may be assigned to the medium." Yet, even
assuming this to be true, so long as the consciousness of
substance is present with such theories, the consciousness of
space or void beyond it must persist likewise. We can always
insist that if the medium is substance, or some thing it must be
some where, i.e. in space. As Sir O. Lodge puts it, " No point
in space can be thought of ' at which if a man stand it shall be
impossible for him to cast a javelin into the beyond.'" An
admission, indeed, which surprises us, especially when we have
also the confession from the same respected authority that
"science knows nothing of ultimate origins." For if this
"beyond" of space is an ultimate consciousness of What-Is,
we are forced to regard it as the ultimate origin of all that
is. Nothing exists independent of this " beyond," and this
" beyond " cannot be conceived to have been caused. It is
self-determined. If, then, we could conceive an ultimate origin,
it would not be so self-determined as this " beyond " is. That
it cannot be conceived to have been caused is evident from
the fact that if we assume a Cause for it, say, God, then
we always have a necessary consciousness of this space
' beyond ' Him, again. And so also for any imaginable Cause.
Therefore, no conception of cause, origin, or anything else
can transcend our consciousness of this "beyond." That
is, we are compelled, whether we wish it or no, to accept
this space - consciousness as our ultimate consciousness of
What-Is, and as the grand Fons et Origo of all that is; itself
the Uncaused.
The difficulty lies only in regarding space as Something!
Once space is seen to be Being, and of genuine scientific value,
and not mere * nothing,' science will find the Perseus she seeks
within this ' appearance ' of invisibility. Meantime, Evolution-
ary Process shuts out all other considerations, and such as
Bergson identifies Reality with developments and duration,
with the inference that we still have an unfinished Universe,
and a God not yet full-grown ! But all this throws back the
enquiry upon the Source of supply for motions and increases,
and only the Void, Space, presents itself as the true Ultimate.
However, anything but that ! That is' nothing ! ' "It seems
impossible," says Prof. Pringle-Pattison, " for the metaphysical
C
34 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
mind to face the idea of a growth out of nothing, an advance
in the content and value of existence by a series of accretions
from the void." On the contrary, it is clearly the only
possibility open to the human mind, seeing that consciousness
denies Process to be ultimate being; denying it in the con-
scious ( I,' and ever affirming space-being as beyond all con-
ceivable processes, motions, and forces whatsoever. These facts
seem fatal to all such theories ; consciousness being universally
admitted to be our final arbiter.
21. It is the same in other spheres of research. Mathe-
matics, e.g., which is governed by laws of Quantity, seeks her
strange triumphs in zero or approximating zero - quantities.
Cantor, Dedekind, Russell, and others, are names which vouch
for the statement.
22. Philosophy in struggling as she has ever bravely done
towards that ultimate goal which only can content the bottom-
less longings of her heart, attenuates even attenuation, and
refines impressions to ideas, ideas to notions, and notions to
A * Notion,' which, like the air-bubble whose sides thin off to
vacuity as the water-film gravitates to drops, transcends all
transcendence as ' Nothing,' which yet, mark you, is ' Being '
and yet again is No-Being, seeing it is only where Being is to
be when it * Becomes ! ' The gravitation towards the Space-
Consciousness is on all hands very patent. But Philosophy
refuses it as a datum of reason. She loudly affirms a conscious-
ness of a 'self,' which is clearly no more than a motion of
what-we are, and at bottom constitutes but an Idea, as heartily
as any that floated athwart the mighty vision of Plato. We are
conscious enough that-we-are, but we are never conscious of
this * self by day or night.
23. Needless to say, the Space-Consciousness is a strong one
in Theology. We do not require to remind the reader that the
consciousness of Everything coming ' out of Nothing ' is one
which has played, and yet plays, an influential part in the
panorama of the Creeds. Creation, God, Soul ; at bottom,
what is each in its content, when traced to the last conscious-
ness of it, and named, Nothing, Gap, Void ; or SPIRIT, or
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 35
Pneuma, Psyche, what actual content remains with us save
Space ? Are not breath and the wind common figures of
speech for them ? We all admit them to be ultimates, but we
also all agree that it is absolutely necessary, in interpreting the
consciousness we have concerning them, to clothe them and
cover them up under space- terms. We do not have a choice
in the matter. Our strongest and last consciousness of these
revered and holy things, urges a space-content for them with a
force that cannot be gainsaid.
Indeed, no effort in any nameable realm of mind to think
the Ultimate Being, ever shakes off the consciousness of Space.
Plato's Ideas and motions of ' chaos ' are inconceivable apart
from the background of Room. Can we even hope to regard
the scientific atom, electron, or ion, or electric charge, or
ether, as our ultimate consciousness of what-is? Have not
we all a deeper consciousness of something else behind and
beyond them, or it, for which we have no term save space?
Every movement of mind, whether it is called scientific, philo-
sophic, mathematic, or theologic, is conditioned by this space-
consciousness, ultimately. Whatever seems to be the inside
content of our thought, a consciousness of space surrounding
that content never fails to present itself as we think it.
24. This general view of the space-consciousness receives
strong confirmation from philosophical thinkers whose special
work brings them directly into conflict with theories of ultimate
Being. In discussing the "principles of co-existence," and
showing that " it is absolutely necessary that all substances in
the world of phenomena " should " stand in a relation of
complete community of reciprocal action to each other," we
find Kant saying, " My intention here is by no means to
combat the notion of empty space, for it may exist where our
perceptions cannot exist, inasmuch as they cannot reach thereto,
and where, therefore, no empirical perception of co-existence
takes place. But in this case it is not an object of possible
experience." Kant has a consciousness of " den leeren Raum,"
1 empty space,' which yet he avers to be " for all our possible
experience no Object " (" er ist aber alsdann fur alle unsere
moglich Erfahrung gar kein Object") (K. d. R. V.,Philosophzsche
Bibliothek. Band 37, p. 246). He could believe space to be
36 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
beyond all Objectivity, and yet not be ultimate being. In
actual content of consciousness, Kant does not really include
space in his concept of Being.
25. Prof. Wallace, in his valuable Prolegomena to HegePs
Logic, and interpreting Hegel's thought, says, " The first part
of Logic, the theory of Being, may be called the theory of
unsupported and freely-floating Being. We do not mean some-
thing which is, but the mere 'is/ the bare fact of Being, with-
out any substratum." Here we are to take Being as something
not objective in the first part of the " Logic," but still as some-
thing which is beyond objectivity. Yet it ' is,' and clearly this
is intended to mean that which is the supremely furthest con-
sciousness possible to us. Is it possible then to regard it
as differing from Kant's ' empty space ' ? It is, we are told,
"without any substratum," and yet space is always that per-
sistent and irreducible consciousness which is ' substratum ' to
all else which we can conceive substrately. We recognise, of
course, that this is the consciousness out of which Hegel built
his oracle " Being and Nothing are the same," and as he,
differing from Kant, would not admit that Space was even
' Form,' and was bound to pass beyond the veriest hint of
objectivity, he left himself with no resource save to designate this
consciousness as poor and abstract, contemptibly abstract, and,
as a category, the nullest of nulls ! Hegel, indeed, has never the
least doubt of the presence of this consciousness, but he flatly
refuses for it all concrete worth. It is far less, he assumes, than,
for example, the zero of mathematics, which necessarily has
a concrete value equal to its relative unit, whatever content
the unit may be assumed to possess. It is to Hegel ' emptiness '
without relation, having no relation to anything that might be.
It cannot be brought under thought, and therefore is not Real,
for to Hegel, only the Rational was Real, and only the Real
rational. Yet, mirabile dictu, he found this consciousness in
himself, and it was his ultimate consciousness, indestructible,
irrepressible, deforceable by no force of thinking, and yet was
not concrete ! One wonders how he ever obtained a conscious
conviction of Being as concrete, independent of this conscious-
ness. We shall see that he never in all his system ever reached
concrete Being.
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 37
26. The space - consciousness is frequently referred to by
Prof. Pringle - Pattison, and we are always more and more
surprised that he is contented to leave it outside of the data
of his judgments upon Being. As an example of this, he says,
"If we could really contemplate existence from the point of
view of the Absolute, doubtless the derivation of the finite
world might not be so inexplicable ; but we never do reach
that specular mount. When we attempt to assume such a
standpoint, the result is, as with Spinoza, simply emptiness
(our italics). Abstracting from the finite, we have nothing left
within our grasp" (Man's Place, etc., p. 126). The professor
refuses with Spinoza to regard this consciousness of "simply
emptiness" as a consciousness of any value. Yet not a con-
sciousness can compare with it, for an instant, for irreducible
insistence of itself as what -IS. If the so-called Absolute is
ever to be found, which, as being always put in relation to the
* finite,' is of course no Absolute, it is here where it must be
settled. For nothing so affirmative of absoluteness is ever given
us in any other consciousness. It is the Ultimate Consciousness.
The professor has this consciousness when he has nothing else
left. He is confident that if everything finite were swept away,
" we have nothing left within our grasp." And yet, clearly
enough, we have this consciousness of nothing left ! It has
the full value of be-mg when everything else is swept away.
It is concrete when everything else is mere abstraction. This
consciousness cannot be abstracted. It is without doubt an
unrelated consciousness, but this is just what we expect in
a consciousness of Absoluteness. Finity disappears in it
beyond the slightest possibility of recall.
"Simply Emptiness"; SPACE! Spinoza, and Kant, and
Hegel ; each of these great thinkers, whose shoes we are not
worthy to unloose, found this consciousness remain indisputably
the last consciousness. And each regarded it as no conscious-
ness of concrete Being, and as useless for the explication of
What-lS. And it is here that we discern that to possess a
consciousness and to place a true value upon that consciousness
are quite different things. It is, indeed, only a preliminary
part of philosophy to lay bare a consciousness. To value it
is her true work. For, as Principal John Caird put it, " Philo-
sophy, along with other things, comes to an end, in a prin-
38 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ciple which reduces all thought and being to nothingness"
(Spinoza, p. 144) (italics ours). There is nothing so true.
It must always lead straight to a consciousness of Space.
But this is just where true philosophy really begins in the
value which is found in this Nothingness. Is it a null,
or is it everything ? ' A null,' said Spinoza, Kant, and
Hegel. Spinoza had indeed to invent an abstract "sub-
stance," Kant an abstract "thing -in -itself," and Hegel an
abstract " Becoming," in order to get Something to philosophise
with ! This * Something,' again, must be ' assumed} it is yet
supposed. "Being," says Prof. James, with all the modern
light to guide him, " remains a casual and contingent quantum
that is simply found or begged" (italics ours). He then asks,
"May it be begged bit by bit, as it adds itself? Or must we
beg it only once, by assuming it either to be eternal or to have
come in an instant that co-implicated all the rest of time?"
(Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 189). Yet it is staggering
to an ordinary mind that such ' Something ' should be con-
ceived either to come or to ' become,' to be either 'substance'
or a 'thing-in-itself,' to be either quality or 'quantum,' to be
either first thing or last thing, and yet that the space -thing
into which it was to come and without which it could not be
conceived to 'come,' should be regarded as of not the least
account in the question. Yet Prof. James declares that "the
best definition I know (of Reality), is that which the prag-
matist rule gives : ' anything is real of which we find ourselves
obliged to take account in any way.' " Now, every one of the
writers whom we have quoted finds himself obliged to take
account of this Nothing, this Space, as his last consciousness
of anything ; yet it is not ' real.' It is not ' Being ! ' What is it,
then? Can we venture to totally ignore this consciousness?
It is certainly the most assertive of all.
But as this reality of the existence of the space-conscious-
ness as the ultimate consciousness in all men is so vital to
our position, we must still give other witnesses to support
the statement. "It is constantly forgotten," says Prof. Wm.
Knight, " that in this controversy the admission that some kind
of being, or substance, must always have existed in the universe,
is the common property of all the systems of philosophy.
Materialist and idealist, theist and atheist, alike admit it ; but
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 39
its admission is theologically worthless. 'The notion of a
God,' says Sir Wm. Hamilton, in his admirable manner, 'is not
contained in the notion of a mere first cause, for, in the
admission of a first cause, atheist and theist are at one.' So
far as this argument can carry us, the being assumed to exist is
therefore, a blank essence, a mere zero, an everything-nothing.
Nature remains a fathomless abyss, telling us nought of its
whence or whither. . . . That something always was, every-
one admits. The question between the rival schools is as to
what that something was, and is" (Philosophy and Literature ',
174) (our italics).
27. So also once more Prof. Wm. James tells us, in his
book quoted above (pp. 40-41), that when confronted with
the problem of Being, "philosophy stares but brings no
reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical
bridge" "Being in general, or in some shape, always was,
and you cannot rightly bring the whole of it into relation with
a primordial nonentity. Whether as God or as material atoms,
it is itself primal and eternal." And as to when it all began,
" since we now witness its end some past moment must have
witnessed its beginning. If, however, it had a beginning, when
was that, and why ? You are up against the previous nothing,
and do not see how it ever passed into being." That is to
say, Being and Nothing are two things to James (italics ours).
These two able thinkers clearly admit that all men who
ponder upon the fact of Being confess it to be a fact. But
whenever thought concentrates upon the Fact, it reaches
Nothing! This 'Nothing,' then, is of no account! But we
cannot begin with nothing, it is assumed. We must have
1 Something,' and from this no-account Nothing to Being "there
is no logical bridge."
28. The point here, once more, is the value placed upon this
consciousness of Nothing, or Space. Clearly, to Philosophy,
this nothing is not Being. It is a Null ; of no value absolutely.
Being is Something, It is attested as such by every conscious-
ness. But this Nothing is not Something. Yet it attests itself
as That-which IS. Prof. James cannot even doubt that one may
not have this ' nothing ' to be always " up against." He thinks
40 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
that Being must always have had " some shape," but not this
* nothing '-shape ! If Being would only come to us in any shape
but this ' nothing '-shape, it appears we might accept it as Being -
Being cannot be a " primordial nonentity ! "
From being regarded as of no account, this Space- Con-
sciousness is sometimes treated in a spirit of faint jocularity
and mock alarm. " Beyond experience, in short, all is and
must be, for us, absolute emptiness, and whatever ' sail-broad
vans ' we spread for flight, we drop at once plumb down, like
Milton's Satan, in a vast vacuity" (Man's Place, etc., p. 150)
(italics ours). Discussing H. Spencer's conception of " Being
without any determination," Prof. E. Caird says, "We cannot
grasp it as a productive principle which explains difference and
at the same time overcomes it. It is the dark in which all
colours become grey. When we reach this unity, it only
remains for us to lose ourselves in it" (Evol. of Relig., i. 122).
And Prof. Wallace wistfully muses on the fact that Philosophy
"sometimes craves for utter union in the fullness of Being."
But, he says, " Such a fullness is the unspeakable and the vain
which we may picture as the apathy of Nirvana, but which
is the absorption of Art, Religion, and Philosophy the cease of
consciousness and an abyss. We may call it it matters not
Being." He cries, " Give us a standing-point, and explanation
is simplified." He does not believe a ' standing-point ' can be
found in " an abyss," i.e. the consciousness of Space. He says,
"the prospect is too horrible to continue further, and face the
Gorgon's head in the outer darkness, where man denudes appear-
ance in the hope to meet reality" (Proleg. to Hegel's Logic,
pp. 157, 464-65) (italics ours).
Leucippus was less despairing, we think, and was much
nearer the truth. " He held that what is, is no more real than
what is not, and that both are alike causes of the things that
come into being, for he laid down that the substance of the
atoms was compact and full, and he called them what is, while
they moved in the void which he called what is not, but affirmed
to be just as real as what is " (Bitrnefs Early Greek Philosophy,
2nd ed., p. 384). Now here is a veritable consciousness of space
as a ' vast vacuity,' as a ' unity ' in which we may ' lose ourselves,'
" an abyss " which " absorbs Art, Religion, and Philosophy," and
yet it is accounted as a Gorgon's head and a mock reality !
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 41
29. Yet to simple thought, all Being must stand upon Space,
if it stands anywhere. Is there really any other thing for it to
stand upon ? The great Universe seems to sleep in its arms as
a child in a cradle. The vast Universe, ourselves and all there
is, is in no ways terrified at losing itself in this ' vast vacuity.'
It is in actuality the widest word for Home. Why are we to
affirm sun, moon, and stars, and all that the force of gravita-
tion conjoins, to be Being, while this Space is to be accounted
not Being ?
Philosophy, it seems, must clutch her * subject ' and ' object '
at all hazards, and contemn the undetermined Abyss, because
forsooth it only determines the consciousness of IS which
underlies ALL that is, and which cannot by anything be
absolutely negated. How often does Prof. E. Caird tell us
that Being is that " of which nothing can be said except that it
is ? " As if this were the last utterance of our despairs ! As if
more can be said of anything ! Is, is surely the first and last
affirmation which counts for anyone or anything. Strangely
enough, such philosophy is certain that * subject ' and ' object '
are real. Yet, is it not the fact that they are just our infinite
botheration because we are never wholly sure that they are ?
We think it is their Unity that really Is. Philosophy is being
constantly pushed into the " abyss "-consciousness of Space,
under the strongest conviction that it IS ; our deepest experi-
ence is of this Abyss ; it is the ultimate consciousness which
we have of What-we-are ; and yet, it is not permitted to come
into our judgment of What-IS !
30. Perhaps it is too soon yet to assert that the true course
of Philosophy, as far as its affirmation of the ultimate fact of
consciousness is concerned, went completely astray after Hume's
great contribution. He really entered himself, and stated the
truth of what he saw. He was conscious, that is, of Motions in
himself which we all agree to call Feeling, Will, Thought, or as
he put it, ' impressions ' and ' ideas.' That was his experience.
It is yet the experience of every man. It is not the whole of
our experience ; but Hume was right so far as he saw. It is
completely different with Kant and Hegel. They neither saw,
nor had the smallest experience of a " thing-in-itself," or of
an absolute " Notion." Nor has anyone yet. These were dug
42 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
out of fancy and the logical dialectic, and although the systems
of logical superstructure built upon them are the pride of
European Intellect, Truth is not to be found in their founda-
tions ; and already they are becoming only magnificently
cultured monuments of historical curiosity.
Kant indeed did enter into himself. It is the first step in
philosophic endeavour, for an unpsychological philosophy is like
a Christmas tree, beautiful and green, perhaps, as other trees,
but without roots, and bearing artificial fruit. Kant then found
the consciousness of space to be the most irresistibly assertive
consciousness of his experience. He found that he could
think-out, or away, everything from his consciousness, but he
could not perform this feat with his consciousness of space.
This was his experience. To negate this consciousness was
impossible. Space is the grand perplexity to Kant. He is
constantly recurring to it. It is so experientially real, but it
is his despair what to do with it. It is emphatically the ' empty
sphere ' to him. He freely acknowledges this great conscious-
ness. " Beyond the sphere of phenomena, all is (for us) a mere
void " (" und der Umfang ausser der Sphare der Erscheinungen
ist fur uns leer"). (K. d. R. V., Phenomena und Noumena.}
" Mere void " was not Reality to Kant.
Space is to him mere ' form/ and of little account. He
refuses to regard it as a consciousness of ultimation. That
which is ultimate for What-he-Is, is a fanciful Something * in
itself beyond space ! Space itself as ' form ' is conceived to
ascend out of this Something beyond itself! This Something
is assumed to exist where there is no space. His consciousness
of Void is his ultimate consciousness, he confesses, but there
must be Something beyond it ! This is where Kant's fancy
begins to play. He has no experience of this Something
beyond space. Not the smallest. Nor has anyone. But we
easily see his dilemma. 'Soul' was a real "thing" to Kant.
It could never be identified with Void ! And he is determined
to preserve this theological " thing " at all costs. Even if it is
a mere algebraical x> he will preserve it. So he places it
beyond earth, sea, sky, or Matter. He places it beyond space ;
in a space-by-itself if anyone cares to try to imagine such a
monster. It is to be a Ding-an-Sich I
Kant, that is, clean against all rules of reason, imported a
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 43
theological " thing " into the data of his philosophical judg-
ments, and as this " thing " is theologically dissociated from
even * God/ and certainly from all the Universe, and as he
accepted this theological judgment as fact, so he persisted in
asserting SOUL and SPACE to be sundered ; and he thereby
inevitably rent Thought and Being from each other, and left
his Universe cleft in twain. He did this in the teeth of his
experience that a consciousness of space was his ultimate con-
sciousness, ' wholly empty ' (ganzlich leere), ' a blank conscious-
ness ' (ein blosses Bewusstsein). He had no consciousness so
terribly in earnest in affirming what-he-was, and none he chose
to value less, as of no account.
And as Kant mis-read and mis-valued the ultimate con-
sciousness of what-he-was, so Hegel mis-read and mis-valued
the ultimate consciousness of what-ALL-IS. We have sketchily
seen that Hegel is so obsessed with the consciousness of space,
as the fundamental consciousness, that he must needs accept it
as the TTOU O-TCO of his system of Thought. But so valueless is
it to him that he compels himself to believe it to be the most
pitiful abstraction of " Being " before he will proceed to risk
any dialectic structure upon it worthy of his own and the
world's respect. He must needs scorn it even as " utter
abstraction, total emptiness the negative of every image,
feeling, and definite thought." Yet this Space-consciousness
is the true prius of everything that can be thought or said.
Its utter elimination of every " image, feeling, and definite
thought," is what gives it its abounding value. For as such,
it is the Real that supremely negates everything but itself, and
thus, through absolute negation, affirms itself as the Everything
on which, and out of which, all becomes that IS. Hegel, we
are convinced, but saw the ' back-parts ' of this absolute con-
sciousness, and failed to include in his synthesis of Being the
one fact which had power to give that synthesis validity.
This is apparent at once when we ask, Where did Hegel
obtain the consciousness that underlies the dictum, " Being and
Nothing are the same?" Where, but in himself. It is his
ultimate consciousness of What-IS. That is a fact which he did
not create. What he did create was the value he put upon it.
To him it was " emptiness ; " null ; of no use ! Yet, it was
the one consciousness affirmed to him as real, and was the
44 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
last one he should have counted abstract. His so-called con-
crete " Becoming " was less real by the very fact that it was
conditioned both as motion and as substantia in his conscious-
ness of this " Emptiness," this Nothing, this Space. Before he
could even postulate his BEING, NOTHING, and BECOMING, he
had first to postulate Space. For no thought can move, and
nothing can be posited, until the consciousness of space is
present.
Therefore, having despised this Ultimate Consciousness, his
" Absolute Notion," however absolute in its Unity it might be,
was a being quite apart and distinct from Space, in our con-
sciousness of both, and consequently, his Universe was as
much cleft in two as was that of Kant. His " Absolute Being"
was not sole Being. There were still Space and this Absolute !
And while this remained, not even his herculean powers of
dialectic could effect a conjunction of his system and Nature,
Life, and assured Reality, as we all think them under these
terms.
31. We venture now to conclude that the space-conscious-
ness, from first to last, has been excluded from every philosophic
synthesis of Absolute Being. Psychology, also, yet debars it
from the throne-seat of all we cognise, although it seems to be
worth all the other facts known to the human mind, being indeed
the fact without which all the rest are crippled and rendered
nugatory. All psychologists nevertheless assert that such a
consciousness is present in us, albeit some are inclined to
maintain with Parmenides that there is no such ' thing ' as
space, an assertion which is quite intelligible, seeing that space
is never determined as any 'thing 1 to our consciousness.
Literature, in general, abounds in affirming the space-conscious-
ness, and the popular mind has no question with regard to its
reality. Scientists of every name recognise the ' Void ' as a
bare fact. All the great Religions have a profound reverence
for it. It is vivid and necessary in the cosmogony of Genesis.
Job notes it as the * Nothing ' on which the earth is hung, and
over which the north is stretched " (xxvi. 7). It is the Ginnunga
Gap of the Scandinavians, out of which grew the roots of the
Iggdrazil Tree that supported the Universe, as we see it. Is
it not, at bottom, the Nirvana of the Hindus ? Hesiod's
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 45
Theogony seems founded on it. His conception of ' Chaos,
says Prof. Burnet (E. Gr. Phil., p. 8), " represents a distinct
effort to picture the beginning of things. It," Chaos " is not
a formless mixture, but rather, as its etymology indicates, the
yawning gulf, or gap, where nothing is as yet " (italics ours).
That is, ' Chaos ' is a genuine, though fanciful, religious fabri-
cation built out of the consciousness of space. And it is
evident that, in this universal though unintentional tendency
to seek the meaning of Origins in this consciousness, there
is an indication that far from being 'empty,' and 'blank,'
and ' bare,' and of sheer null-value, it is, in reality, the most
supremely full and valuable consciousness possible to us.
Kenosis is Pleroma.
32. We now come back to the question of the Test of
Truth. What, then, is Real to us ? Many say, " Experience is
our true test of what is Real." " Experience," says Prof.
Bosanquet, "may be said to begin with the certainty that
'there is Somewhat,' and the postulates of knowledge do but
express in abstract form the progressive definition of this
'Somewhat'" (Logic, ii. 206).
Now, in this ' Somewhat,' which is said to be ' certain,' we have
simply an abstraction. It is a totality which has no connection
with our ultimate consciousness of anything, in reality, until we
fill the term ' Somewhat ' with our consciousness of Space. For
this consciousness is, as we have seen, the sole consciousness
which gives absolute certainty of What-lS. All else is mere
flux and uncertainty. In actual experience, even the expres-
sion 'I AM' when it means "Self" gives only a content of
abstraction. It gives nothing certain to knowledge save a
vague generality. But when we fill ' I AM ' with a content of
Space-Being, then, for the first time in our experience, we have
true knowledge, not of an ' I AM,' but of WHAT-WE-ARE. The
consciousness of Space and what-we-are is one. We find it
impossible to think them differently. For it has been shown that
there is no consciousness equal in power of Reality- Conviction
to this age-long consciousness of Space, Void, Gap, Nothing;
and that this is the ultimate consciousness of what-we-are, as
true experience, and consequently, that what-we-are is affirmed
whole-being with All-that-IS,
46 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Not every experience, therefore, can yield an absolute
certitude of reality. Nothing is ever certified absolutely real
till it is certified to Be. And only Space certifies Being. All
else that comes into our consciousness points away from itself.
All flows, changes, and is impermanent and, consciously, not
absolute in itself. Consequently, ' Self-Consciousness/ as it is
set forth both in philosophy and psychology, does not give any
guarantee of absolute certainty of Reality till this ' Self is
conscious of being Space. For example, we have such state-
ments as the following, " Self-consciousness is the living
experience of unity in diversity." " The fundamental nature
of experience may enable us to explain derivatively any spatial
feature of experience, but that fundamental nature itself must
be learned from experience and simply accepted " (Man's Place,
etc., p. 115). " Our own reality, that sense of our life which we
at every moment possess, is the ultimate of ultimates for our
belief, ' As sure as I live ' " (Prof. James). And so also Hegel's
words, already quoted, " in order to accept and believe any fact,
we must be in contact with it, ... we must find the fact united
and combined with the certainty of ourselves."
Now, the very terms employed here are impedimental. " In
contact with " fact, is not allowed by science, which denies that
anything can be absolutely in contact with any other thing.
One thing only comes as near to another as its nature will
permit it. " Unity in diversity," consequently conveys only a
conception of things rolled up together, but never possibly near
enough to be the same being. In the 'unity' so effected we
always have the possibility of diversity breaking out again from
the ' unity.' But, indeed, the fact that one thing is required to
certify another thing, as being, only drives back the question
to " Who certifies the certifier ? " " Who or what certifies the
fact of being for the 'Self'?" No truth which is absolute in
our consciousness of it should require testimony as to its being.
It should be self-certified, and thence certify all else that is.
The thing that requires to be certified as true and real by some
other thing is by that very fact not absolutely true or real.
33. Prof. Bradley's "absolute criterion," viz., "Ultimate
reality, is such that it does not contradict itself," runs close to
H. Spencer's 'Universal Postulate,' viz., that a thing is only
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 47
certified as real when its negative is inconceivable. Both
resolve themselves into a question of the power of Thought.
Now, to say always that this is Appearance and that is Reality,
assumes that we must forever have the Two things to decide
upon, and the one to certify the other to be true. We postulate
Reality, and this connotes Appearance or Unreality. But
clearly, we could not judge between either unless we possessed
a power of thinking which is independent of what is judged.
There is evidently a vantage ground which consciousness
occupies apart from these judged conclusions. And it must be
one in which " Either Or," is an impossible judgment.
Otherwise, we could not decide that, when the absolute or
ultimate Reality is found, we could not contradict it, or that
it did not contradict itself. Now, without the consciousness
of space as being what-we-are, this impossibleness of contra-
diction is itself impossible. We say ' I Am/ and then assume
that we cannot contradict such Reality, or say " Non - being
is impossible to me." The whole of this assumption, how-
ever, tumbles to the ground whenever we admit that we
have not originated, begun, or created ourselves. For as soon
as we admit that we are not self-created, then the possibility
of being uncreated or unmade, enters our consciousness like-
wise. " I am " is then seen to be but a relative consciousness
to the consciousness, " I was not," and " I possibly shall not
be." We are then as ' Selves ' mere things of flux and change,
and our fancied absolute Reality is then chimerical. The many
long controversies regarding the annihilation of the ' soul ' at
death prove that this consciousness of existence-contradiction
is possible. In such case, What-we-are is not certified the
impossibility of Not-Being. The conception of Nirvana is, of
course, but another form of the same consciousness. On the
other hand, when we stand upon the consciousness of our own
being as identically our consciousness of space-being, we are
no longer bound by the decisions of dialectical tugs-of-war,
Negative v. Affirmative ; for then our consciousness of space-
being admits of no differentiation absolutely, and therefore of
no possible questions as to beginning or ending, making or
unmaking. We cannot conceive space to have been created ;
to have had beginning ; or to be possible of decreation or
ceasing to be. Is, is the sole and only consciousness given.
48 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Spencer's 'postulate' has, of course, its value. It is a
forcible enough conviction, and good enough for all common
purposes of argument, but it never shows us where the force
of affirmation of being arises out of the weakness of thought-
negation, and what it is that compels thought to be so negated
in its wild career against everything. How does our thought
or consciousness derive a new power to assert the strong
affirmation of reality just at the very moment when it is
dead beat to think more? For it is the same power of
thought that must bring back an assurance of our reality
which has been reduced to helplessness in a contest of con-
ceiving. What is it that reduces thought to complete and
ultimate inability, and yet gives it at the same time a power
to declare a conviction of reality than which the human bosom
holds no greater? In short, does it lie within any concep-
tive ' Self to guarantee its own reality, and is this self-created
certificate of absolute reality absolutely infallible ?
But even if this * criterion ' of reality could guarantee
the absolute reality of the self, for itself, could our con-
sciousness of our self also guarantee the absolute reality of
everything else that seems so real to us? Prof. Bradley has
at great length proved that we do not necessarily have a
consciousness of reality in the mere consciousness of ' Self,'
as we at present understand ' Self.' The reason is that when-
ever we are conscious of this self as an 'object' of thought
and consciousness, we at once bring it under the same category
of uncertainties and conditioned things as all other objects
of the mind. It thereby enters the everlasting ' flow ' of all
instabilities, and then a consciousness of * Self is entirely void
of any absolute reality.
34. For reality, we must first find the consciousness which
does not permit the possibility of " either or," ' I am,' ' I was
not/ * I may not be,' " this is reality that is unreal." Now, all
these relativities are wiped out absolutely in the consciousness
of Space. We can say absolute and relative, self and not-
self, one and many, mind and matter, reality and appearance,
truth and falsehood, and many more, but we cannot say
Space and Unspace. And the consciousness of Space alone
gives this absolute self-affirmation of Being. // certifies itself
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 49
as Being) independent of any testimony from any Other. " Even
if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true," was also the
consciousness of" I am" in the Master (John viii. 14). And it
is because we have no other consciousness of what-we-are than
that of Space, that we also have the same self-affirmation of
absolute being, and that we have the same consciousness of
whole or unrelated being when we say ' I.' But only as space-
being can we say ' I have always been, and I shall always be.'
The consciousness of self-affirmation and the self-affirmation of
Space^ is one consciousness of Whole-Being in which there is no
possible consciousness of part or parts. We cannot say " Space
was created," or " Space shall end." We always finish such
efforts by finding ourselves and space same-being, or Whole.
Is, therefore, is the sole possible consciousness of Space. It is
affirmed with all negation negated, absolutely. It also renders
it impossible to predicate of what-we-are as either past, present,
or future, for these predicates cannot be applied to space. It
is a timeless consciousness. Moreover, we cannot affirm point
or part as possible in this space-consciousness, for points, parts,
seconds, minutes, hours, exist because we have first assumed
ourselves as beings apart from space, and so of such division
as being absolutely real in its own nature.
At first sight, this does not seem to be any other than
Spencer's " Inconceivableness of the negative," and Bradley's
" Reality does not contradict itself." There is all the difference,
we think, between reality and abstraction. The ' inconceiv-
ableness of the negative' of what? What reality does not
contradict itself? Neither Spencer nor Bradley gives us a con-
crete case. There is only the utterance of a consciousness that
has not reached solid ground.
The defect underlying the criteria of reality given by
Spencer and Bradley is analogous to the defect which underlies
the assertion of Spinoza's " Substance.". He said this ' substance '
was " That which is in itself and is conceived through itself" :
a consciousness which unites what-Is with what-is-conceived, or
Being and Thought, but which also unites them in abstraction
and not in anything which affirms its own concrete reality
absolutely. Now, this consciousness of ' Substance,' of uncon-
tradictable ' Reality,' and of what cannot conceivably be
negatived, ought to be as much a substance, a reality, and
D
50 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
an unnegatable fact to our Senses as to our Thought. And
it is this demand of our nature for what we would affirm
to be absolutely Real, that is abundantly supplied by our
consciousness of Space-Being. It is as real to sense as to
thought. Our whole nature finds itself taking space into
its accounts, and pre-supposing such being in every thought,
feeling, and conation, and assenting to its fulness of con-
tent in the ultimate consciousness of what-we-are. This also
is vouched as being our completest experience ( 40). As
experience, indeed, it far surpasses the ' experience ' of Hume
or Kant, or of J. S. Mill, for it includes an experience which
must have anteceded Time, even as it is an experience
which rises above the possibilities of the Future, and assumes
an independence of futurity. For Space has no Past, no
future, and knows no change.
35. From this position it must be evident also that, until
we accept what-we-are as Space -affirmed Being, we shall
always have a blurred vista of the so-called " degrees of Truth."
For in all else save the Space-Consciousness, absolute truth
does not exist. We first see things to be true and then
detect them to be false, ultimately, in an everlasting kaleido-
scopic vision. But for the Space-Consciousness, the false and
true, devil and God, would persist in an eternal relativity
which it would be impossible to annihilate. It would also be
impossible for anyone to conceive that it had ever been
different in the past, or would be different in the future. The
conception of Whole-Being (which is much more than Unit-
Being) would be also impossible. But there are no possible
degrees of Truth in our consciousness of Space. It is truth
Absolute, or, as we prefer it, Whole. And we also find that the
same consciousness holds good for what-we-are. What-we-are
conscious of being is never truer at one time than it is at all
times. It does not grow, fill-out, thin-away, become dim, or
shrink. There is no change in it, in short. It is always
what-we-are. And certifying what-we-are as being, we inevit-
ably certify what-we-are as Space. Any other judgment rests
upon uncertified conceptions.
36. The consciousness of space, also, obliterates all the
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 51
provoking 'difference' that persists between Reality and
Appearance. Space never appears. We are only conscious of
its absolute or whole Reality. It never comes into the crowd
of ' phenomena.' We do not see space, though it is the first
condition of all our seeing. And so likewise with all our
senses. Space is not Appearance. It is impossible to bring
it under that category. Hence all relativity between Reality
and Appearance disappears. And it is the consciousness
of man as being Space that makes it impossible for him to
regard himself as an 'object' or an 'appearance.' In the sure
consciousness of his ultimate being as space, man can affirm
truly beyond all possible contradiction, " I do not appear," " I
am not Appearance." It is here also where his consciousness
of Absoluteness is found without its ' relativity.' He is never
conscious of being in ' The Flow ' of the All, nor as having
been Caused. For Space has no Relative Being ' over against
it.' It gives Isness to all that is. And if man had never found
this consciousness of Absoluteness or Wholeness in his own
being, he never could have even conceived it for anyone or any-
thing else.
We then have but a Whole consciousness of IS for our-
selves, (i) Of Reality, which is without any possible conscious-
ness of being Unreal ; and (2) of affirmation of being, which is
without any possible consciousness of negation. For our
consciousness of space neither allows us to say, " It appears,"
nor " It is not." And if we could not apply this consciousness
first to ourselves we could never apply it to anything. Self-
affirmation and self-existence are, on this basis of Being,
perfectly rational and intelligible for ourselves. For we have
not the remotest consciousness of being sustained in Being, but
as simply self-existing Is, in the same way that we conceive
space as self-existing. What-we-are always yields the same
consciousness which Space does (using dual terms for exposi-
tory purposes).
37. It follows that the further we carry our thinking from
the space-consciousness, the more completely must we deter-
mine our conclusions in falsities. Every conception of an
'object' is, for this reason, untrue to the extent that space
is shut out from our judgment of it as 'object.' When we
52 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
contemplate an object, say, a tree, we have to shut out Space,
as a consciousness, before we can objectify it as being a tree.
As soon as we admit space into our judgment of the tree ; that
is, discern what-is among what-appears, then the 'tree' is no
longer in existence. Only Space Is. And the test of the truth
of this judgment is found in reversing the process. If we try
to reduce Space as the thing possible of change, in order that the
'tree' may stand ultimately as the Absolutely Real, we find
our attempt foolish. And any object whatever would be found
to change in contrast to the absolute unchangeableness of
Space. Space does not " Flow." But all else does.
Prof. James, delivering himself on this crucial point, says,
" The whole distinction of real and unreal ; the whole psychology
of belief, disbelief, and doubt, is thus grounded on two mental
facts (i) That we are liable to think differently of the same.
And (2) that when we have done so, we can choose which way
of thinking to adhere to, and which to disregard " (Psych, ii.
290). Now, we can not think differently of Space. And this
fact settles both of the Professor's criteria of belief, disbelief,
and doubt. And our consciousness of being space also explains
why it is that, as he says, "that sense of our life which we at
every moment possess, * As sure as I exist,' is likewise our
uttermost warrant for the being of all other things " (ii. 297).
In as far as we are conscious of Space-Being as being the
fundamental being for all that is, we must affirm the reality of
all that is. And it is in this way that we are able to affirm all
that is, to be as real as we are conscious of being ourselves. It
is the consciousness that all being, our own being included, is,
at bottom, Space-Being. And in such a consciousness, concrete
and natural beyond every experience of the concrete and
natural, we have a true assurance of Whole-Being, but never
a vestige of a consciousness of diversity in Being. Such a con-
sciousness never gives us an experience of having been diverse
and then united, or of having been united under conditions of
possible diversity again. What-we-are is whole with all that is.
We obtain, then, from this consciousness a far fuller content
of * Self than is possible to the ' Self of philosophical systems.
Indeed, what we have always to remember now is that when
we are conscious of what-we-are, we are never conscious of an
'object,' a Thing, or a Something in space. We are never
ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WHAT-WE-ARE 53
conscious of being cut off from space, but only of being space.
Our ultimate of ultimate experiences is an experience of space,
and not of a ' Self.' The 'self of philosophical systems, and of
consciousness as explained by psychology, and as the ultimate
content of thought, is a mere abstraction and spectrality, and
cannot be certified as real on any basis of rationality. The
philosophical 'self must be now looked upon as the mystical
' thing-in-itself ' for which Kant built a magical temple, in the
innermost shrine of which he set up this ^r-Idol, rearing the
pillars 'noumenon' and 'phenomenon/ like Boaz and Jachin,
before its enchanted portals.
But, again, we call attention to the fact of our loathing to
accept this position, because of the imaginary zero-ness of the
Space-Being. We assert our consciousness of what-we-are as
space-being, and that all motions of consciousness and thought,
such as feeling, willing, seeing, hearing, etc., are conditioned
ultimately in our space-being, and then we are condemned as
taking away everything from our Self. We only leave us
Nothing ! It is the very opposite of this. We are showing
the true value to be placed on this space-consciousness as not
null - being but Whole - Being, and to give what-we-are that
Immortality of which we cannot think differently, nor choose of
it what to accept and what to throw away.
Our consciousness of ' Nothingness ' is never a consciousness
of the Unreal, although this is sometimes maintained. For
example, Prof. F. H. Bradley in explaining his view of the
1 Absolute,' says, " A thing is real when, and in so far as, its
opposite is impossible. But in the end its opposite is impos-
sible because, and in so far as, the thing is real. . . . Now, in
the case of such truth as we have called Absolute, the field of
possibility is exhausted. Reality is there, and the opposite
of Reality is not privation but absolute nothingness."
" The field of possibility is exhausted," it is believed, when
we are left with the consciousness of " absolute nothingness,"
which is declared to be " the opposite of reality." Yet this
consciousness of " absolute nothingness " is just the conscious-
ness, the only consciousness, which we always, without
exception, find it impossible to negate, deny, or reduce. We
are conscious of this * nothingness ' when we are conscious of
nothing else ! Whatever we think, cogitate, remember, pre-
54 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
vizualise, or admit within consciousness, this consciousness of
space is always there before them, underlying, surrounding, and
conditioning them, while itself cannot be conceived as condi-
tioned. This is the Reality that has no possible c opposite.'
' Privation ' is a characteristic of everything called ' real ' save
this Reality. It can have no relative * Unreal.' It always
remains, as we must say ad nauseam^ as the ultimate
consciousness of what -we -are, the sole consciousness we
possess of IS, the real, the true, the unchangeable, the per-
manently immovable. How, may we respectfully ask, did
Prof. Bradley come to have such a consciousness of " absolute
nothingness?" Where, but in the consciousness of himself?
It is not found in the heavens nor on the earth, nor in anything
phenomenal or cosmical. It is this consciousness of "absolute
nothingness," indeed, which resists everything, and which is the
root consciousness, as we shall try to show, of all we conceive to
resist, and is thereby our root consciousness of Almightiness itself.
It is, as a consequence, the absolute Everything in its " absolute
nothingness," the Absolute Affirmation, the true categorical
imperative of Being.
It is this "absolute nothingness," this field of all possibilities,
which we believe that the Sphinx-Spirit of philosophy, knowing
no despair, joyfully contemplates. Enthroned on her ever-
lasting seat, hers is the Space- Vision. These forms of Earth
and Time, of Flesh and Stone, profit but ' a little while.' All
Flows. The heavens and the earth pass away. For so (if we
may be permitted the usual personal terms) the Eternal, in His
endless Kenosis, empties Himself, and reveals thereby His in-
exhaustible fulness, His Space-Being, the more.
CHAPTER III
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY
38. We may now be permitted to outline in brief the con-
clusions which the facts of our argument seem to warrant us in
offering.
I. Our consciousness of what-we-are, and our consciousness
of space, is an identical consciousness of Whole-Being.
II. We cannot, therefore, think differently of what-we-are
than of what-space-is.
III. This whole-consciousness of space, and of what-we-are,
gives only the simple consciousness, IS.
IV. In this simple consciousness, IS, every consciousness of
Reality, or Truth Absolute, as well as of all relativity,
absolutely, is composed and concreted. W r e may call
it the supreme idiom of Space-Being.
V. Therefore no consciousness of absolute reality or Truth,
nor any consciousness in which qualification is
affirmed, is possible except in, by, or through the
consciousness of space.
VI. Therefore every conception or perception which is
detached from this space-consciousness, and held in
the mind as something independent of space, will by
that fact be limited, i.e. Objectified, and will be true or
real as such only in as far as the consciousness of space
is retained in the qualifications of its objectivity.
VII. Consequently the nearer, or the more absolutely, a
conception or perception identifies itself with, or
exhausts its objectivity in, the space-consciousness,
which admits of no difference, relation, or qualifica-
tion, the nearer will it approximate to Whole-Being
in our consciousness of it.
55
56 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
39. If this view is tolerated meanwhile in the interests of
clear reasoning, it will be evident to the reader that we take
up the problem of philosophy by asserting its highest fact,
Consciousness of Whole-Being, in which there is yet no vestige
of parts, instead of consciousness of relativity, qualification,
part, or object. Consequently, neither the Ptolemaic nor the
Copernican standpoint of thought can avail us, seeing that all
conceptions of centre and circumference are absent in our con-
sciousness of Whole-Being. The grand aim of philosophical
endeavour, ancient and modern, has hitherto been directed
towards Unity, Absolute Unity, from an assumed unques-
tioned and unquestionable reality of relativity, difference,
parts, phenomena, or appearances. Moreover, the fact of the
latter has been held as axiomatic, universally received, and
set forth as a principle of the foremost credibility, while the
former has been throughout menaced with interrogations,
and for the most part timidly put forward even by its
devotees, as at least a " presupposition " in the cognition of
Being. To struggle for this Absolute Unity under all risks
has been deemed peremptory in the sacred cause of the pro-
foundest demands of our religious instincts. The great minds
of both East and West, pagan or Christian, have felt the power
of this obligation. Surely, it has been said, Creation must have
come forth from One Cause, One Will, One Person ; or, at
least, One Being must have directed the All of things by One
Might towards One End. In such vastitude of undoubted
Difference, is not such Unity presupposed in Being?
So have brave and loyal thinkers soliloquised, as feeling
borne down in a battle. Nevertheless, such musings and
pleadings all through long centuries of beetle-browed con-
templation, have never evoked such certainty of this Unity, so
presupposed, as men have found in that Difference which is
so tough in its * antagonisms ' to be ' overcome.'
40. Candidly, however, could any other result be expected
from systems of thought which maintained that such fact of
difference was as absolutely real as this presupposed Unity?
We venture to say that the true gravity of the profoundest
demands of human nature has not been comprehensively
grasped so long as such Difference and such Unity are calmly
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 57
accepted as both invincible in their truth of Being, and together
constituting the very ne plus ultra of all cogitation. This con-
viction that Difference is an eternal fact, cleaving absolutely the
spheres of science, philosophy, and religion, far as eye can see
or thought can wing her flight, is primarily sunk in the founda-
tions of such systems as indispensable to any superstructure
whatsoever, and then surprise is expressed when this Difference
still abides every assault from the attacking Unity which is
brought face to face with it in logical combat ! Is it not rather
to be expected that our deepest religious instincts will demand
something more stable than a predaceous Unity which, like
Jonah's fish, at one time swallows up all ' differences ' in the
shape of raging gods, men, and natural forces, and at another
vomits them all forth again as striken cities, pitying heavens,
and petulant prophets ? Our religious instincts surely demand
that this Unity shall be so overwhelmingly All-that-Is, as to
create the conviction in men that any existential Difference is
wholly inconceivable.
The ' Pre-supposition,' in short, to meet the gravity of the
case fully and effectively, must, in both the old and modern
meanings of the term, prevent everything else. Difference and
Division, for the ALL of Being, in our fundamental conscious-
ness of it, should be an impossible consciousness. To be level
with the religious consciousness of the world which through
long centuries has slowly risen above the differences and
divisions of deities, and grasped once for all the consciousness
of One God, the philosophical vision should see Being whole,
as Sophocles saw life, and assert Difference and Division, as
absolutes, to be unthinkable.
But this means a deeper basis for thought in the conscious-
ness of what-we-are. "The unity beyond the difference," of
modern philosophy, her "Absolute Unity," her "Self," are
merely devout guesses, and give nothing concrete to thought as
absolute guarantee of Reality. We are never sure that this
Unity will not again diverge from its united state and plunge
us into its former Duality, Plurality, Division, and differentiated
Totality. We must first find the consciousness which cannot
by any possibility suggest even a hint of difference or division,
which negates all negation by a fact which is independent of
our thinking it, which denies to even the "Self" an absolute
58 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
difference of itself from anything that IS, and which gives
such a conviction of Whole-Being as renders a conception
of division between what-we-are and the All-that-is to be
utterly impossible in any experience. And this conscious-
ness, we maintain, is to be found in the consciousness of Space-
Being.
For the wide realms of philosophic thought which are
defined by the terms Monism and Pluralism, which again
connote mind and matter, thoughts and things, concepts and
percepts, idea and sensation, idealist and empiricist, or statist
and fluxite, are plainly defective in their scope and pro-
fundity to cope with the actual consciousness which we all
have of What-lS. Monism always ends by sealing us up in an
abstract UNIT-Being which becomes as obnoxious and irritable
as Pluralism, which riots in an everlasting lust of Separables.
Both fail to reach that common concrete basis for Being, which
is ever wider than mere Unity, and far more than that Unity
when it is divided out into its inconceivable Pluralities. Each
fails in Scope. Each also fails to do justice to that common
consciousness which both confess. For the Monist in struggling
to generalise All into ONE-ness, really confesses that somehow
Division exists ; and, on the other side, in insisting that the All
develops into Difference and Isolation, the consciousness of
original ONE-ness is admitted by the Pluralist. The one con-
ception inevitably involves the other in its affirmations. For if
we think ONE it implies a judgment closed, as if our thought
should complete a circle, going all round Being to verify its
being solely and only ONE. But the space consciousness at
once asserts that such a ONE does not include Space-Being
itself, and hence the consciousness of more than ONE enters,
and the how - much - more is just the Plurality that taunts
Monism. In short, there can be no satisfaction given to our
consciousness of Being until both predicates, UNITY and
PLURALITY, are rendered impossible in the problem.
Now, neither Monism nor Pluralism ever brings our con-
sciousness of Space-BElNG inside of its system. It is left severely
apart. Yet it is just this consciousness which we require in
order to abolish the necessity of choosing on which predicate
we shall lay down our life in the BEING-PROBLEM. For, in the
first place, we obtain from it our primal want CONCRETENESS.
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 59
Nothing is so profoundly asserted to BE as Space-Being. And
it has no affirmation of mere Unity or Plurality. For we never
can enclose it in a judgment of ONE-ness, as if we held it
in our thought as a marble is held in the hand. We never can
get all round about Space to verify that it is just its lonely Self.
And similarly, for Pluralism, as we never can find hole or gap,
crack or rent, in space, its divisibleness is inconceivable. Space
admits of no point being placed in it, seeing that before the
point can exist space must be there to receive it. No line can
be drawn upon Space, therefore, for even ' distance ' is objective
and imaginary space between two imaginary points which are
never quite fixed except in a concept. Newton, in his formula
of gravitation, squares such "distance." The consciousness of
Space is purely and solely, IS. Therefore no predicate of
UNITY or Plurality ever covers it, and WHOLE-BEING seems the
most approximate term fitting the consciousness we all have
of it, in which, however, there is no consciousness of parts, and
no edges or verges absolutely. We never can think the outside
of Space. We never can think any side for space, for it never
presents a surface. Neither has it any inside. It is WHOLE-
BEING. And this is the exact consciousness which each of
us has for what-he-lS. When we say, I, we have no con-
sciousness of being outside ourselves or inside, for there is no
surface or edge or verge. We are. And this gives the
identical consciousness which Space gives, viz., IS : WHOLE-
BEING.
Grasping, then, this consciousness as the only absolutely true
consciousness, we find that neither Monism nor Pluralism replies
to the consciousness of What-we-are in its own idiom. The
"Self" of philosophy and the "Universe" of science reveal
much, and we are grateful for all they have revealed ; but when
we ask for the value of Space they are dumb. It is obtained
only in the I-Being which utters the " I am " which space utters,
in that idiom which is their exclusive language, and one which
only what-we-are interprets wholly. As we listen to both, IS,
as our consciousness, remains the common voice.
Our position, consequently, implies an extension of method.
The appeal is to Experience. But the Experience of our
appeal is not limited to the sphere of the phenomenal, the
sensational, the conditioned, but extends to that experience
60 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
which equates with our ultimate consciousness of what-we-are.
Our appeal is to Experience Whole.
But in order to be Whole-Experience both senses and
sensation must identify their truth with the consciousness of
what-we-are. Our method begins therefore with space-being as
consciously what-we-are, and seeks to show that every experi-
ence possible to sense and sensation assumes and maintains the
prius of that consciousness. This is contrary, it appears, to some
respected students of the mind. " Space is a construction," says
Prof. C. Read (Metaphysics of Nature, p. 179, 1st ed.), "or rather
a mental organic growth, to which other experiences, tactile
and visual, contribute." Dr S. H. Hodgson tells us that " If we
had not the senses of sight and touch we should be without
any cognition of space" (Time and Space, p. 66). "There is
good reason to think," Prof. J. Sully avers (The Human Mind,
vol. i., p. 243), "that each sense develops, to some extent at
least, its own spatial consciousness apart from other senses."
And with reference to sensation, Prof. James Ward says, " The
first condition of spatial experience seems to lie in what has
been noted above as the extensity of sensation " (Encyc. Brit.,
" Psychology "). This extensity of sensation, called ' massive-
ness ' by Dr Bain, he illustrates by comparing " the ache of a
big bruise and the ache of a little one." This characteristic or
quality of ' extensity' he affirms to be " an essential element in
our perception of space," though he cautions us that there are
other elements in such perception.
Now, with every sensation we ever experience, no matter
how derived, there is an unfailing experience not only of its
own ' extensity/ area, spread, or space, but also of ' extensity '
area, spread, or space beyond that ' extensity.' It may be a
sensation of motion, pain, pleasure, or any other, but the
experiential consciousness given, with its limited area, is never
separate from, but always whole with, our experiential con-
sciousness of unlimited sensationless area or space, beyond such
sensation. How then do we come by this conscious experience
of limitless area or space ? Is it through some limitless sensa-
tion? Everyone has an experience of boundless space in his
consciousness. What sense, then, or sensation, contributed,
developed, or conditioned its presence in our consciousness?
Does not this suggest that no sensation is ever the ' first
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 61
condition of spatial experience ? ' No doubt, such a sensation
might be the ' first condition ' of an experience of directed
attention to our consciousness of space, but it seems to us that no
sensation creates or conditions such a consciousness of spatiality,
'extensity,' area, or spread of itself. There is certainly focus
and concentration upon the objective area in which the ache or
bruise ' extends/ but without a previous experience of space no
such consciousness of extended objective sensation could be
possible. And no matter where the sensation should be located,
the same experience of space-consciousness, unlimitedly beyond
its ' extensity,' would arise. The space-consciousness is far
deeper seated than sensation. In truth, we conceive sensations
as we conceive all else objectively, but we are only conscious of
space identically with the consciousness of what-we-are. We
have no concept or percept, conception or perception of what-
we-are ; we are only conscious we are ; and this is exactly how
we are conscious of space. And it is for this reason that we
have no consciousness of mass, form, ' extensity,' or measure-
ment in either what-we-are or in space ; for the ' space,' which
has ' dimensions,' is, as we shall try to show, on all fours with
the 'self of philosophy and the ' soul ' of theology, and must be
characterised as a pure creation of the conceptual judgment,
entirely disowned by both senses and consciousness.
It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that our senses
yield only the limited materials of 'objects' and 'objectivity' to
our concepts. They truly give all the materials from which
' objects ' and ' objectivities ' are conceptualised, but concepts
are not the work of our senses but only of our judgment.
Every conception of mass, form, c extensity,' or measurement, is
due solely to our judgment, and never exhausts, the unlimited
fulness of the content of the senses. For unlimited space is
always attested by every sense.
No doubt our senses seem to suggest mass, form, etc., by
the very nature of limitation with which they are credited, for
they are never credited with mediating anything else than
objects and 'objectivities.' Considered as such, seeing, hear-
ing, smelling, touching, and tasting, have a certain order and
decreasing range of area. Seeing ranges over the 'objective'
heavenly spaces, hearing only through the 'objective' atmo-
spheric space, smelling over a small area of that atmosphere,
62 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
touching has a still narrower 'objective/ and tasting least of all,
though some have attributed touch to all the senses But
although so apparently limited in their perceptive power, not
one of them fails to mediate that perception (we cannot find a
better term) in which the boundless objectlessness of space is
mediated to our consciousness. Although space is not seen
objectively, yet the eye-capacity not only deals with objects, or
what we call mass, form, measurement, etc., but also with space
as we experience that consciousness through all our senses.
The capacity of the eye in perceiving a hill, e.g., is not exhausted
by perception of mass, form, ' extensity,' etc. Why then do we
see no mass, form, etc., in space, and ascribe only * objects ' to
the eye-capacity ? The eye is as faithful in the one case as in
the other, although with space the eye is dealing with the
boundless, formless, measureless. The reason seems to us to be
as follows. The perception, which is given whole by the eye
space, hill, and all is arbitrarily cut into by the judgment,
which selects only the ' qualities ' which go to make the concepts
mass, form, measurements, etc., and then declares these finally
to be conceptually a hill, an 'object,' while the quality-less,
boundless, inconceptual space is declared conceptually to be
nothing ! But such choice of judgment and such arbitrary
creation of such concepts, have not the remotest support in our
consciousness of reality. The very fact that we characterise the
limitless portion of the eye-message as ' nothing ' is proof that
it is of our experience, and that experience is not realised as
whole without it.
And what has been said of the eye, applies also to the
ear. Sound is not more affirmed in our experience of per-
ceptions and sensations than is Silence, which is always bound-
less. The ear mediates both to our experience. And the
mediation of silence is the mediation of the formless, measure-
less, limitless, or, the experience of space. Our consciousness
of space is never less, indeed, than the necessary antecedent of
both, in which both find their functions not divided but whole.
It is totally different, of course, when each has been arbitrarily
created into separate concepts of sound and silence by our
judgment. We then affirm sound to have * extensity,'
' massiveness,' and to be, while silence is nothing !
Similarly we might reason with reference to the other
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 63
senses. But it is evident that we are here dealing with a
consciousness which is not mediated through any sense or
sensation as a mere sequent consciousness to their functioning,
but one which is iheflrius and primal condition of our possessing
a consciousness of sense or sensation at all. This is the more
evident when we remember that all consciousness is itself
Motion, and pre-supposes thereby the being of space as the
essential basis of any consciousness. All consciousness of
sensations, senses, perceptions, or conceptions, must therefore
follow our consciousness of space-being, though the latter may
fitly enough be our latest realisation in knowledge historically.
This conclusion is also strengthened by the fact that neither
sense nor sensation, percept nor concept, ever affirms absolute
reality for themselves or for all they function ; whereas this is
the special idiomatic affirmation of space-being both for itself
and for all else (speaking in divisive terms for expository
purposes).
Therefore, it is really this space-consciousness which gives
' first conditions ' to all our senses and sensations, perceptions
and conceptions, and must have been the true generating power
in their evolution and development. The lense of the eye no
more affirms reality of anything than does the lense of the
telescope, nor yet does the ear any more than the ear-horn. It is
only in as far as a consciousness of space is mediated by either,
whole with all their ' objects,' that we are able to affirm reality,
or being, to all they mediate, for this is their condition and
guarantee of reality in our consciousness of them.
Neither does any sense profess to create forms, or measure-
ments. To the eye the sun, or star, may seem far nearer
and smaller than it actually counts by our measurements.
Sounds are similarly inaccurately measured, and so with the
other senses. This character, indeed, has stigmatised the senses
as ( deceptive.' It is rather we who do not accept the whole
fulness of data they bring, and distort by a limiting judgment,
or conception, their absolute truth. No sense actually forms or
measures. Its first and only business is always unfailingly to
yield an absolute wholeness of perceptive reality : space-being ;
the formless and limitless. We can then, if we so judge, cut
up this fulness into * concepts ' of ' objects ' and set each in its
place in the granary of our ' Knowledge.' But if they after-
64 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
wards grow stale and unsatisfactory, we ought not to blame
either sense or sensation for such inadequacy.
But here it may be said that this measureless is the true
measure of all things, as ' God ' is said to be. And such a
conception of the measureless comes in with the fallacious
concept of ' God/ in this case. For this concept, being of
Unit-Being, is created and based not upon our consciousness
of reality, but on an arbitrarily chosen and limited standard
of 'one.' In conceiving measure, we arbitrarily select a part,
a mere point it may be, out of the material which the senses
give to our perceptions, and then we create that part into an
arbitrary standard of measure, calling it One. We then build
our measurements of ' objects ' upon that conceptual basis, and
necessarily discover that what is, as mediated by the eye, and
what is, as moulded into our concepts from limited material,
do not coincide in truth. The eye (as all our senses) gives the
measureless, boundless space-being; but on the basis of our
conceptual standards, even * God ' is not the measureless, or
the boundless, seeing that such a deistic concept -is not Whole,
by the fact of its being merely a measure of One. We say,
e.g. t God and Space : units both.
Our so-called concepts and percepts of 'space' might be
explained analogous to such ' extensities ' of unit-objects.
Measurement and form are due to judgment, the concept creator,
but never to any sense ; and rightly enough the eye never sees
the ' units ' of our concepts and percepts which we define as
' distance,' ' space-of-three dimensions,' * mass ' etc., for neither
of these ' objects ' is real being, but only conceptual being, the
creation of our judgment from material whose extent is bound-
less, but which boundlessness is ignored in the data of such
concepts. Our senses are no parties to the creation of limited
* objects ' and the ' objectivity ' of our conceptions. They sustain
the truth of our fundamental experience of whole-reality, and
this experience of whole-reality far transcends our ordinary
experience of conceptual ' objects ' and ' objectivities.'
41. The philosophical method adopted by modern thinkers
may be generalised as one of Decreation. Descartes called it
Doubting. He doubted everything possible to be doubted,
both within the sphere of Thought and of Things. He found
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 65
the systems of antiquity and of Scholasticism wholly unaccept-
able and incredible. He resolved therefore to shred them to
their foundations, and on the basis of what he found undoubt-
able, or indestructible, to build his own structure of Universal
Truth. He dissolved therefore ' Mind ' and ' Matter,' or all
that was known, and all that was experienced, and pronounced
them illusion and imperfection. But he could not doubt the
Doubter! For the process was of course one of Thinking, and
necessarily he must end by thinking Himself. He could not
admit himself under the Doubt-process. This was therefore
his Rock of Ages. Cogito : ergo sum. " I think, therefore I
am."
But clearly Descartes could only reach in this way a
thought-born product. Reality was not connected with his
( I am ' in .any sense. His ' I am thinking, therefore I am,'
still confined him within his process, which, as his steed, could
not ride with him beyond itself. But the true consciousness
of what-we-are gives no such consciousness of motions or of
Being as based on Thought. And just as the scientist can
never get outside of * Matter ' by a process of decreating its
structure into infinitesimal fractions, or ions, so neither could
Descartes get outside of 'Mind' by separating it into so many
nullities. In order to do so, we must get hold of that
consciousness of Being which yields no consciousness absolutely
of either ' matter,' ' mind,' or ' motions,' viz., the Space-Being
consciousness : Is.
Kant, similarly, put the first obstacle in his own path to
Truth-Universal when he said, " Space and Time are only
forms of sensible intuition, and hence are only conditions of
the existence of things as phaenomena" (Kritik, d. r. V. pref.,
sec. ed.). Space conditioned! By what? Decreate every-
thing ; and then try to decreate Space ! The reverse was the
truth. It is the space-consciousness which qualifies all that
is, but nothing either in Thought or Thing ever qualifies Space.
It is the unqualifiable Reality.
So it likewise befell Hegel. Descartes said, Doubt ; Kant
said, Criticise ; Hegel said, Abstract. Decreation by thought-
process in order to reach a permanent basis on which to create.
This was the method and aim of each. And neither ever
reached this basis. For in the end of their efforts, the Ultimate
E
66 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Reality of knowledge is placed by Descartes in an Infinite
Substance, by Kant in an unknown .r-thing, and by Hegel in
an abstract Being and Nothing, culminating in Notion, neither
of which ultimates has the remotest support in our conscious-
ness of what-we-are. We never get beyond Thought-Process
and concepts with either of these great and revered Thinkers.
Spinoza's 'Living Substance' stands in the same category.
The horseman never goes further than his horse can carry him.
42. Now, our consciousness of Space is that it hides under
nothing, and requires no such processes to manifest it. It is
certainly not an ultimate of conception. It conditions all pro-
cesses but is not conditioned. We do not conceive it, and
we do not perceive it. For percepts and concepts are not
even possible as processes of sensation or thought except as
being conditioned by the Space - consciousness. For our
consciousness of Space yields no predicates either for what-
we-are or for the ALL-that-Is. It is simply an is-consciousness.
And this is our common experience without exception, absol-
utely. It gives nothing to sight, hearing, smelling, touching,
or tasting. It tells us nothing of hard, soft, dark, light,
coloured, numbered, outlined, or formed. It gives no hint
of being either Mind or Matter. It yields nothing to these
conceptions of our intelligence. Nothing in any Sensation ever
reveals it. We have neither * Impression' nor * Idea' of space.
And these are statements which are all equally applicable to our
consciousness of what-we-are. What-we-are generalises certain
processes of thought and names it " Mind," but is not itself
conscious of ^ing Mind. What-we-are generalises certain
qualities and calls it "Matter," but is not itself conscious of
being Matter. And Herbert Spencer was quite right when he
said that we think of Mind in terms of Matter and Matter in
terms of Mind, but do not express thereby the consciousness
of what-we-are, or of what-is. This to him was an Unknown,
the position generally professed by all Empiricists.
And, as a consequence, no process of Decreation, Criticism,
Abstraction, nor any conceivable process of Thought is necessary
to our consciousness of Reality. The space-consciousness is
given before a consciousness of motion, or process, is conceiv-
able. If we had no latent consciousness of Being, independent
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 67
of all thought, thought would never move. Consequently,
the space-consciousness is never under the "laws of thought,"
nor the " laws of association," nor, indeed, any law. For Law
is process of Thought massed into a concept. Nor can we
compare what-we-are or what-lS to anything. Neither (speak-
ing always in dual terms, for the sake of exposition) has space
likeness nor unlikeness to anything. Space cannot be objectified
as " over against " some Subject, nor yet subjectified as " over
against" some Object. It is neither subject nor object, but
conditions every percept and concept of such. We find it
impossible to say of space, ' It is this or that.' Our conscious-
ness, as we must repeat, is simply, IS. It admits neither the
predicate UNITY, as if some sundered thing had been united,
nor of DIFFERENCE, as if it had been formerly one and
sundered. There is no place in it for Belief, Disbelief, or
Doubt. It is neither He, She, nor It, for it is not under
limitations, and, necessarily, it is the basis which is common
to both .conceptions of ' Personality ' and 'Impersonality/ and
sublates these relatives. It knows nothing whatever of Relation-
ships, or Relatives, in the logical sense, and, consequently, the
entire family of logical relatives, such as subject and object,
one and many, finite and infinite, absolute and relative,
being and non-being, are never found in it. Space Is. It has
no other possible category for the human mind, if category it
can be called, seeing that IS swallows up all categories ; and
when we say ' I AM,' we must understand ourselves to have
/r^-said ' Space.' For in our consciousness of ' Space/ our
consciousness of ' I AM ' is sublated, in as far as we conceive
the * I ' to be one ; personal ; a ' self/ or limited. Thus our
consciousness of Space gives neither possibilities of 'subject'
nor 'predicate.' Individuality, Individuation, and every pre-
dicate implying universality, qualification, quantification, or any
relation whatsoever, sinks into this consciousness of Whole-
Being, IS.
43. Space has no 'qualities.' But it does not thereby 'cease
to be/ as Hegel has decreed it. It only escapes from ordinary
conceptuality. He says, " Quality is, in the first case, the
character identical with being : so identical, that a thing ceases
to be what it is, if it loses its quality " (Logic, Wallace's Trans.,
68 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
par. 85, p. 157). The German seems even more emphatic.
" Etwas ist durch seine Qualitat das, was es ist, und indem es
seine Qualitat verliert, so hort es damit an, das zu seyn, was
es ist." He repeats this conclusion. " A Something is what it
is in virtue of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be
what it is" (ibid., p. 171).
44. We know nothing more important in Hegel than this
conception. For it is the one conception which seems to
determine his conception of BEING, and also his conception of
NOTHING. What has no quality has, to Hegel, no BEING, and
what is swept clean and pure of quality is also NOTHING. It
is not BEING. Space, which has no quality absolutely is there-
fore never included in his consciousness of BEING. Therefore,
also BEING and NOTHING are separate conceptions, and it is
because of the different mode in which he conceives each
that, notwithstanding all his titanic efforts, he is never able to
conceive them 'the same.' Two professed concepts, indeed,
never can be conceived as the same concept. By the construc-
tion of a concept it is impossible.
He seems to have accepted the position of the ancients
with regard to BEING and NOTHING, the WORLD and the VOID.
" Where nothing was as yet," did not mean space-being to
them. It meant only the lack of all predicable things.
' Nothing ' was what was relative to ' things ' that were, of
which they were able to predicate quality, quantity, measure,
number, colour, etc. The ancients could not predicate BEING
of this lack. In the same way, Hegel's BEING possesses quality,
quantity, etc., and when all these are lacking it is to him
NON-BEING. He calls this NON-BEING, NOTHING ; blank, ' utter
emptiness.' All his reasoning leaves it outside of itself. It is
not data of judgment to Hegel on which to rationalise BEING.
The two concepts, therefore, BEING and NOTHING, are true
relatives, they have a different content, and are fundamentally
distinguished. Dr H. Stirling says, " We feel that though each
term formulises the absolute blank, and the absolutely same
blank, there is somehow and somewhere a difference between
them. They point to and designate the absolutely same
thought, yet still a distinction is felt to exist between them "
(Secret^ i. 49). Same and Not-Same ! Absolute uncertainty of
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 69
Reality is the basal result of Hegel's philosophy. They are
never the ' SAME.' What we actually get from his 'Nothing' or
Non-Being, is a zero-content, exactly equal to the lack of that
' BEING' which, through the abstraction of its Quality, Quantity,
etc., has been 'taken away.' Although he asserts the contrary
{Secret of Hegel, i. 321, Remark I.), his pretended Absolute
NOTHING, which is unthinkable and inconceivable, is exactly a
concept of NO thing. It is, like the numerical zero, never
quantity-less, although zero-quantity. It is not absolute nothing,
for it has always the lack-quantity equal to the number one to
which it stands related, and counts positively for the lack of
that quantity.
Even when we simply say, " NOT," as he advises, without
reference to anything, we cannot rid it from quality-in-itself.
For example, he says it makes little difference whether we put
Non-Being for Nothing, " for in non-being the reference to
Being is implied ; both Being and the Negation of Being are
enunciated in One, Nothing, as it is in Becoming."
Non-Being, by reference to itself, is. It is also One with
Being. Hence, this is not the Negation which Hegel wants.
He asks us to realise the Negation which is in his consciousness
by not referring it to Being, or by simply saying " NOT." Then
we have his " Nothing." But this " NOT " is, of course, pure
sound, and has neither consciousness nor thought behind it. In
the very fact that we think it, and say it, it is referable to
ourselves, that is, to Being. He tries to substantiate his
fundamentals by asking us to do' the impossible. This " NOT "
has no response in Nature, in anyone, nor in Hegel himself.
Its place is in a dictionary.
Hegel, consequently, is never able to free his BEING and
NOTHING from NUMBER. Neither he nor we can conceive
either less than UNIT-BEING, even when we assume that they are
the SAME. And they are only productive of a series, endless as
he supposes, of Unit-beings. Even his Absolute BEGRIFF, his
NOTION, never rises beyond the mathematical consciousness,
for his BECOMING is also Unit-Quantity, though presented as
a TOTAL. He denies that his NOTHING is just the lack
of all quality, that is, a zero-thought; but it is proved in
the fact of his assertion that this NOTHING can ' Become,' or
move into BEING, and be BEING. It is thereby self-determined
70 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
in motion. Now, the space-consciousness always renders it
impossible to utter the term NOTHING except as NO Thing,
or Zero-Being, the lack relative to Unit-Being. It is likewise
just as impossible to say of two ultimate concepts, that they are
Same-Being, except on the basis of both as space-being. Then,
the true predicate is not ' Same ' Being but ' Whole-Being.'
It was inevitable that Hegel should fail to clear his concepts,
BEING and NOTHING, from either Number or Motion when he
refused to include Space as a datum of his judgment. For it is
solely in the consciousness of Space that we can obtain absolute
freedom from number and motion. And, denying this position,
neither of his concepts can shred itself from unit-being, for
though they are married together they are never truly either
one or the ' same? That his concept of NOTHING, for example,
has only unit-form in his thought, is evident from his treatment
of it. He asserts at one time that " Nothing is, for it is in its
nature the same as Being," then he veers round to say that
" Nothing shows itself in combination, or, if you will, contact, with
a Being ; " then again, " Nothing is only absence of Being," and
speaks further of " the transition of Being and Nothing into one
another." Then he gives us this simplification. " But nothing
is no beginning, or there is no beginning in nothing : for a
beginning includes in it a Being, but nothing contains no
Being. Nothing is only Nothing" (italics ours). It is clear
that Hegel is merely playing with forms of logical thought, and
makes no reference to any reality. An absolute nothing cannot
be thought at all, for it must be thought of relative to the thinker
who thinks it, and who is.
His method of effecting these severely antithetic and
synthetic wonders is, he tells us, by DIALECTIC. This is
important, for we are here referring once more to Hegel to
show that modern philosophy in its greatest exponent is merely
thought-created, without the least reference to fact of nature
in its highest expression of Space-Being, and thereby makes
the false assumption that thought, or more correctly, con-
ceptive thought, is the supreme Fact of our consciousness of
BEING. If it were, we should be able to think Space, and give
quality and quantity to it, as Hegel has done with his BEING
and NOTHING and BECOMING. This cannot be done, however,
and Thought being also but MOTION, Space-Being is never
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 71
sublated under it. Space-Being conditions Thought. And that
we are always within the conditions of Thought in the Hegelian
System of Philosophy, is clear when he says, " We call Dialectic
the higher rational movement, in which such seemingly absolutely
separated things pass over into one another through themselves
through that which they are and the presupposition sub-
lates itself" (our italics). And what we have said regarding
his BEING and NOTHING as merely Unit-Being, never outside
the arithmetical sphere, is supported by his words, " It is the
dialectic immanent nature of Being and Nothing themselves to
manifest their unity (Becoming) as their truth" {Secret of Hegel \
i. 348-353). " The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly
the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming" (Logic,
p. 163, 88). And Unity of Being is never near a conception
of Whole-Being, which is impossible to any thought or con-
sciousness save as given by Space-Reality. Logic always
requires an objective form of thought, but the space-conscious-
ness is given absolutely devoid of form. This is proved in our
" I " consciousness.
We must assert, therefore, that we all have a genuine
consciousness of Being, Reality, What-we-are, without the
remotest need of either Quality or Quantity to authenticate
it to us as Being. Our consciousness of What-we-are, Reality,
Absolute Being is never less than IS, Space-Being, within which
all thought lives, moves, and has its being, and in which all its
motions are finally subsumed.
Hegel did not really advance far beyond Bacon in this
respect. But Bacon specified his necessary Quality as FORM.
He says, " The form of any nature is such that, when it is
assigned, the particular nature infallibly follows. It is, there-
fore, always present when that nature is present, and universally
attests such presence, and is adherent in the whole of it. The
same form is of such a character, that if it be removed the
particular nature infallibly vanishes " (Nov. Organum, Bk. 2,
aphor. 4). From which it is evident that Space-Being was not
included in Bacon's conception of ' Nature.' And it is this
omission which gives him his conception of that Being into
which something "infallibly vanishes." That is to say, all
Bacon's thought, like all others, invariably drifts towards the
consciousness of space.
72 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
45. We seem now to have before us the grand trend, or
gravitation of Human Thought, as the highest and the greatest
experience it in their search for Reality in the fundamental
knowledge of Being. The trend is steadfastly towards the
consciousness of Space-Being. Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and
Hegel, are our pre-eminent modern examples. These minds
may be taken as our data for the judgment that all Thought,
as intelligent process, moves out of a consciousness of Space-
Being in its incidence of cognition ; meets with no higher
basis of Reality in its uses of Percepts and Concepts ; finds all
cognition which is drawn through such uses, unstable and
limited ; finds, in short, that ALL FLOWS, and never discovers
the absolute knowledge desired till rest is found permanently
in the same consciousness of Space-Being which is identical
with the consciousness of the * I '-Being. And in this con-
sciousness there is no realisation of quality, quantity, motion,
form, nor substance, neither in the consciousness of the space-
being ' within ' us, nor in the ALL of space-being ' without ' us.
Number and Motion are also impossible to this consciousness.
The area of Being, therefore, if we are permitted to .call it
so for purposes of reasoning, which is involved in Motion,
Process, Becoming, is bounded before and after by a conscious-
ness of Space-Being in which no such qualities are predicable.
That is to say, the forms of thought, and the limiting processes
we term Perception and Conception, utterly fall short in the
presence of this consciousness. But although this is the case,
we do not think there is any pressing necessity to characterise
this limitless consciousness by such objective terms as Descartes'
Infinite Substance, Spinoza's God-Substance, Kant's Thing-in-
itself, Hegel's Absolute Notion or Spirit, or Fichte's Moral
Order, for everyone of these is fatally qualified by connota-
tions of matter, number, motion, etc., and never brings us any
nearer to the goal of our desire. Neither is it incumbent upon us
to stigmatise it, with the Empiricists, as " The Unknown," for
in the case of Absolute Being, if we know it to be unknown,
it still comes within the sphere of knowledge. With the
veritable data given us in our consciousness of what-we-are, we
can truly call it space-being, what-lS. And nothing greater,
fuller, truer, or more absolutely real, can be affirmed of any
consciousness of Being. No philosopher has found in any
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 73
of his ' Being ' terms a consciousness of Absolute Permanence
so invincibly expressed as the term Space affords.
We have, then, Absolute Permanence in what-we-are ;
absolute permanence in all that IS ; and Existence vibrating
between, in its myriad-fold periodicities, the greatest being not
the Gravitation of Matter, but the pulsating Mind throughout
the Universe and known to us as Cosmic History, of which
Human History is a fragment. As the motion of the blood
between the fixtures of life and death, the vibrations of the
string between its static nodules, so Existence seems to
spread out in its multiplicity of Forms, Matters, Substances,
and Causes, Colours, Numbers, Modes, and Relations, between
the permanences of Whole-Being apprehensible through our
consciousness of what-we-are and Space Absolute, which yet
the idiom of Space-Being vouches as also what-we-are.
46. It is impossible to think Space-Being impermanent.
Yet all else that we think is branded with instability. Why
is it that we are never satisfied with the Object as we see it,
hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it ? It is because nothing it ever
gives us in our perceptions, nor anything it reveals to us in
our conceptions of its qualities, quantities, and relations
generally, stands on the same level of absolute verity of Being
as we are conscious of for ourselves. And when we ask the
Object what really it IS, unfailingly it answers our question
by referring itself to our consciousness of Space. Not to form,
substance, or any quality or quantity, but inevitably to Space-
Being. It refers us, that is, to the same consciousness for its
own reality as we are referred to by our own consciousness
for what-we-are. And when this consciousness is admitted,
all doubt of the stability of Being vanishes.
47. It is sometimes asserted that all our knowledge is due
to that process called perception, through which our senses
and sensations deliver a content from which what-we-are moulds
a Concept, or generalised Idea. But the Concept seems to be
as unsatisfactory in its pretensions of infallibility as any other
conscious motion of our being. This has been felt by Idealists
and Empiricists alike. The Ultimate Being styled Infinite
Substance, God-Substance, Thing-in-itself, Absolute Notion,
74 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
is placed by idealists, as James points out, beyond the spheres
of perception and conception. Similarly, the " Unknown "
of the Empiricists is neither perceived nor yet is it conceiv-
able. What is the hint given in this stress of philosophic
necessity? Neither of these ' Beings ' has the smallest support
in our consciousness that it Is. They are purely Guess-Beings.
But why place them in a realm-by-itself, outside of all percepts
and concepts ? It is the pressure of the space-consciousness
that compels such processes. For if Thought will not take
the natural path towards the Real, in that Space which is
never absent from either percept or concept, there is no other
alternative but to seek refuge in the imaginary.
But we need not decry either percept or concept. What
we require, however, is a consciousness of Being in which both
motions are subsumed, or identified. This is found in the
Recept of the I-consciousness. What-we-are both perceives
and conceives and receives. But imperfection moves with both
our perceptions and conceptions. For the Absolute Reality
is always more than these motions can overtake. Dr Bain,
in his ' Mind and Body,' describes this separation of the
'powers of the Intellect,' into the "three facts called (i) Dis-
crimination, or consciousness of Difference ; (2) Similarity, or
consciousness of Agreement ; and (3) Retentiveness, or the
power of Memory or Acquisition." He says these three
functions "are the Intellect, the whole Intellect, and nothing
but the Intellect " (p. 83). " Conceptual Knowledge," says James,
" is forever inadequate to the fulness of the reality to be known."
Only the Receiver is conscious of being whole with Reality
Absolute. And while neither Percept nor Concept fully declare
that Reality which is given in our * I '-consciousness, they are
its handmaidens and cease not to lead every thought and con-
sciousness towards it. How ample is the percept, we say ; how
narrow the concept built out of its content ! For no concept
ever really embraces all the content which the percept yields
to it. It is the continual approximation of the concept to the
amplitude of the percept that may be said to mark the " progress
of Mind," and especially of the scientific mind.
48. How often, for example, had men perceived the falling
body before Newton. Their percept of this fact was as ample
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 75
as was his. But what was it in the percept that everyone left
out of the concept of the falling body? It was the earth.
Their concept of a falling body confined itself to the body
alone, and did not include the earth as necessary in such a
concept. Newton alone included the earth-part of the percept
in his concept, and so made an advance in science. No dis-
covery is ever made otherwise. The percept, without fail,
yielded as much content of material to the men of the first
century as it does to those of our own. But the latter have
included more of its content in their concepts, and widened
thereby the bounds of knowledge. The " Evolution " generalisa-
tion is another conspicuous example.
But if we were to ask, why does Newton's generalisation of
Gravitation fail to give us a final consciousness of Absolute
Being, but only a concept of limited motion among limited
bodies, the reply would be that he also left out part of the
content of his percept when he closed the concept of his great
law. That part of his percept was Space. Yet it was in the
data of his percept, as it is in every percept. Now only Space
taken into the content of our concept can yield the fullest
realisation of Absolute Being possible to any concept. And
when this is done, the concept, indeed, finds then the task
beyond itself. For the inclusion of the space-data in any
concept always rends it, and then it only points beyond to that
consciousness which in its plenitude says ' I AM.' For in the
' I AM ' consciousness even the concept of Motion given in the
Law of Gravitation is transcended, and both percept of space
and concept of space, blend in a receptive identical conscious-
ness of Whole-Being. This was impossible to Newton with
the meagre part of the conceptive space which as * distance,' he
selected for his generalisation. His ' distance '-space is of
course made up of the imaginary ' points ' which it is supposed
can be placed in Space, but is only an imaginary line as
limited as the masses between which it is said to lie. Such a
line has mathematical quantity ; it is made less or more; and,
as such, has nothing to do with the consciousness of Space
proper and Real. " The square of their distance" is squaring a
* space ' which, limited strictly to two masses, has no affinity
to the Space of Whole-Being. It is clearly objective, and has
its ' qualities ' derived from the two masses which it divides.
76 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Yet Whole-Space is always given in the data of our percepts.
But to connect in an identity any Object of our percepts with this
Space has always appeared as preposterous as an identity of
Mind and Matter, or of Spirit and Body. Yet ' difference,'
however apparently wide, should not be taken as absolutely
real. Every advance of modern scientific research has converged
nearer to identity of all the powers of nature which formerly
seemed invincibly divided. They all pass into each other.
And in time when science admits Space to be the most scientific
fact there is to consider, then the basis of all these powers,
matters and motions, forces and energies, will be found whole^
and every extreme subsumed in it.
49. No doubt, from the Object of our perception to the
percept-less Space the extreme seems to be unbridgable. But
the mystery is that we are never conscious of any incongruity
between the two, nor are we ever surprised to find them always
present together in our percept or presentation. But our usual
course is to put the Object into our concept, or representation,
and ignore the space present in the percept. But suppose that
our percept should on some ridiculous occasion fail to include
space along with the Object. What would happen then ? Could
we form any concept, representation, or ideation from such a
percept? It would be quite impossible. There would be no
Object possible for the percept. Form, and Size, and Substance,
and colour, etc., would disappear. The condition of their being
objective would perish. That is, both percept and concept,
presentation and representation would lapse together. This
would be the real condition which is falsely assumed to exist
when " qualities are taken away." From which data it is
possible to say that it is first our consciousness of space-being
which renders perceptual and conceptual being possible to
our consciousness. There must, therefore, be an underlying
identity between our consciousness of the Object and Space-
Being, and we shall see that it is found in the consciousness of
ourselves as being whole-with-space.
50. There is a tendency in psychology to narrow the percept
to the sphere of sensation, and then to limit sensation to an
area from which thinking and conation are shut out. A kind
SPACE AND OBJKCTIV1TY 77
of division of labour is established between all the various
1 faculties,' as they used to be called, and the human conscious-
ness takes on the semblance of a great place of business in
which every 'faculty' is assigned its own individual duties
There is really no such division. E.g., the perception of the
eye gives an object to the sensation, from which material we
say a concept is formed, and we then talk of having an ' idea '
of the object. Eye, ear, touch, taste, smell, give such presenta-
tions to sensation, and through sensation to our concepts. But
a sensation arises out of the motions of life, a pain or pleasure,
and the nerves act as the bearers of sensation independent of
our ordinary sense-instruments, eye, ear, tongue, nose, skin-
contact. Something touches from within instead of from
without, and perceptibility of the sensation leads to the
formation of a concept as to whereabout the pain or pleasure
has location. But the concept still marks a certain division
between what-we-are as receiver of such material from percept
and sensation, and the use which is made of it in concept
formation. There is motion of sensation and thinking by some
* I '-Being which seems apart from both spheres of motion.
And yet there is clearly a common basis of intimacy for this
I-Being and these motions. For the ' I '-Being makes the
concepts, or thoughts, which are built out of the material of
the percepts and sensations, and at will actually objectifies
them. A percept of the concept is then carried on within the
inner sphere of thought and consciousness. Every concept
being a generalisation of the material which percepts have
conveyed, the generalisation itself, as we have seen in the
'distance' between two masses, becomes as distinct an object
of a higher perception as any object given to the ordinary
sense -instruments. And it is for this reason, of course, that we
have philosophy enlarging upon the Subject and Object, the
Thinker and the Thought, and stamping division into Being
because it is apparently ineradicable from our motions of Per-
ception and Conception. Both such 'Subject' and 'Thinker*
are really concepts made perceptive. Kant's vision of his
' Thing-in-itself ' all alone in a space-by-itself was as distinctly
a percept as is our common observation of a landscape or of
a tree. It was the same with Hegel. His " Absolute Notion "
is a generalisation, a concept, which just because it is general-
78 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ised as ONE, UNIT-BEING, is objectified. And consequently
Hegel, finding the inability of generalising What-/^-was inside
of that Object and Duality of Being, rampant as it was in his
consciousness, as it also was in that of Kant, adopts the plan of
making the Subject ' strike round ' into the Object, and ' enter
into itself,' and 'become itself!' And when we agree with his
efforts and accept this amalgamation of percept and concept,
thought and thinker, our disappointment is great when we
discover that the Subject-Object is, after all, just another
generalised concept, which the ' I '-Being would be blind indeed
not to perceive as a very much objectified thing. And thus it is
evident that even if we could unitise subject and object in this
artificial way, such f/^zV-Being would never give us the conscious-
ness of what-we-are as being it.
51. Why, then, cannot such percepts and concepts bear us
further in the problem of Being? The reason is that the
concept, the generalisation represented to our ' I '-Being, never
includes within itself all the material which the percept gives to
consciousness. No concept ever includes Whole-Space within
itself. It includes only the qualities, quantities, etc., which are
necessary to objectivity. The selection is the cause of objec-
tivity. But Whole-Space is always in the consciousness which
is allied with perception. And it is this fact in the percept
which proves its illimitability in this respect. Now it is the
concept which limits by a judgment a portion of the content of
the percept, and generalises it, calling it T-his or That, Man,
World, Cosmos, God, Cause, Effect, etc. And in proportion to
the material contained in the percept which is used by the
concept, so will the generalised 'Idea' be. A stone, for
example, gives different concepts to a boy, a geologist, a
lapidary, a naturalist, or a chemical analyst. Why should
there be any difference of concept ? The difference is caused
by the material selected out of the perception of the stone
which each uses for his adjudged concept. Each concept again
might be a kind of generalisation of accumulated generalisa-
tions, all affording material together for a wider concept. For
the boy, his concept of the stone would probably be formed out
of the perceptual content, Form, Matter, Size, and in all likeli-
hood, Weight ; but weight is itself a generalised concept from
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 79
the material of other perceptions. For the geologist, the con-
cept 'Stone' would include all the qualities and quantities of
the boy's percepts, but it would include also Time. And this
Time-concept of itself is a generalised concept which involves
motion, etc., a quality which the boy would not put into his
concept of the stone. To the chemical analyst, again, a great
many other qualities would be employed in formulating his
concept, such as coherence, cohesion of atoms, gases, etc., most
of which would be drawn from percepts which involve long
experimental perception for themselves. All of these concepts,
however, would involve Number, Matter, Form, etc., although
each of these qualities, again, would vary indefinitely in the
concept of each observer of the same stone. But not one of their
concepts would pass beyond Objectivity. The stone as an object
to the boy would remain an object to everyone of these persons.
The same would fall to be said of the scientific philosopher
who might subject the stone to the utmost tests of theoretical
mathematical analysis. None of them would pass the bounds
of Objectivity. And the reason of this would be found in the
fact that not one of them had included in his conceptual
generalisation that data of Whole-Space which would inevitably
be found unused in each consciousness of all the qualities and
quantities perceived by each.
Each would only include in his concept that portion of space
which has been generalised as possessing three dimensions, the
point, line, and surface-space, which can be squared and cubed,
etc., but which is as distinctly itself an object conceptualised
from 'qualities' as the others are.
52. This latter is the 'space' which Kant declared to be
" nothing else than the form of all phenomena of the external
sense, that is, the subjective condition of the sensibility, under
which alone external intuition is possible." Kant's "Space"
was as truly objectified as was Newton's ' distance between two
masses.' No matter although he declares that it is given
a priori, or before we can have any experience of concept or
percept. He is never able to substantiate this, for, as we think
it, his Space has number, for it is not Time, and therefore it is
qualified, and as such it is conceptual. Kant's 'Space' and
Whole-Space are not identical in any way.
80 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
But those who accept Kant's view of Space are necessarily
unable to grasp the consciousness of whole-space. For Whole-
Space cannot be conceived or perceived. And when it is found
impossible to have such conditions for thought, or when it is
clear that no possible percept or concept can be formed of
Space so as to generalise it, then it is denied having existence
at all. But it is only discerned through the ' I '-Being as
identical-being, and concept and percept are sublated in the
I-Consciousness which we have of What-we-are, is. For the
same reason, when no percept nor concept is possible for
the object, when, disburdened of all its 'qualities/ it enters
space-being, then it is said not to be. That is, when the Kantian
1 space ' disappears with the object, of which it is the 'form' and
all percept and concept is impossible, Whole-Space is assumed
as Null, and the object which enters into it as also null ! But
this only illustrates, once more, that Being is such that every
name, or generalisation by which it may be named, is untrue, in
the absolute, until it is named Space-Being, for by this idiom
alone does it make itself named in all that is perceived and
conceived as Being. Every object when analysed to its utmost
capacity, never gives less than a residuum of space-being, as
being what-zV-is, ultimately. The formless, matterless, number-
less, causeless, timeless, etc., is always our final consciousness of
any object, even as it is of What-we-are ourselves.
But we are not to suppose that such an 'object' is not
fundamentally space until it is so generalised with Whole-
Being. On the contrary, the fact that our ultimate consciousness
of the object is Space, is proof that its objectivity is only
what -it -is put under such limitations by our arbitrary
conceptions. It is due to our concept alone that it is
numbered, formed, mattered, timed, and divided from Whole-
Being. Our percept protests constantly that such is not the
whole truth of the object, seeing that Whole-Being-Space is
always omitted in the concept of the object, and is never
put among the data on which it is judged to be. And in
this connection we also find our true consciousness of
Absolute Substance for the object, to be Space. Similarly
Cause, which seems so inherent in our concept of an object,
is found to be Whole-Space ; our true consciousness of un-
caused Cause.
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 81
53. We may venture now to say that so far as Science has
yet advanced, it is evident to everyone interested that, inten-
tionally or unintentionally, the discarding of division between
THIS and THAT, in the universe of things, is her destiny. Her
attention is principally focussed upon infinitesimal quantities ;
and she is daily expectant of laying bare that ' matterless '
and almost imaginary object of her speculations, ETHER,
which in its way comes near to our consciousness of space-
being. The face of Science is turned to look, with the Sphinx,
endlessly onward into the DEEP. She is even prophetic
of bringing under her knowledge the exiguous being of Life.
There is a distinct trend towards realising the consciousness
of space-being as scientific fact. It is indeed the fact of all
facts for Science, as it is for both Religion and Philosophy.
For it is the fact which alone can harmonise What-we-are with
.Whole-Being, and fill up the * gaps ' which our small general-
ising concepts have dug between Body, Mind, and * Spirit,' and
created thereby the isolations of Science, Philosophy, and
Theology.
54. Our * percepts,' then, are in no wise blamable. They
give us indeed those 'qualities' without which it is asserted
Being cannot be, but they also without fail bring us that which
is wholly quality-less and quantity-less, and it is this simple
consciousness which affirms Being for ourselves, as for all, and
without which Being is falsely apprehended. In order, there-
fore, to possess a consciousness of Absolute or Whole-Being, as
it IS, it is never the so-called ' qualities ' which are necessary.
They only form a part of what is necessary. The consciousness
of space is necessary, and when we include this consciousness we
include all that IS, 'qualities,' 'quantities,' atid the rest. To
take away from a ' thing ' its matter, substance, form, and cause,
is never to reduce it to Non-Being. It 'infallibly vanishes,' no
doubt, as Bacon said, but only much as the water-drop vanishes
into its constituent gases, or as "matter" into 'electric charges' ;
but Non-Being is an impossible consciousness for What-lS, and
when all these ' qualities ' are taken away, the ' thing ' as we
term it, simply equates or identifies itself with Space-Being, or
takes place with that Being which we refuse to it in our
concepts. We are willing to say it is, when it is Water, and
F
82 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
we style it Being-Thing when it takes another form of H 2 O,
and when it goes still nearer the space-being we may believe it
to be, but when it shreds all its * qualities ' and gets beyond
percept and concept, we falsely determine that it is Not. In
reality, the 'thing' is simply doing, in such a case, what man
has always done for himself, viz., verifying its being in a
consciousness which affirms Being Absolute, or rather, Being-
Whole, a verification which is impossible until Space-Being is
accepted with our so-called 'quality' and 'quantity' as
What-IS.
Let us notice now this process of negating what Kant
called "the categories of the understanding." As a matter of
common experience, if it were not for our consciousness of
space, we could never find it possible to conceive of a * quality,'
or a 'quantity,' being taken away or negated. When we
perform this thaumaturgic operation, where do we send them ?
Where, but into our space-consciousness? Then we take it
upon us to call this ' negation ' Non-Being, Nothing ! What we
actually do is to put consciousness of space-being in the place
of the concept negated ; our wide-open unclosed judgment, IS,
in place of the concept which is closed and judged as qualified
being ; the unlimited for the limited. Then, because we cannot
find any quality, quantity, or relation in this whole-open
judgment of space-being, we affirm that the qualified ' thing '
has ' ceased to be ' ! On the contrary, its affirmation of absolute
being has now reached its highest expression, passing beyond
every concept of generality into that which is Whole-with
what-we-are.
And in this fact we find once more that the is-consciousness
is really the dynamic affirmation in every concept which is
built out of the material of percepts, and is the consciousness
which, despite of all suggestions of limitation for that material,
gives us that consciousness of reality which is so insistent in
us for everything that is. We are well aware that the ' things '
which pass away are composed of qualities, quantities, and
relations, but beneath every such testimony there is a deeper
affirmation which becomes the stronger for the iS-ness of the
qualified 'thing' the nearer it approaches the state of quality-
ness, quantity^riess, and relationless-ness. In short, the affirma-
tion of space-being, IS, does not limit itself to the motions of
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 83
our concepts, wider or narrower in their generality, but
emphasises everything to be absolute and whole, as well as
what we call related and qualified. Nothing is lost in this
consciousness.
55. This is the same fact which Science reiterates in her
statement of the ' conservation of energy/ a doctrine which has
a wider application than Science yet recognises. She also,
like the theologian and the philosopher, will not accept Being
beyond the limitation of her concepts. ' No conception, no
knowledge/ is the postulate, and, consequently, science breaks
up her perceptive material into concepts of molecules, atoms
and ions, and still more general concepts of matter and motion,
energy and inertia ; theologians into ultimate concepts of God,
Cosmos, Man ; and philosophy into Self and Not-Self. Each
follows the same process, viz., decreation of former concepts ;
rearrangement of more material brought in from our percepts ;
and finally new generalisations of other concepts. Yet not one
of these so-called final concepts or generalised ideas, gives the
slightest assurance of absolute permanence. The Process of
decreation has not been guaranteed to have ceased its work.
No such guarantee is possible, either, until the is-consciousness
comes in to negate it absolutely, and this always means the
entrance of the consciousness of Space-Being, I-Being. All
concepts, then, like the widening curve towards the straight,
leave all limitation behind them, and take on infinity, asserting
the illimitable. For in the is-consciousness of Space-Being
the I-Being decreation is impossible, d\ process is inconceivable,
and generalisation cannot be done. We have, however, a
genuine knowledge independent of a concept. Or, to put it
differently, all percepts and concepts then close together in
that Recept which yet owns no quality, quantity, nor relation.
Bacon, in this consciousness of the Receiver, would find no
1 Form/ and would conclude that Being had thereby ' infallibly
vanished ' ; Hegel would assert that it had ' ceased to be/
in spite of the fact that neither could possibly think less
than space - being with his every thought a fact which is
proved by the truth that when everything has seemed to
vanish and cease to be, scientists must still call it 'energy/
philosophers ' Notion/ and theologians ' spirit.' The is-con-
84 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
sciousness abides, and defies all negation. It is Whole-Con^
servation affirmed.
56. Therefore, this IS-consciousness is the true affirmation
of Being; and that affirmation of Being, which is conditioned
in quality, quantity, and relation, is only conditionally true.
And, therefore, in the construction of the Being-Concept we
must begin with the Whole and not with the part, with Space -
Being and not with that being which is qualified and conditioned.
The error lies in the start. Descartes, as it were, said, " Let
us doubt everything till we reach the Undoubtable " ; Kant,
" Let us criticise till we reach what is beyond all criticism " ;
and Hegel, " Let us abstract everything till there is nothing
more to abstract " ; but each began by admitting that there
was Something to doubt, to criticise, and to abstract. What
happened then, was, in the case of Descartes, to get rid of all
perceptive material till he reached the One, i.e. himself, who got
rid of it ; in the case of Kant, to criticise every concept out of
existence with not even one left to contain the ' I ' of himself,
which he thought must necessarily be Unknown thereby ; and in
the case of Hegel, to abstract not only Descartes' ' I am thinking,'
but Kant's ' I,' without a predicate save * Unknown,' and then to
affirm what was not left to be abstract BEING. Each carried the
decreeing process of Being, or Something, further than the other,
and yet each ended by still affirming the Something ! How
could they do otherwise? They never could free themselves
from their own postulate, " Something IS." They each proved,
nevertheless, that, independent of every concept, generalisation,
or Idea-ing, we still have a consciousness, and, therefore, a
knowledge^ of Being. They proved unintentionally that know-
ledge does not begin nor does it end with concepts. On the
contrary, it is when all concepts have faded away into the
consciousness of Space-Being, that we know Reality, What-
we-are, and All-that-lS. We reach the consciousness of BEING,
which admits of neither doubting, criticising, nor abstracting.
And it is because that ordinary people z^doubtingly, ^critically,
and z^zabstractingly accept Whole-Space-Being as well as all
that is qualified, quantified, and related by it, or, rather accept
that Whole-Being which is given in the percepts as well as in
the parts conceptualised, that they possess that affirmation of
SPACE AND OBJECTIVITY 85
the REALITY of all and everything which the doubting, the
critical, and the abstracting find it so difficult to apprehend.
The latter always want to apprehend REALITY through concepts,
generalisations, and unified judgments; to call it This ; and
the former accept the consciousness of BEING which ever
transcends these "categories of the understanding." And in
this Space-Consciousness All Nature reposes, as affirmatively
real as the 'I am ' of man. That is, Reality does not rest in
Thought-Concepts, nor in processes of Thought which are
conditioned by concepts of the Understanding, nor in
Objectivity which creates a ' Cogito,' an '!=*,' or an abstract
1 Being-Nothing,' but in that consciousness which is not of a
' Self but of What-we-are as Whole-Space-Being.
CHAPTER IV
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM OUR CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS
57. This view of Being evidently involves the transcendence
of Personality. Personality is a generalisation of all the
qualities, quantities, and relations which have been assumed to
belong to man, and as it is such a concept, by the nature of a
concept it is decreatable. For every generalisation which man
has formed is open to be broken up, changed, or abandoned.
Hence the confidence of scientific research to carry every
generalisation which sums up our human knowledge to wider
bounds and ampler realisations. We see this conviction to lie
at the foundation of all research. The concept, God, for
example, is a generalisation formed from the qualities, quanti-
ties, and relations which men agree to ascribe to Deity because
they do not know any other to whom they can belong. These
are almightiness, eternalness, unchangeableness, wisdom, justice,
purity, etc., without which qualities, it is believed, there could be
no knowledge nor consciousness of Deity, and without which,
indeed, Deity would ' cease to be ' even though the personality
which man conceives for himself should be ascribed to Deity
also.
58. Similarly, the Universe must possess, it is believed, the
qualities of matter and energy, for without these it would
' infallibly vanish ' ; and so likewise man himself must retain
certain qualities in order to be conscious that he Is. Yet none
of the qualities, out of which, and with which, we build up the
concepts, God, Universe, or Man, ever professes to guarantee
itself as permanently stable. No such quality ever affirms itself
unconditionally to Be. ' With the result, that the concepts which
are based on and built out of such evanescent material, neces-
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 87
sarily possess the same character of instability and unreliableness.
No concept, therefore, of God, Universe, or Man, either formu-
lated in the great past or the present, ever yields to mankind
a consciousness of absolutely permanent and undecreatable
Reality. It is impossible, so long as these concepts are
dependent for their very nature and construction, upon material
which openly proclaims itself ' passing away/ or fluxional. It
is this fact which explains why, in every epoch of the world's
history, a different concept of deity has been found to command
the worship of man, and why man has an ever varying concept
of his universe, and also why he is never absolutely certain
whether life, soul, mind, or spirit, are veritable 'qualities' or
' quantities ' belonging to his Being ; and why, as a consequence,
he has been compelled to leave them in vague opinion, belief,
and conjecture, curtained always in haze and sorrow. And it is
just because such a man-generalisation is dependent on such
qualities and quantities that he is never absolutely assured what
he is, or what he is to be, if these can be * removed ' from him,
or caused to ' infallibly vanish.' Must he, in such circumstances,
" cease to be ? "
It is in such a bog of unreliable convictions that the
consciousness of space-being constantly rears our rock of
ages. To know Being, it is not necessary to have any quality
to be a mediate. We have a positive knowledge of what-we-are
independent of all the 'categories of the understanding.' No
doubt, we find much that is to be known of ourselves through
mediating qualities of form, substance, cause, and matter, colour,
shape, size, weight, etc., inclusive of all the qualities of what we
term ' life,' and all the qualities of what we define as ' mind,'
but we also rise beyond such mediated knowledge, and every
mediating quality of ourselves, to knowledge which gives no
quality, absolutely, in the knowledge of What-we-are, save Is,
or Space-Being. We rise to knowledge, that is, which cannot
be generalised in any concept, and is therefore not decreatable
by any solvent of thought. And it is just because everyone
possesses this highest consciousness and knowledge of What-
he-is, that he speaks freely and confidently of his 'life, 5 his
' soul/ his 'spirit,' although he has not the slightest conscious-
ness of any quality by which they are conceived or perceived,
or by which they exist, or are known to him. It is the Space-
88 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Being consciousness which alone speaks to him in its own
idiom (using dual terms for conceptual exposition), and to
which What-he-is responds in joyful trust. Life, Soul, Spirit,
are terms which sum for him that positive knowledge of what-
he-is, which he obtains primarily in his qualityless, quantityless,
and predicateless * I '-am space-being.
59. But according to Kant, and many others who have
followed him, this was not to know. It was only to know
The Unknown. Now, no man has a right to affirm anything as
unknown till he has exhausted the reservoir of facts which
percept, concept, and recept place at his disposal. And con-
sciousness of what-man-is, is a fact which never has been
exhausted by the modern agnostics from Kant downwards. It
has been read " with mistakes." The scientists who are as loud
as the philosophers in proclaiming the Unknown, have also
failed to include the highest fact of the universe in their
generalisations. They have never, as we must always insist,
included the fact of Space-Being in the data of their judgments
of what-is. They seem also to have felt justified in not includ-
ing Space-Being within their data of judgment in this respect,
just because that no percept nor concept could be formed
concerning it. For Space-Being is not a generalisation although
it is judgment. It is the I-consciousness of whole-being, and is
that which renders it possible to form judgments or concepts.
But this is not the Unknown. It is that which forms the basis
of all that we know. Not to know what-we-are in its ultimate
of ultimate consciousness of Space-Being, is not to know at all,
save through the broken and blurred mediates of percepts and
concepts by which we only know imperfectly the All that is in
the Flow. For the ultimate consciousness of what-we-are is
whole-knowledge ; and no knowledge that man is conscious of
possessing ever transcends it, whether that knowledge is
generalised as Man, Universe, or God. For each of these
concepts, from the fact that it is a concept, is a closed judgment
of Unit-Being ; it is in a class of One ; and therefore, limited,
and not whole ; and it gives no consciousness of permanent
stability of knowledge equal to that consciousness which we
have of what-we-are ; " I."
We have indeed no consciousness of Space-Being as either
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 89
known or unknown. We have only the simple consciousness of
Is, and this is the same consciousness we have of what-we-are.
Consequently, it includes all we know through the predicates of
our knowledge, and also all we predicate as unknown as relative
to what we know. But it is beyond the sphere of such rela-
tions. Known and Unknown are subsumed in it. When we
say " I know that what-I-am is unknown," we prove that the
relations of knowledge and ignorance are surpassed, for such a
consciousness gives simply Is. And the same statement applies
to our concepts God and Universe. We have, however, for all
three concepts, Man, God, and Universe, an ultimate consciousness
which yields only the Space-Being consciousness as the basis
of each concept, or thought-born object, and, in this common
consciousness, each generalisation dissolves itself into the
Is-Being, which is whole-being and owns no such parts as are
known to us conceptually as God, Universe, and Man. In other
words, the concepts of personality and individuality are sub-
sumed in the consciousness of Whole-Being, idiomised as
Space-Being.
60. To emphasise this conclusion, let us take the concept
man, in its evolution and development of generalisation, and
then we shall realise better how inefficient the concept is in
interpreting, or exhausting, the whole-fact which is given in our
conscious ' I.' Head, body, limbs, and all we perceive of blood,
brain, breath, are conceptualised, or generalised under the
terms, matter, substance, form, and cause, as Aristotle taught,
just as a house, a tree, or any object whatsoever is. But we do
not thereby exhaust all the facts which lie in the concept man.
For neither of these generalities explains feeling, thinking,
willing, remembering, attention, or all we sum up in conation.
Under the term mind we generalise the latter facts even as
under body we usually generalise the former set of human facts.
But Life is not yet brought under these generalisations of mind
and body. Now, we neither perceive nor conceive Life. Yet
men venture to say that it is neither mind nor body. Passing
then beyond the possibilities of a concept, Life cannot be
generalised on a basis of our knowledge of what-we-are. We
only have various percepts and concepts of matter, substance,
size, etc., just as we have for any body, stone, tree, or man, etc. ;
90 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
but to these we have added, for Life, the important percept of
Motion. We perceive motion in the protoplasmic cell, and
continuation of motion in our percepts and concepts of its
expansion of body, form, substance, etc., which we then
generalise as Growth and Change, under which come all the
motions of assimilation, reproduction, decay, and death, or the
reversal of the motions of growth, assimilation, reproduction,
etc., culminating in motions of disintegration, dissolution, etc.
Life is that term of generalisation of motions which are gathered
out of our various percepts of them and by it bound together ;
and it is one which really comprehends both known and
unknown. It is a generalisation which transcends the true
concept of ordinary judgments, and is judged to be, by a
judgment which rests in our consciousness of what-we-are, and
not in that knowledge which is derived from qualities or
quantities. That is to say, Life is as ' unknown ' as what-we-are.
But we have not yet exhausted the generalisation, Man.
For an animal has Life. And all that we have said ascends no
higher than the generalisation, Animal. Now, all men confess
their animality. But the lowest savage asserts himself to be
more than the Being which he generalises as Beast, a term
under which all that lives in sea, on earth, or in air, may be
classed. Why? Because even the savage, or man in his
aboriginal developments, has perceptions and conceptions of
man which he never obtains regarding the Beast, and conse-
quently he is compelled to form other concepts of man than
those which he conceives for the beast. The animal erects no
altars to unknown beings. All that broad and overflowing
sphere of human experience which is ruled by religious emotion
and devotion cannot be generalised within the concept Animal.
There is a profounder consciousness of Being manifested by
Man than we can perceive in the motions and behaviour of the
Beast.
As this distinctive feature of human nature has been
observed from of old, and as it is the inherent prerogative of
man to name all things, to put his percepts of things into
synthetic unity and definition, it has been his wont from time
immemorial to characterise man as possessing a 'soul' or
1 spirit' which distinguished him from the Beast which had
none. So insistent is this consciousness in man, and so clamant
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 91
always for his recognition that, notwithstanding that no quality
or quantity can be perceived in man on which such a concept of
' soul ' or ' spirit ' can be founded, every theologian and philo-
sopher who has endeavoured to systematise our knowledge of
man has been compelled by the necessity and peremptoriness
of his subject to insert that fact in his account. We discern the
perceptual material out of which the synthetic unity of Body is
built, and we likewise perceive the qualities and quantities out
of which the generalisation of Mind is constructed, and we
partly perceive those qualities and quantities out of which
we form the concept Life, but the generalisation ' Spirit '
exists in our consciousness independent of either the one or
the other. We have seen that such thinkers as Hume, Kant,
and Hegel, acknowledge the fact of it, and they fully realise
that something in their Being as Man is not accounted for by
all they can include within percepts and concepts, sensations
and ideas, and we see the same state of matters existing from
the earliest religious writers downwards, and from the time of
the first philosophers until the above mentioned. And one and
all do a marvellous thing, for they synthesise this ' part ' of our
Being under the concept * soul ' or ' spirit ' without the least
shred of material gathered from percept, sensation, or idea.
While Hume confesses that he never can ' find himself,' he is
yet conscious that he Is, and because Kant cannot find himself
within space or time he calls himself ^r-thing, Unknown ; and
Hegel, seeing that the predicate which can fit man in this
respect must also define man's ' God/ boldly names it " Spirit "
as equating with his absolute ' Notion.' He instinctively felt
that no man would accept this ' Notion ' either as himself or as
his * God,' owing to its narrow connotations and associations
of instability, and so made the leap across the ' unknown ' gulf,
and named it by the more respectable term ' Spirit ' I
61. The fatal assumption that man can be conceptualised in
Unit-Being, and fixed down as One, with a defining term of
generalisation attached to him, lay at the base of all their
reasoning, and corrupted that truth which the facts of the
Being of Man declared. Hegel widened his ' Notion ' doubtless
to embrace Man, God, and Universe, as One, but his Being
was still One, and objective, and consequently proved that the fact
92 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of Space had not been included in his synthesis of Being. If he
had included this fact of facts within the data of his judgment
of Being, he would have found it impossible to generalise
Being under any term except the Is, or Space-Idiom. Kant
fatally limited space to the perception of the object, making
space subordinate to the object as its servile ' form/ although
he invariably ' perceived ' space in every perception, or in what-
ever he perceived. His limitation of space was false to his
percept, for every percept we experience gives no limits to space.
The object is undoubtedly perceived under a consciousness of
limitation, necessitated by its objectivity being based in qualities
and quantities which always connote limitation ; but distinct
and inseparably allied to the object, the percept gives also
Space, and gives it to our concepts as Being, and Being with
no limitation in its connotations. And it is this space-being
which is given to Man's knowledge of himself, in all he perceives
of himself as Body, Mind, or Life, but which he never includes
in his judgment of What-he-Is, and which is never accounted for
by either the concept Body, Mind, or Life. These he has counted
Being, but Space he has never counted as Being. And as this
consciousness of space-being is the sole consciousness which
rids us of the limitations of concepts, generalisations, and all
quality and quantity, absolutely, so it is the consciousness
which frees our judgment of what-we-are from the restrictive
bonds of objective or Unit-Being, and rationalises Man as
foing even when Body, Mind, and Life pass onward on their
fluxional way forever. He is conscious of being when they are
not in his consciousness of being. He has a consciousness of
being more than that Life which he has striven to put into
his concepts. For even his concept of Life, great and venerable
,as it is, is a mere relative to his other concept of Death, and
is therefore limited by that relative concept, and is never true
to that consciousness of illimitability which persists in his
consciousness of what-he-is. The term Life, in short, notwith-
standing the modern emphasis laid upon that category, is
useless as a concept by which to interpret to the full all that
man is conscious of being. For in his consciousness of space-
being, as we have seen, man rises above consciousness of Death.
It is not possible to conceive Death as coming within the being
of Space. And it is this consciousness of himself as space-
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 93
being that, against the sneers and learned scepticism of long
ages, has enabled him to uphold himself as Being-everlasting ;
eternal-being ; the Is-Being which knows neither Life nor
Death, and which is not in the Flow. Moreover, it is this
consciousness which bursts all concepts of personality and
individuality which he has formed for himself, his 'God,' and
the creatures of his knowledge. For the concept, Personality,
as it stands in all human language, is /;z#-Being, dependent
upon that quality and quantity which are supposed to be
absolutely essential to being, and to our knowledge of it. It
therefore comes far short of the consciousness which man
has regarding What-he-Is.
62. It is the omission of the consciousness of Space, as
Being, from the concept which we form of any 'object' which,
since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has prevented the philo-
sophical judgment from reaching the consciousness of Whole-
Being, and has inevitably compelled all thought to accept
difference and division of Being as fixed within its very nature.
Socrates distrusted Nature, and turned away from it as from
a maelstrom of changing phenomena upon which nothing could
be built of ultimate thought. The concept seemed always to
give more promise of scientific stability. His pupil Plato
emphasised this break with Nature. The concept appeared to
be immeasurably superior as a basis of reality for the ethical
foundations in which he was chiefly interested. For him, every
perceived object was fluctuating, but the concepts, e.g., of
Justice, courage, temperance, etc., were apparenty fixed and
constant as cognitions. The concepts seemed better to serve
the end of Good, which was the grand desire of attainment.
And Aristotle completed what Socrates and Plato had initiated
and matured. The concept was then standardised, and regarded
as the true basis of Knowledge. Aristotle held that any object
was explained by the root -concepts of Form, Matter, Substance,
and Cause, concepts which some reduce again to the essential
t\vo, Form and Cause, and this explanation of the conceptual
object was accepted by the thinking world. Aristotle became
" master of those who know." (See Dr Zeller's Socrates, p. 48.)
But the consciousness of Space-Being was thus omitted
from the judgment of such concepts, and consequently the
94 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
' object ' was only partially explained. Are we to be told that
Aristotle had no consciousness of Space when he perceived
an 'object'? If he had, can we assume that he found any
'object' in his perception totally independent of Space? We
must assume the very contrary, viz., that with every 'object*
he necessarily ' perceived ' or had a consciousness of Space. No
object which is given by any sense exhausts absolutely all
that that sense gives in giving that object to perception. The
eve > e -g-> always sees more than the object it sees, be the
object anything whatsoever. But he disregarded that part of
his perception wholly. He saw in the ' object/ Form. But if
he had had no consciousness of Space could he have found
it possible to even obtain a concept of Form ? He saw in
the ' object,' Matter, and Substance. But take away, or try
to imagine no space, and what becomes of these concepts?
Are they possible ? Again, he saw Cause in his perception
of the 'object.' But this was impossible. He only assumed
Cause as necessary to the presence of the 'object,' as an
' effect ' in reality. The ' Cause ' was actually a concept based
on his deeper consciousness of Being of which he took no
account. However, it is clear that an ' object ' is never explained
by these concepts, for the simple reason that neither Form,
Matter, Substance, nor Cause, can become concepts until Space
is present in our consciousness to make their existence possible
to thought. Space is inconceivably absent from the perception
of any ' object,' and must therefore by that necessary fact, be
accounted as essential to any cognition of that ' object.' We
cannot separate space from the ' object ' in our perception,
and we ought not to divide it from the object in our concepts.
If we do, we despoil the ' object ' of its principal content, for
under no possible condition of existence does it omit this
statement of Space. It testifies to Form and Cause because,
first and foremost, it testifies to Space. And as we could
form no conception of the being of the ' object ' without the
concepts Form and Cause, it follows that these being essentially
dependent upon our consciousness of Space along with our
consciousness of these categories, the consciousness of Space
given in the perception of the ' object ' is the sole and necessary
basis of any cognition of its Being. And with the admission
of Space-Being to our judgment of an ' object,' all such concepts
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 95
as Form, Matter, Substance, Colour, Size, Weight, etc., are
obliterated as essentials. We are left only with Cause.
63. For if the 'object' indicates Life, then neither Form,
Matter, nor Substance, is possible as a concept of the ' object.'
These concepts require to be based upon the fact of Life
beyond them, and consequently, Cause is lifted far above
their plane of necessity. Without Life, the ' object ' could not
be conceived to have Form, or Matter. Take away Life, for
example, from our knowledge of the Tree, and Form and
Substance are seen to be dependent for existence on this
prior concept of Life. But Life is in-concept-ible, or incon-
ceivable, and if our knowledge of the Tree-Object is to stand
upon Form and Substance and Matter, solely, no concept of
the actual Tree-Object is possible. Our true knowledge of
the Tree-Object really rests with the concept Life, a concept
wholly imaginary. If then, we had not Space-Being still
unaccounted for, as Being beyond even Life, the Tree-Object
could not be said to be under any category of knowledge. It
would be Inconceivable and Unknown. But the Tree-Object
testifies of this Space-Being as essential and inseparable from
its presence in our eye or thought, and until we can also abolish
this space-being from any connection with the Tree-Object,
we must accept the fact of it as That which, after all, explains
the Tree-Object. It explains, that is, its Cause. Form, Sub-
stance, Matter, and Life, are all seen to be caused. They have
no testimony in our consciousness of them, as being uncaused
causes of the Tree-Object. But this is what we do have in
admitting Space-Being as datum of our cognition of it All
other categories bound up in our knowledge of the Tree-Object
admit themselves to be expressions for ' effects,' but in no
wise ' causes ' or ' Cause- Absolute.' Space-Being, so inseparable
from our perception of the Tree-Object, alone stands in our con-
sciousness as Uncaused. For we have just seen that such a
concept as ' God ' is itself in the Flow of changing things, and
gives no consciousness of Unchangeability apart from our
consciousness of Space-Being, a statement which we hope to
render clearer in our consideration below of Space as Whole-
Energy. Finally, if this reasoning holds true for all inanimate
and animate ' Objects,' it also holds true for what we designate
96 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
as ' Spirit! For we have exactly the same consciousness of
' Spirit,' when it denotes what-we-are, that we have of Space-
Being.
64. We may now affirm that the separation of the concept
from the space-content which is always given in the percept-
content of anything, lies at the very root of the great fallacy of
Division in Being as its ultimate characteristic ; and that to
Plato and Aristotle must be traced its fatal introduction into the
sciences of Epistemology and Ontology. They no doubt carried
it little further than its practical limits. But its influence on
Modern Philosophy, in its Absolute aspirations, has been pro-
found and disastrous. For in its absolute detachment as The
Idea; as summing up The All of Being; as Itself its own
Subject-Object ; as embracing all categories and all possible
characteristics of Being within its self-affirmed Unity ; or as
what Aristotle saw afar off as vor\<ris yo>icrea>9, its influence upon
every species of speculative as well as practical thought has
been baleful and bad. Unity became the grand fetish of all
Thought henceforward ; and as a consequence, the necessary
limitations of every concept, that of the Most High not
excepted, followed with the inexorable certainty of ( Fate.'
" The purpose of philosophy has always been the intellectual
ascertainment of the Idea ; and everything deserving the name
of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of
an absolute unity where the understanding sees and accepts
only separation" (Wallace's Logic of Hegel^ p. 354). Nature
was also completely severed from the thinking Mind, although
all the material of every concept of the mind is necessarily
supplied by Nature. Now, true Unity is a pure dream on
such conditions, for no matter how great Unity may be con-
ceptualised, Space-Being is inevitably found surrounding and
conditioning such Unity, and is never whole with it.
65. We say then that the fact of ' Spirit,' or the I-conscious-
ness which man so defines, is thus only rational on the natural
basis of Space-Being, for which no limit is conceivable. Man
cannot conceive himself to be different from space-being", in
which consciousness personality itself, as a concept, dissolves;
For our consciousness of space-being sublates in itself both the
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 9?
Personal and the Impersonal. Whole-Being knows neither
the personal nor the impersonal as different unit-beings? What
man has to realise in the space-consciousness of himself is that,
if he will put himself under a concept of personality, he must
do the same for Space, and, if he must assert space to be
impersonal, he must accept the same definition for What-he-is.
For, in his I-consciousness, such terms of personality and
impersonality are neither affirmed nor denied. They are
simply transcended in the common consciousness of Space-I-
Being, which, both for Knowledge and Consciousness, speaks
solely in the idiom of Is.
And as for the motions of man's ' spirit,' it is evident that his
tendency or ' instinct ' to adore the invisible and the unknown,
is a tendency or ' instinct ' which is rational and in entire
harmony with his deepest consciousness of What-he-Is. He
rises above the consciousness of all creatures in that he
acknowledges Being which is neither seen, heard, touched,
tasted, nor smelled, which is not felt, nor thought, seeing it
cannot be put into a concept, nor connoted in any sense, yet
which he sees in all that he sees, and hears in all that is heard,
and which he names as nameless, ' God.' And clearly, this is
the consciousness which lies at the root of that consciousness of
Being which is said to be Everywhere. It is this space-being,
illimitably everywhere in the data of our percepts of which man
is conscious as being inseparable from himself, and which he
sets before himself as Being whom he calls the Most High.
But for space-being in our percepts ' Spirit '-Being would have no
existence in our religious convictions, and but for man's con-
sciousness that he is whole with space-being, such an attribute
of everywhereness could never be realised by him in any way.
For all that man has attributed to his ' God ' is to be found in
himself.
66. We can safely say such things, because man has never
given to his ' God ' that amplitude of Being which is to be
found in his consciousness of Space-Being. He has always
persisted in putting ' God ' into a concept of personality
even as himself, and construing Him as Unit -Being, and
therefore limited. With the sole exception of Jesus, no man
has construed ' God ' by the space idiom. He alone founded
G
98 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Being on the consciousness of Space-Being, His own ' I- Am '
consciousness.
Professor J. Ward, in his notes to his Aberdeen Gifford
Lectures, says " there is still much to do in differentiating the
conception of God, to which experience directly leads, from
the conception of the Absolute which belongs entirely to
philosophical speculation," and he thinks that "this will be
the problem of the twentieth century." Prof. E. Caird also
has said, " Human development will belie all its past history,
if the new light upon man's relations to the world and to his
fellowmen, which science is every day bringing to us, does not
give occasion to a new evolution or interpretation of the idea
of God " (Ev. of Relig., i., 138). This is proof enough that in the
modern conceptions of ' God/ none is equal to the general con-
sciousness of Being which man is conscious of for himself. For
it is the consciousness in man that he himself has realised a higher
affirmation of Being for himself than he can find in the concept
' God ' of his day, that inevitably urges him to decreate that
concept and place another in its throne-seat. The conception
of * God ' as defined in the great creeds of the past, is thus felt
by the ablest thinkers of our time, to be completely unsatis-
factory. The voice of science proclaims against it, the murmur-
ings of philosophy affirm its inadequacy, and the unrest in all
the spheres of theology, regarding this highest concept of the
Church, point only to one result, viz., a consciousness of the
present concept * God ' as untrue to our deepest consciousness of
What-Is, and consequently the necessity that exists to develop
that realisation of* God '-Being which will harmonise more fully
with our consciousness of What-we-are.
Support to this view is found in such writers as the late
Prof. W. James. He finds it possible to speculate as to which
was first, God or Nothing ! He runs on in these words,
" Whether the original nothing burst into God and vanished,
as night vanishes in day, while God thereupon became the
creative principle of all lesser beings, or whether all things
have foisted or shaped themselves imperceptibly into existence,
the same amount of existence has in the end to be assumed
and begged by the philosopher" (Some Problems, p. 44). "If
being gradually grew, its quantity was of course not always the
same, and may not be the same hereafter. To most philosophers
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 99
this view has seemed absurd, neither God nor primordial matter,
nor energy being supposed to admit of increase or decrease.
The orthodox opinion is that the quantity of reality must
at all costs be conserved, and the waxing and waning of our
phenomenal experiences must be treated as surface appearances
which leave the deeps untouched " (Ibid. p. 45).
Like all thinkers, Prof. James cannot get away from
" Original Nothing," and, as we see, he puts it forward as a
possible theory of Being that this "Nothing" might have been
the volcanic Gap out of which ' God ' issued to be the creative
principle of our Cosmos and all it holds ! So invincibly
persistent is the Space-consciousness over the minds of men,
and so determined is every thinker to thrust it from him as
being Being at all. If Prof. James had had the faintest dis-
cernment that Space might really be Being, would he have
talked so randomly about an " amount of existence " being
assumed and begged by philosophers in order to give them
as much material as make a concept of a Beginning from ?
" Quantity of Reality ! " What quantity ever yet vouched for
Reality ? Absolutely none. Every quantity must, for its own
reality, refer itself to the " deeps " which have really been left
untouched by philosophers. With the result that, in these
days, neither what we name * God,' Soul, Life, or Spirit, nor
what we name as Body, nor what we call Mind, is ever freed
from the haunting qualities of Instability and Unreality. And
it never can be otherwise so long as we persist in conceiving
Being to be necessarily based in qualities which thought has
conceptually created, and which can be removed, taken away,
or lost. ' God,' as a term for Being, must be lifted above the
region of limited concepts, as if He were a masculine One
among many Others, and shown to be dependent for its very
existence on that consciousness of Space-Being which is the
true womb of every attribute of Godhead as well as for
What-we-are, and for what All Is. We cannot think differently
of God and Space, any more than we can think differently of
Space and What-we-are. If ' God ' burst first from ' Nothing/
then this * Nothing ' is true God. And it is only the arbitrarily
postulated concept of personality for ' God ' which hinders us
from accepting this Nothing -consciousness, or Space-Being,
as the highest and best attested consciousness for God-Being.
100 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
We shall see that it is our * Nothing,' or Space-Consciousness
which ultimately furnishes the human mind with every attribute
of Deity which, conceptually, is worshipped and adored as
'God.'
67. We conclude then this sketch of the development of
the concept Man, with the statement that until that concept
rises beyond, and above, all qualities and quantities into the
Being-consciousness, and realises itself as being space-being,
man himself is never satisfied that it interprets What-he-Is.
Wherever he begins with himself in what-he-is of Body, of
Mind, or of Life ; however he may analyse and synthesise the
qualities and quantities which he discerns as the material of
these concepts, or judgments of his being ; he finds it impossible
to circumscribe himself within these concepts, for a higher
judgment of What-he-is lies beyond them in his consciousness
of What-he-is, and ever supersedes the lower judgments, and
carries him beyond all qualities and quantities and relations
to still higher being in which he finds himself more than they
are. None of these are What-he-is, nor can he conceptualise
what-he-is, and ultimately he cannot restrain the fulness of
his being within that knowledge which is based on quality
and quantity and relation, and is generalised into concepts of
this and that ; and it is then he knoivs beyond all his knowledge
that he is unrestrictedly whole-being with Space-Being. This
is the secret of his ' finding himself in all that is,' as the modern
philosophical phrase has it. For it is not that his thought
ever goes away from him to meet the objects, and then comes
back to him with the knowledge of what that object may be.
On the contrary, he always finds himself there before his
thought. The movements of his thought only meet the objects
of creation because his being is there first. And every percept
and concept and recept of his thoughts suggests this fact to the
utmost. He synthesises all the qualities and quantities and
relations of body, but the Space-Being is never absent from
these. He simply leaves out the Space-Being consciousness
when he generalises the concept Body. That is, he makes
deliberate choice of the material out of which he forms that con-
cept, and expels he must expel the consciousness of Space-
Being from it. And it is the same with every concept he
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPt : JktpMNT:5: \fa'
forms regarding Mind, and Life, and Spirit. He finds his
Being, asserted by his deepest consciousness, to be beyond all
these conceptual Unit-Beings. And from each concept in
turn, he is always compelled to omit the Space-Being conscious-
ness from his judgment-of-what-he-is, before he can form such
a concept. And it is in this limitation of his every concept
that he is also aware of a beyond or something still unknown.
When he admits the Space-Consciousness into his concept,
all limitation of knowledge is transcended in the Is-conscious-
ness. That is to say, as soon as he admits this cousciousness,
he finds he still Is, in the same judgment with his judgment
of what-space-Is. No verge nor edge, boundary nor line can
be found between Space-Being and What-he-is. And he
discovers that his thought, far as it reaches through the vasti-
tude of Being, of which the Cosmos must be a fragment, never
outruns his being, or What-he-is, any more than the motions
of gravitation in its universal motions ever outruns Space-Being.
Every motion in Body, in Brain, in Mind, in Life, in ' Spirit/
exists because it is based in Being which is ever more than
its motions, and is not merely endless and boundless, not
merely universal and united with all and every being, but is
Whole-with Space-Being. And however man may conceptualise
certain qualities and quantities together, and define them as
One Being, ' God ' (and we see this process followed from of old
in all systems of religion, the Christian religion not excepted),
it is vain to think that such conceptualised Deities can long
afford that inmost satisfaction which is found alone in the
realisation of the deepest consciousness of Being. Such Deities
endure but for time, times, and half-times. They are simply
* Gods '-with- us but not of us.
68. These facts of our Being might indeed find many
corroborative lines of reasoning to sustain them, if an enquiring
attention were devoted to that purpose. It would be found, for
example, that the human mind never has been contented with
all it has conceptually known of Being. The general world
turns its eyes to the sun, moon, and stars, but desires still
further to see beyond, and beyond them. The science of
astronomy is thus created. The whole field of human know-
ledge might be exhausted in the same way, and the same
1G2 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
search and research beyond all that is known would be found at
work to discover still more. Whence then this confidence that
still further being lies beyond all we know ? Whence the
confidence that we are able to know it when it is brought
within the compass of the senses? Whence the conviction of
this evidence of all our senses being outrun by our inner
consciousness of Being? It is surely because with all that is
known and discovered, we never are conscious of what-we-are
as being out-classed and out-distanced. On the contrary, we
always are conscious of being far more than all the being which
is known and laid bare to our thoughts. And never, till we
reach Space-Being, level for what-we-are, would we find this
consciousness abated. Then, indeed, instead of finding Space
a mere * Nothing,' we should be conscious of Whole-Being, and
know then the vastitude of that knowledge which lies in What-
we-are, and which we and all are ever voicing in the conscious
I, the common voice of common Being.
We cannot therefore affirm Space-Being to be something
quite apart by itself into which the Universe and all its vast
contents are deposited by some interested Person who is outside
of it a Person who is supposed somehow to exist space-less !
We have no consciousness of such an Order of Being. If we
did, we should be bound in reason, to regard the space in which
this Person placed His Cosmos, as greater, or at least, as great
as He was Himself. If He lived spaceless, then He would be
limited by the space-being which He was not. He would
be quite a finite person. But nothing in Nature or conscious-
ness sustains such conceptions of Space. When ' God ' is so
conceived as independent of Space, the conceptions of both
' God ' and ' Space/ are creatures of logical travail, and have
nothing answering to them in Reality. The true consciousness
of Space subsumes all conceptions whatsoever, that of ' God ' as
a conception not excepted. For it is the primal and essential
consciousness for all we perceive and conceive and receive ; for
all we know and feel, for our seeing, hearing, touching, tasting,
smelling, feeling, thinking, conating ; for all we experience ; or
in one word, for What-we-are. It is Whole-Being, * God '
included. If we might venture the expression, the all and every
of our perceptions and conceptions, together with all of which
we are conscious as formless, substanceless, matterless, causeless,
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 103
quality-less, and relationless, compose Space. But space is not
thereby objective in our consciousness of it. For no such
Object could be conceived till it were also first conceived as
surrounded by space.
69. Neither can we regard Space and the Object to be
divided in Being from each other, as if Space were mere form
and the object were alone true being. For if we regard the
object in every possible way, it will always be seen to be space,
fundamentally. It is, no doubt, popular conception to conceive
that no space is ' inside ' the object, but is excluded from the
'matter' of the object. This of course is the very kernel of
defect in the concept of any object. Space is supposed to be
shut out from the object which we conceive to be existing
independently of Space. It is the analysis of all the qualities
and quantities and relations of the object, into their formless-
ness, their qualitylessness, etc., which proves the superficiality of
such a conception for Space and the Object. They are never
divided in the Percept, and we should never divide them in our
Concept. All our sensations deliver their truth whole, but our
thoughts only unify parts of such whole truth, or Reality. It is
the limit begotten of all motion and memory, as compared with
the Being in which they move. On the other hand, we are not
to rush to the conclusion that any limit of our conceptions is
strictly real absolutely. This is the fault of our lesser judgments
of Being. All motions are really moving within motions, as the
wave-motion moves within that of the tide, and the tide within
that of gravitation, and gravitation within that of Space-Being.
Similarly, the thought-motions, as we shall see, move within the
Life-motions, the Life-motions within the motions of What-we-
are, in which all motion is composed as whole with the energy
which affirms Is, of itself, or Space-Being. But all such motions
are not separate but whole. It is the judgment ratified in our
concept which is defective for each, and thus again objectifies
the motions themselves.
70. By ' lesser judgments ' we must be understood to mean
all judgments of objectivity. These are ever capable of recon-
struction and change. But this is not so with the ultimate
judgment ( I.' No data can arise to compel us to change or
104 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
reconstruct that judgment, if the space-consciousness lias been
included within it. If, however, the consciousness of space-being
has not been included within it, the ' I '-Being of such judgment
is one of objectivity, and is capable of change. It is such
imperfect judgments which give us the philosophically abstract
'objects' "Ego," "Self," "Mine," "Stream of consciousness,"
and many others, all of which are limited ' I '-beings, and in no
sense impervious to a new reconstruction under a new judgment.
When we admit space-being into our consciousness of what-we-
are, the judgment of our ' I '-Being is whole with all Being, and
cannot be reduced by further judgment. It is not then within
a concept of judgment at all. It is simply a consciousness of Is,
which conditions both the contents and motions of every
judgment absolutely, in its transcendence of Change.-
71. The whole question of the certainty of Reality, therefore,
resolves itself into this Is-consciousness which is independent of
all processes, motions, objectivity, and even personality, as that
concept is usually held. We have seen that universally and in
every department of human thought, ultimate certainty of being
is ever sought for under the compulsions of an irresistible trend
of mind towards the entire negation of objectivity, that is,
towards the Space-consciousness. Only a temporary certainty
is found in Quantity. All experience, ancient and modern,
affirms of the Quantitative that it Flows, or passes away.
Everything which can be objectified declares itself to have no
continuance of being forever. And similarly, no quality, or
character, which can be predicated of any being remains
absolutely valid, even when that quality is necessary to the
concept of Deity. Forms, Substances, Matters, Motions, and
all that is predicable as relative, are all kaleidoscopic and
impermanent. Instinctively, every sincere endeavour to find
absolute Reality as also absolutely certified in and to our
consciousness, frees itself from both quantity and quality, and
from every relation without exception, and seeks satisfaction in
the quantityless, the qualityless, and the relationless Is-con-
sciousness.
Whole-Being, or Space-Being, is not therefore a conception in
the ordinary acceptation of that term. It is that concept
vvhich has become recept in the identical consciousness of
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 105
What-we-are. It is the judgment which is not closed in limita-
tion, but whole-open with consciousness itself. For when we
say, ' I/ we do not necessarily say, ' One' It is a consciousness
of simple, open Being ; Space-open ; Is.
The natural deduction from such a consciousness, moreover,
is that all that is in the Universe, is space to all that is in
it. All goes through all, in all possible ways. Nothing can
be conceived to be absolutely or forever isolated from another.
Everything in the vastitude of what we call "Nature" has its
existentiality common with everything. They must be named
with Space-Being. In reality, there is no possible objectivity,
as that conception is understood in the human mind ; no
division ; no apartness ; no unit or unity conceivable in the
common existentiality of Whole-Being as it is affirmed in
our consciousness of What-we-are.
72. For although Science maintains that nothing in the
universe comes into actual contact with anything else, and only
approximates to a touching, this statement is only true when
the conscious basis of Being is not in question, or when the
space-being of our final consciousness of Being is not included
within the data of the contactual problem. It is a judgment
of Being which can only be proved valid when it is also
shown that the whole content of our percept of the meeting
of two objects is enclosed and fully stated in our concept of
contactuality. Two atoms cannot be conceived to be in
actual contact any more than two worlds, until we include that
Space-Being which is given in our percept of them within
the concept which we construct regarding their being. The
two atoms have no common basis of being till this Space-Being
of our percepts is admitted into our judgment of What-they-are.
As a matter of fact, each atom is usually generalised, conceptu-
ally, entirely apart from that space-being which our percepts
of its quality assert as existentially whole with it ; and there-
fore, with such data of judgment, it is impossible to conceive
the two as in contact. But when we realise the limitation of
the concept in so far as the Space-consciousness has been
omitted in such judgment, and then include this space-con-
sciousness within our judgment of the two atoms, it will be
found that it is still impossible to conceive them in contact,
106 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
for the reason that the two can only then be conceived as
Whole with space. Space-Being, as the ultimate fact in all
we think regarding any object, names its being above all
the qualities of the object, and simply testifies Is regarding it.
And this is true concerning all objects, generalisations, or
concepts.
It is a matter of some regret that Hegel permitted himself
to sneer at this consciousness as being "the night in which
all cows are black," not discerning that it was the consciousness
in which the 'cows,' the 'night,' his 'self,' and his 'absolute
Notion,' were subsumed in Whole-Being.
The scientific concept of the impossibility of two objects
being in actual contact absolutely, is really due to the fact
that Science does not recognise the principal fact, in her
percepts of these objects, which would enable her to make
that same statement with a wholly different meaning. And
it is clear that the same reasoning applies to the impossibility
of conceiving two conceptualises as ' subject ' and ' object,' in
actual contact, and likewise the concepts of ' mind ' and ' matter,'
' atom ' and ' space,' where ' space ' means ' distance.' The realm
of theology is filled with the same ' objects ' of conceptually ;
and the severance of ' soul ' and ' body,' ' faith ' and ' reason,'
' law ' and ' gospel,' ' God ' and the ' universe,' etc., etc., is only
possible on the same grounds.
73. But it must not be supposed that we are asking mankind
to lay this age-long habit of concept- making aside, or, in other
words, to abandon that mode of thought which creates all
Relativity, differentiation, division, personality; the sphere,
that is, which is governed by " the categories of the under-
standing." We are not attempting such a foolish task. But
we are contending for the abandonment, by every serious
thinker, of that habit of thought by which this sphere of the
Relative is affirmed as existentially true. We are protesting
against absolutising the Relative (if we must so express it), as
real in our consciousness of Being. And the great shadow
of doubt and suspicion which has lain, through all time, across
this absolutising of Relativity as true absolutely, seems to
justify us in doing so. We do not deny the partial truth of
the relative, the object ; but we affirm that it never gives the
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 107
truth of Being. All relatives are true as relatives in as far
as they include any portion of the space-fact within their
conceptuality. And just as it is impossible to perceive or to
conceive anything without in some way enclosing space in
such judgment, so is it impossible for any concept so formed
to be absolutely false. But when the Relative, the Concept,
the Objective, is taken to be absolute in its affirmation of the
reality or truth of its being, that is, when Quality or Quantity
is asserted to be essential to Being, then we humbly demur.
By the nature of the human mind, Truth is based in our
consciousness. And it is our contention here that the whole
sphere of Relativity has never stood rooted in our Ultimate
consciousness of Being. Every judgment on Being which
creates an Object, a related thing, a differentiation, or as
Spinoza would say, a Determination, is ever subordinate to a
judgment which, from the ' I ' - consciousness, affirms such
determination to be the unthinkable. This is our experience.
Summarily, no thought is ever absolutely true to the full
truth of Being till such thought is wide-open-whole with the
Is-consciousness. And when it is so, it is then Thought which
is not depending upon the material of Quality and Quantity
for its motions. The energy of such thought is the energy
of Whole-Being and equates with the energy which affirms 'I.'
74. Knowledge therefore cannot be confined entirely to the
technical sphere of the Epistemological. The Ontological, or
rather, the Holological, is its home. For * Being,' as the
object of the science of Ontology, is also sometimes objectified,
and is thus made relative, as we have seen, in terms of Being
and Non-Being. The entire realm of Philosophy is thereby
lowered beneath itself. Perhaps, however, this has been
inevitable. For the Is-consciousness has urged the thoughts
of men beyond the narrow concepts of c Being ' which they have
generalised ; refusing conceptual immortality ; and they have
been compelled under the stress of the Is-consciousness to
abandon all such concepts and venture forward beyond them.
But when the final consciousness of Reality, idiomised as Space-
Being, was put outside the motions of Thought, and judgments
based on quality, etc., were preferred as the deepest testimony
of consciousness to Being, then there was no other resource
108 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
but to view the Space-Being as Non-Being, and Being as
determined relative to it. Inevitably, also, every man could
find his Thought in such philosophical systems which were so
based in the concepts, Being and Non-Being, but he could
never find himself. Such concepts have no absolutely real
reference to concrete Being ; Whole-Being ; seeing that they
do not accept into themselves the only absolutely real Being
idiomised as Space-Being.
75. It is doubtless the same mistake of absolutising the
Relative which has played such havoc in all efforts to obtain a
true consciousness of absolutely Continued Being. Mathema-
ticians seem to boast themselves of having accomplished the
feat. The Arithmetical Continuum, it is affirmed, is a fact.
Number has yielded a result which consciousness itself has
shrunk back from helpless !
Now, by the nature of a concept, which has its physical
conditions governed by the vibrations of the whole Cosmos, and
built out of qualities which science cannot discover to be even
in contact with each other, an Existential Continuum would seem
in such circumstances to be the impossible. Hume thought
that we could not have a perfect continuum of Thought for the
reason that we never have a perfect continuum of impressions
through our senses. And this can be verified in a simple way.
If, for example, we pass the eye along a plane surface ever so
slowly, we are never able to effect a consciously perfect con-
tinuum of vision. The path of vision, strive as we like, is
broken up into points. And no other sense does better than
the eye in this respect. The hiatus is of course immeasurably
small, but the fact remains that we never can assure ourselves
that vision, in the case of the eye, is absolutely continuous.
The reason seems to be that vision, as indeed every sense, is
under the domination of both what we call Life and Thought.
Thought is under the domination of the brain, and the brain, is
in turn, determined in its motions by the pulses of the blood.
And as the blood pulses act in continuous variability, and as
the movement of vision is affected at any moment by the trans-
mission of nervous energy, the influx and efflux of blood in the
brain, the respiration of the breath, and other minor influences,
it is evident that there are data for believing that, eye and
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT- JUDGMENTS 109
thought being so conditioned, the normal and only result for
concepts of the mind will be one of limitation, point-to-point
differentiation, discontinuity, or what we define as Objectivity.
We are not conscious of thinking two or three thoughts
simultaneously, but one after another, just as we find in all
vibrations or pulses. We know that in consciousness itself
there is an energy or emphasis which is not equal over the
whole field of it, to which we give the name of Attention,
Concentration, and other synonymous terms. But we must
remember that that focal centre of energy in consciousness
never can be got to stay fixed in the same static place. It is
perpetually moving. And hence the difficulty we experience to
fix our thought upon anything for any length of time without
fatigue, the expenditure of energy being noticeable. " Every
conscious state," says Prof. Alex. Bain, "is accompanied with a
diffused wave of effects, muscular and organic, which is stronger
according as the feeling is more intense " (Senses and Intellect,
p. 277).
But the point to be noticed here is that these gaps between
our vision-points as the eye is moved onwards, are points of
space-consciousness. The percept gives to the eye and brain
that gap-material from which a thought or concept of space
alone can be formed. In another sense, the points are uncon-
scious points, as far as the object gazed upon is concerned.
That is to say, in looking at any object whatsoever, while the
percept seems to give a continuous * object,' the concepts of it
are broken up into points of consciousness and unconsciousness
of that object, although the speed of sequence is so great as to
be generally unnoticed.
All thought, or process of judgment, must be conditioned in
the same way. And this seems to be one reason why it is
impossible to have absolute continuity of conception on a basis of
the "categories of the understanding." It is certainly the case
that when we conceive an ' object,' we are entirely unconscious
of Space in the actual determination of the concept of the object.
And contrariwise, when we have Space filling all our conscious-
ness, we are, for the instant, completely unconscious of the
object. It is this fact that makes it possible for anyone to have
the consciousness that ' heaven and earth shall pass away.' But
this is only saying once more that all concepts involved in
110 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
objectivity are decreatable, and that our fundamental con-
sciousness which cannot be subjected to that process is that of
Space. And it is this consciousness alone which gives us our
veritable and undoubted consciousness of absolute continuity and
durance of Being.
Our Experience is thus always more than Thought, Con-
cept, Idea, or Notion. All that is involved in conceptual
objectivity is less real and continuous being than is Space-
Being. We identify what-we-are to be continuous being in our
space-consciousness, but we never can reach a consciousness of
continuity in any other * being.' Hence it follows that but for
our consciousness of Space we should never have any conscious-
ness of what-we-are save one of point-to-point being, differ-
entiated, and divided. We should have a new consciousness of
what-we-are with every new concept, and the continuity of the
* I ' being would be unthinkable.
76. Therefore, concept of quantity being the foundation of
every arithmetical concept, it is clear that, unless Space is taken
as the quantity, no consciousness of continuity for any other
quantity is thinkable. That space is believed to be quantified
in every concept, is of course the reason why we have objec-
tivity at all. It is the space which can be squared, or cubed,
increased or decreased, and is the basis of the Euclidean Point,
Line, and Surface, each of which though unreal, gives for the
time being a consciousness of reality, just because there is a
consciousness of this space accompanying them. And as far as
point-being of this nature goes, there is always a consciousness
of continuity within the bounds of the concept of 'the point \ whether
it be conceived as a pin-point, a world-point, or a Cosmos-point;
that is, whether such total-point is infinitesimal or ' infinite ' ;
but such space-point has always its conscious limits, and in the
end it is declared objective, and seen to be space ' materialised '
by conceptuality, and in no wise our true Space-Being. It is
logical or terminable space : concept-created. It is that space
we enclose within our concept of the sea-line, or the sky curve,
or between any two points, such as the two masses in Newton's
gravitation formula. No absolute continuity of existential being
is ever given in it. For when our true consciousness of Space
is brought into the data of our judgment of such objects, no
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT- JUDGMENTS 111
concept of unity or totality is then possible. For neither
quantity nor quality is found in that consciousness.
Nevertheless, the Arithmeticians are not the only thinkers
who believe that a consciousness of existential continuity of
being can be given by our concepts. We have seen that
philosophers may be obsessed with the same conviction.
Differences are concussed into unities ; subject and object are
caused to unite as one-being under thought compressions some-
how. The phrase " Stream of thought," appears to convey a
true consciousness of continuity, as also does that ' Self which
' returns upon itself,' or " strikes round into itself." It does not
do so actually. It is analogous only to the break in the flash
of petrol in the carburettor : the apparently perfect continuous
" stream " of thought impresses itself upon the reflection as truly
real, and then we hear of the * Notion, 1 in its absoluteness, as
containing the ALL of Being within its womb. We never
escape from unity or totality, in such a view, and the
consciousness of Space beyond such totality is not included
within such a concept. There is the usual differentiation
between Being and Non-Being, or discontinuity of Being.
77. In fact, if concepts are conditioned for their existence in
motion of Thought, then continuity, as a concept, should be,
owing to that fact, impossible of affirmation in the sphere of
objectivity. For Motion cannot be conceived except as
conditioned in space. The consciousness of space is ante-
cedent to the consciousness of motion. The space-conscious-
ness therefore antecedes the thought-motions. But the same
difficulty occurs between conceiving continuity for our Thought
as for our vision. Every idea or concept stands apart by itself,
and in passing from one to another we are as conscious of a
gap, or hiatus in continuity of thought-motion as we are of a gap
or hiatus in continuity of seeing. Concept is not continuous
because percept is not continuous.
78. Bergson has indeed made something of the fact that
mental states permeate one another. Continuity is thereby
insinuated. But Hegel implied this fact when he said " Being
and Nothing are the same." What neither Bergson nor Hegel
gives us is the data for obliterating each one state, and
112 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
making out of their debris one whole mental state as the
result of such permeation. One wave-motion permeates another
wave-motion, and the universe as well as the human mind
is seething full of such permeations, but what we wish to
know is if the fact of permeation accounts for creation, and why
and where each wave-motion gives up its individual energy
in becoming continuous energy with all energy. Bergson's
permeation of mental states helps nothing. He gives no
data for the sublation of each single process into one process
continuous for each. It is not indeed process that can give
us the data we want, for all process confesses itself limited
and conditioned in space-being, and is itself far short of
ultimation.
No motion therefore is conceivable as absolutely continuous.
We simply pass our concepts from point to point in space so
exceedingly swift as to engender a generalised conception of
continuity. ' Cause ' becomes c effect ' we say, but we are never
conscious of the continuous motion through which the one
becomes the other. It is because by the nature of our concepts,
space being omitted from them, no consciousness of common
existentiality is conceivable for them. Unity is all that can be
predicated of each concept, and Totality ; but whole-being is
inconceivable except on the basis of the Space-consciousness.
And when this is given, all the categories of the understanding
vanish, and every motion of thought is sublated in it,
79. Now, as we presume to think, it is just this consciousness
of Whole- Being which we always find absent from the systems of
both ancient and modern philosophy, and the absence of it seems
to us to be the chief reason why disconnection, division, differ-
entiation, and isolation prevail so grievously throughout all the
domains of Thought. The concept has been deemed to be
perfect as an interpretive instrument of Being, and Unity of
Being to be the ultimate truth in that interpretation. The
" Unity of Subject and Object " has been the goal aimed at,
and when this Unity has been declared perfect, it has been
supposed that "the riddle of the universe" was answered.
Whereas the consciousness of Man has always demurred to
this Unity of Being as declaring the truth of his existentiality
to be common with All-Being. No concept of his Thought,
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 113
however, was capable of giving him anything else, seeing that
in wielding the power of this concept he neglected the full
truth of his percepts, and thrust from his judgment of Being
that presentation of Nature which alone could enable him to
find himself not merely one with some other, but whole with all
that affirms Being.
80. Unity never yields a consciousness of Whole-Being.
The apparent satisfaction which such a consciousness gives to
our Thought is always unsatisfactory to our ultimate conscious-
ness of What-w r e-are. And perhaps but for the magnificent
genius with which Hegel enforced the concept of Unity of
Being upon the world, as the ultimate truth of Being, the
masters in Israel would have found, ere now, that higher
interpretation of Being in the consciousness of the Man of
Galilee, from which Hegel, Kant, and Hume have turned
away. For it is abundantly revealed by Him. No Teacher
of men has so exposed the poverty of the concept, and has so
exalted the fulness of the percept ; has proved how little of
the truth of all we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, finds
sanctuary in the inmost convictions of humanity, and how
small a portion of the ways of civilisation, so grounded in
the human concepts, ever harmonises with those ultimate
affirmations of our Being which we call, in the aggregate,
Religion. What avails it that there is always 'a unity beyond
every difference,' if such a unity still discovers itself, to all
eternity, to be differentiated once more from something else
not included within itself? We never obtain more by this
concatenation of conceptual unities than the arithmetical series
of numbers which runs out to ' infinity.' Our percepts still affirm
that there is being presented within every one of them which
is never embraced within the bounds of such conceptual unities.
For so long as Space-Being is omitted from our concepts of
Unit-Being, there will be abundance of expansive consciousness
in which such Unities may extend their differentiating and
uniting for ever.
It may indeed be true what Prof. Wallace has said, in
interpreting the philosophical system of Hegel, that u Thought
(the Idea), as has been more than once pointed out, is the
principle of unification or unification itself: it is organisation
H
114 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
plus the consciousness of organisation : it is the unifier, the unity,
and the unified subject as well as object, and eternal copula of
both" (Proleg. p. 324), but we search in vain for our con-
sciousness of Whole-Being in this so-called Unity. If there
were given us here, even an ultimate consciousness of Some-
thing which was One existentially, after this process of uniting,
that is, a perfect continuum of Being, we should be convinced
that the wholeness of the Unity was, at least, fairly adequate
to what we seek. But even this wholeness is never given in
such a Unity. Every one of these terms, ' unifier,' ' unity,'
'unified,' 'copula,' involves the concept as well as the conscious-
ness of coming-together, which again involves the consciousness
of space for the movement of coming-together, and indisputably
it is this consciousness of space, and not the fixed-up Unity
which is our ultimate consciousness at last.
But in actual fact, it is never shown how the concept of
existential identity of subject and object is effected among,
and out of, all these uniting concepts ; nor how a separate
copula is created for their union in our consciousness. The
Subject, the Object, and the Copula, are never existentially
united into an identical Being or Thing, perfectly continuous
in its being. They are only tied together in a total. The three
are one, in a concept of three, but never in a concept of Being.
In the nature of the concept it could not be otherwise. The
consciousness of Whole-Being, without the slightest hint of
parts in it, is completely impossible for these three concepts.
We require the data of that Being which has been omitted
from the content of each concept before true unity can also
be true to our consciousness of Unit-Being. We require the
space-consciousness for the process of their uniting, and it
is never brought into the judgment which asserts Unit-Being
as so effected, and as a consequence, we have only a pseudo-
unity. Neither is the ' Self,' looking on at this unifying process
ever sublated with either the united Three-Thing, X or with
space-being. Therefore, the Unity so effected is never absolute
under any circumstances, nor is it ever verified as such in
our consciousness of it. The ' Thing ' so united is a mere
object, and both * Self and Space-Being are consciously apart
from it in the data of our judging it to be Unity. In other
words, instead of a consciousness of Whole-Being, we retain
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 115
only one of relation and relativity. And this will be found
to hold true of all the 'antagonisms' and 'differences' which
are declared to be existentially united, as well as of the new
Unity which is said to lie ' beyond them.' They are no more
than Totals in their unity, consciously finite, and they never
include either what-we-are, or space-being, within their Total-
Being.
Now, it is our commonest experience that when we look
on any object whatsoever, a house, a desk, a tree, a finger, a
star, a horizon, the sky, a man, anything, there is given us
an undoubted consciousness of Unit-Being for that object.
But in every case without exception, there is always accompany-
ing that consciousness of objective unit-being, an inseparable
consciousness that the object itself is not the Whole of that
Being of which we have consciousness. And universally, no
object coming within the scope of either sense or concept
fills completely our consciousness of Being, or What-is. It is
never a consciousness of Whole-Being. Therefore, it is never
responsive to our deepest consciousness of Reality, or Truth.
8 1. Our consciousness of a part, or division in Being, is
therefore due to the fact that we never bring such object,
part-being, or unit-being, into our consciousness of Whole-
Being. If we did, we should not be able to conceive it as an
object, a part, or a unit. It is we who, arbitrarily, and
deliberately judge, or make a concept of, an object by omitting
from our data of judgment that experience of Whole-Being
given in our consciousness of Space, which, on our admitting
it to such judgment, inevitably renders conceptual objectivity
impossible and untrue. Bacon believed that, by rigidly con-
fining our experience to " things themselves," we could abolish
error forever ; but it is clear that, until he rose above the
consciousness of there being any actual ' thing,' he could never
reach Absolute Reality. The grand error is in accepting the
reality of the object, the part-being, or unit-being, as determined
in the very essence and nature of Being, as much as the
' Unity beyond the difference.'
It is for this reason that both the deductive system of the
ancients and the inductive system of the moderns have equally
failed to realise for the human mind a consciousness of Absolute
116 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Reality, resting on a fact which both sense and thought agree
to be true. The same unresting dissatisfaction and irritability
prevails to-day throughout the whole modern world of Thought
as obtained in the days of Bacon and Descartes. The deductive
process of reasoning was found by these giant minds to be
fruitless of those highest results which the foregoing ages had
hoped to realise by it. Greek Philosophy was characterised by
Bacon as 'puerile'; 'lifeless'; of little use; non-progressive;
and merely repetitive. He turned away from it " to begin the
work anew, and raise or rebuild the sciences, arts, and all
human knowledge, from a firm and solid basis." And his
practice of this resolution earned for him the proud title of
* Father of modern science.' We do not require to emphasise
in any way here the enormous value which the Baconian method
of pursuing the path to reality has had for the world. What
we want to do, however, is to point out the fact, which is too
evident to all thinking people in our time, that in as far as the
Inductive method professed to lead the human mind to Ultimate
Reality or Truth, it has fallen as short as did the method of
Deduction which Bacon scorned.
" A firm and solid basis," is undoubtedly what the pro-
foundest yearnings of the ' I AM ' crave. The world will never
find satisfaction under the sun until this is realised. The cry
for it has gone up to heaven since the world began. Great men
have earned their proud place in the admiration and worship of
mankind because they convinced their fellows that they had
led them to it. And it is only true to say that One alone has
stood rock-fast amidst the floods of criticism, doubt, suspicion,
and examination, which have tested these pretensions. For He
alone arose above Process. The rest of our noble great ones
failed to ascend above the All that was in Flow. From the
beginning of the world until this day, He alone discovered the
" firm and solid basis " above the sphere of Change.
Plato, for example, felt Bacon's yearning for such a basis.
Who has not felt it? And instinctively he sought for the
Primal Thing. The universe stood before his rapt vision. Its
grandeur and vastitude flowed onwards in its majesty like
music. Order and beauty were everywhere. Thought was
impressed upon every motion. Surely, he conceived, thought,
ideas ) must be the Primal Being. The Idea directs all under
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT- JUDGMENTS 117
man, it must also surely guide all things in the universe.
Moreover, to make anything, man must first possess an idea of
what he would make. It must be that Ideas were the Primal
Basis of Being. A Personal Being who thought these Ideas
must also exist.
So has Man mused since the ages began. And on the basis
of the fact of Ideas, as primal rock, Plato built up his system of
philosophy. That is to say, from these primal 'Ideas' he
deduced the Cosmos. By an easy generalisation, Deity was
placed over the universe, and was seen to direct all things from
His heavenly throne. Clothed in other or Hebraic attributes,
the Christian Church accepted this Deity, along with the method
of understanding His handiwork given by Plato, and the Aristo-
telian system of Logic which confirmed it all. And thus,
generally speaking, it remained till Bacon's advent.
Plato's basis rose no higher than Thought : Process of mind :
an ever-varying basis. All the deductions made by later
philosophers and logicians reposed on no better foundation
than he knew. They were supposed to embrace Nature, but
Nature actually lay outside of them, and the abstractions of
human thought alone dominated the world. Through Greek
Philosophy nature was lost to man. Bacon declared that we
must throw away these abstractions and return to 'things
themselves.' We must begin anew, and from what the ' things '
revealed of themselves, realise the Truth there was. He was
undoubtedly wise in his method. The ' Thing ' tells its own
Quality ; it characterises itself, and as such we know it. And
we know it truly. It is scientific knowledge, resting on a firm
basis of fact. And by following this simple and commonsense
method, the knowledge of men has advanced in storms since his
time. Truth has widened with the suns.
Yet we have still to ask, Has this Inductive method led to
Ultimate Reality? Has it brought more satisfaction to the
thinking race than the deductive process of Plato-Aristotle?
Has anyone the least confidence that Ultimate Truth can be
realised by these methods ? Does not the * thing ' but reveal
its Quality ? And does not such Quality change and flow and
give no firm and solid basis? Process is vain. We see the
proof of this more clearly in the experience of Descartes. He
also examined the c thing.' He examined himself. He likewise
118 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
had a vision of the universe, and saw the basis of it all to rest
on Thought. Cogito : ergo sum. The sanction of Being was
proved by thought. So also Hegel. His whole system is
based on this principle. And the principle amounts to a
disease in human intelligence at the present time. Process
creates, it is said! We think 'things' together!
82. Bacon made a false beginning in his assumption that
our senses are fallacious, and that our " first notices of things "
are erroneous. Our c first notices of things' had to be corrected,
he declared, by a stricter examination. He stated this axiomati-
cally, as if it had no exception. This was the rift within the
lute. The exception was the important point. For there is in
the very first ' notice ' of a new-born child, That which no after
examination, or ( notice' ever surpasses in fact of truth. It is
the experience of Space-Being. Truth, in its Whole-Being
grandeur , is the first experience of every ' thing ' and of every
person. We never lack this experience though we ignore it.
And it is this consciousness which was as certainly given to the
experience of the ancient philosophers as it was factual for
Bacon himself. And it was that conscious fact for which neither
the one nor the other had the smallest use. It is a fact of
the first importance, surely, that we are all intensely conscious
of Being, that is, of Space, which is not revealed by either a
process of Deduction or Induction, for the simple reason that it
has no quality, quantity, nor relation, and no * thing '-ness to be
tested for its truth ? It gives no consciousness of Change. It
does not Flow. It is indeed the "firm and solid basis" by
which all comparisons of firmness and solidity are made. It is
our conscious basis of absolute Solidity. It never requires to be
corrected by further tests and examinations. The mind of man
is always satisfied with Space-Being. No murmur has ever
risen from the depths of the human heart, that bottomless pit
of complaints, regarding the disappointments of Space-Being.
The reason for this seems to be that we have the same experience
of space-being as we have for what-we-are ourselves. We are
conscious of be-ing, but we are not conscious of being ' things,'
or of possessing quality, quantity, or relations which change.
The conscious ' I,' at its deepest, is identical with our conscious-
ness of Space-Being.
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT- JUDGMENTS 119
This fact ought to have been taken into account by the
philosophical discernment For no motion, or consciousness of
motion, but unfailingly yields also a consciousness of Space, as
its primal condition of moving. This space-consciousness
was present in Plato, as in Bacon and Descartes. Motion of
Idea ; process of thought ; changing judgment ; were surely
intensely intimative and informative of space-being. It is to
this space-being which Motion of judgment, process of Idea,
and all methods of ( thinking,' testing, judging, are constantly
witnessing and pointing. The process may be deductive or
inductive ; it may be from the Primal Principle to the smallest
particular ' thing,' or from the qualified and quantified ' Thing '
up to the widest generalised Principle ; it may be a combination
of these motions of mind ; it may be any conceivable process of
mind ; yet there will always remain the fact that such process
never yields any other result than insolidity, and Changing-
Being. The Ultimate Reality lies above all this, in that
conscious Space-Being which is ever consciously Whole-Being
with what-we-are.
83. But Induction, contrary to Bacon's belief, really starts
from the abstract as much as Deduction. It starts from the
'thing' itself. For this very 'thing,' no matter what we call it,
is a concept of the mind. It has been formed out of material
given to mind by the senses. And it would not have been
possible to characterise it as ' thing/ if the consciousness of
Space-Being had not first been abstracted from that material.
To call it * thing,' then, in such a case, is to name an abstraction
of thought, or a production of the conceptual judgment, which
is false to the whole truth given in the perceptual material of
the senses. The senses were not fallacious, as Bacon believed ;
there is never any fallacy given by our senses. But there is
fallacy often to a riotous degree in the concepts of our
judgments formed from the content our senses bring. The
scientific mind trusts itself loyally enough to the services of the
senses, and discerns constancy in the Universe, but is often
painfully compelled to alter her conceptual judgments with
regard to what these judgments have omitted from the abundant
content which the senses deliver.
There is no assured consciousness of Reality, therefore, to
120 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
be had either from the process of Deduction or Induction.
They only yield a result more or less abstract and unstable in
basis. The same falls to be said of all Logic. The conscious-
ness of the Space-Being alone gives the royal assurance of
absolute Reality. And it is the omission of it from the
fundamentals of thought and reason, which, we think, is
responsible for the instability of all intellectual confidence in
our time, and for that thought-sickness which fevers the pulses
of the world. What is ever lacking is the ' firm and solid
basis' which we all desire for our consciousness of " Spirit," that
grand and imposing fact which no examination of the ' thing '
ever reveals in the very least ; which draws its power of truth
from beyond all consciousness of All that Flows ; and which
keeps its throne-seat in the convictions of man independent of
either the methods of deduction or induction. And although it
has been put forcibly under metaphors of motion, such as breath
and wind y the metaphors are more the creation of the fallacious
concepts of the mind than interpretive of the consciousness of
unchanging reality which the ' I '-Being, or Space-Being, stead-
fastly maintains. It was quite gratuitous on the part of our
world minds to assume that it was not our nearest reality, but
one far away ; in order to reach which, they had to undertake
a sore process of doubting, criticising, and abstracting. It
is our Nearest. We cannot think differently of this Reality
and ourselves. It is so near that we must think space-being if
we think ourselves. But men have for this reason declared that
it is not real, and only we ourselves are real. " Descartes," says
Prof. J. P. Mahafify, " reasoned : space is real : but if not
material, it is a non ens: therefore it is material. Kant also
reasoned : space is real ; but viewed as a material datum, it is
non ens ; therefore it is not a material datum, but the pure form
of intuition" (Descartes, p. 210). The reality of space, to both
thinkers, was intensely real. But, to Descartes, this meant
material reality, without which there could not be Being at all.
Kant did not quite place the whole stress of Being on material-
ity, but in that case if space was not material, it must be
( spiritual.' And as this was inadmissible, space must be neither,
and only &form for our ideas of both matter and spirit.
84. Now, neither Descartes nor Kant had the slightest foot-
SPACE AS OMITTED FROM CONCEPT-JUDGMENTS 121
hold for such conclusions. Descartes had no quality, quantity,
nor relation given him in his consciousness of space on which to
base his conclusion, ' Space is material/ and just as little had
Kant for his concept ' Space is form.' These conclusions are
pure guesses. There is not a shred of fact to base them on.
But Descartes was baffled to know how there could be Being
without ' matter,' and Kant and Bacon were just as obsessed with
the conviction that Reality must have Form. A moment's
consideration, quite free from all theological prejudices, would
have shown them that they never had any other data of
consciousness for the reality of themselves than they had for
Space. And whatever judgment they passed on their own
Reality, they were bound, in loyalty to facts, to pass on the
reality of space, a fact wfcose reality somehow they did not
doubt !
This view of themselves, on the same basis of reality as
space, was of course the punctum stans for Being which they
were not prepared to take. Space must at all costs be severed
from the beings of Man, God, and the Universe. Better to
count it Nothing ! Space must be put outside of Being ! Bacon
as well as Plato believed, without the least item of fact, that
he was one reality and space another. Each held by the
absolute truth of objectivity. This is the conviction of all ancient
and modern philosophers, notwithstanding, as we see, that they
possessed a consciousness of the reality of space. Differentia-
tion, as a consequence, was assumed to be m the very structure of
Being. The latent consciousness of Whole-Being is still with
them, of course, and they never can rid themselves of its
insistent arguments, but as space was always left out of their
concepts, or judgments of Being, no such Wholeness could be
realised. It is the urgements of this Whole-Being consciousness
which lie, all the same, at the very heart of every effort to
effect ' Unity ' beyond all the sad ' Difference ' which is first so
gratuitously admitted. As if mere Unity of Being were of the
least consequence, in interpreting Reality !
The assumption that man was one being, and space another
and non-being ; and, certainly, not common being with man, was
the grand error. For if consciousness is to be our supreme test,
tlicn it must be affirmed tJiat no man is ever, or can be ever,
conscious of the dividing line between wliat-Jie-is and space. We
122 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
cannot by any possibility, as we must always reiterate, judge
ourselves to be different being from space-being. Conse-
quently, Objectivity stands on no absolute basis of reality.
85. It must now be evident to the reader, that it is the age-
long conception of human Personality which has been the grand
deflecting power at work in biassing the human mind towards a
false judgment of universal or whole-being. Man has assumed
the isolated oneness and apartness of his being, from every other
being, to be the sine qua non of all judgments. The high
question of discussion, therefore, hinges upon the proposition
Is man's conception of Personality true or untrue? Man has
judged his person to be himself, to be all of himself, and no
other than himself. His conception of * God/ and the ' Uni-
verse,' his conceptions of his ethical relations to God and man,
have been built upon this fundamental axiom of reality.
Heathen or Christian, religious or irreligious, fool or philo-
sopher, male or female, each has accepted this concept of
personality as the absolute Truth, and all being as other or
objective to it. It will be our endeavour to show that it is a
concept which is not sustained by the common consciousness of
man at its deepest, and that it is not the ultimate consciousness
of Being in either ourselves or Him whom we humbly seek to
follow as Lord and Master. We shall try to show that the
conception of personality, in the sense in which it is understood
in all Literatures, is invariably transcended by one which is
peculiar to His own teaching, a conception of personality,
indeed, which is dissolved or sublated in His ultimate conscious-
ness of Whole-Being-God, to Whom He ever professes to be
ascending. And it will be found that it is the Space-Being
which He always makes His basis of all ultimate statements of
personality -, whether such ' personality ' connotes ' Humanity ' or
' Divinity.' Neither ' Nature,' nor ' God,' nor ' man,' is ever
excluded from His statements of What- He- Is. Each is always
included, rather ; and in the resultant, or whole consciousness
of Being, He affirms freely of all that is, "It is /." In other
words, Objectivity vanishes in His consciousness of Whole-
Being.
CHAPTER V
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY
86. The transcendence of personality means the necessary
elimination of the concept or conception of personality from our
consciousness, together with the qualities, or characteristics,
from which that concept is formed. We are asserting that the
concept of personality, as it is customarily created from the
characteristics of unit-being, with its attendant attributes of
unit-will, unit-origin of thought and feeling, independent action,
independent experience, etc., is inconsistent with our deepest
consciousness of what-we-are, and therefore is a concept which
cannot retain the highest place in our judgment of what-we-are.
Every concept of the intellect is a judgment framed from and
upon the material which sense and sensibility contribute, and,
as we have tried to show, carries in itself the potentiality of its
own decreation, when a higher judgment transcends that judg-
ment which brought it into being. But, as our concept of
personality determines all other concepts which we employ
in interpreting Being, it follows that the transcendence of the
concept of personality is the transcendence of conception itself.
But this again is to abolish Logic in its lofty pretensions
of apprehending absolute Reality. In doing so, however, there
being no longer any concept by which thought can anchor
herself, we have the impression of stepping outside of Being
into Nothing ! But it is quite the reverse of this result. We
rise above all lesser judgments, of which ' objects,' either indi-
vidual or personal, are the products, and, with the space-
consciousness, enter the true consciousness of what-we-are as
horizonless reality absolute.
87. High Philosophy has deemed it her principal ideal to
124 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
reverse this process of Mind. In grappling with the problem
of Being she has unwittingly postulated the conceptual judg-
ment as the essential core and centre of her work. In every
great system of philosophy, therefore, we always, without
exception, either begin or end with a conceptity which graves
the impression upon us of its being the last laborious con-
centrated effort of the philosopher's wholly combined powers
of intellect. We define it as a conceptity, which has only
a thought-, or abstract-content, in contradistinction to the
true concept which always has a content of sense, or much-at-
once-ness of sensation. Hegel well designated his central
conceptity, BegrifT. The * Monad ' of Leibniz, the 'Substance'
of Spinoza, the Unknown '^--thing-in-itself ' of Kant, the ' Ideas '
of Plato, and all the central concepts, or conceptities, that
dominate the philosophical realm, give the same condensed
evidence of a final hydraulic-like pressure of the logical
energies. Each great mind, in its titanic ambition, is revealed
thereby as attempting to buckle-round the Cosmos ; the All
of Being ; God, Universe, and Man ; one strong conceptual
band, the extremes of which each seals close in one grand
logical judgment. Each be-grips^ or tries to be-grip, Being
in his concept, and, in doing so, ruins it into false limitations.
Such laborious effort flows from the prior conviction that
Absolute Being can be put inside of a conceptual judgment.
There is also the still prior conviction governing all such
philosophy that thereby a comforting Unity will be achieved
absolutely. And such a conceptual Unity has been supposed
as we have said, to be able to yield a grand and final solution
of the ' riddle of the universe ' ! And so it would, clearly, if
Being, or What-we-are, were capable of being clenched in a
logical concept.
The path to absolute reality is rather by way of the
primal space - experience of the child, and the full - open
surrenders of sensation-given love, than through the hydraulic
forces of the logical press in its creation of conceptities. Nature
must be heard in a deeper idiom than speaks through the
reeds and chords of the grinding conceptual organ. So natural
should we be in such contemplations as to lose ourselves in
the consciousness of What- Is. Even the concept of personality
should be regarded as the egg-shell from which what-we-are
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUAL1TY 125
escapes. But this, of course, means the abandonment of our joy
and conceit of thinking, in which we pass from concept to con-
cept, as bees do from flower to flower, drinking the perceptual
content of each as we vigorously accumulate erudite stores of
object -knowledge. The space -consciousness rather calls us
to a boundless empyrean, to commune in common whole-being
with true, invisible, illimitable, conceptless Being, and to leave
far behind us all the so-called ultimate concepts of God,
Universe, and Man, with which we are so familiar. All the
concept-belts in which we buckle Absolute Being must them-
selves be burst, and Thought permitted to take her instinctive
ascent into the space-consciousness, clear out of her cognitional
restrictions, even as the drowning man instinctively seeks the
upper surface of the water, ascending into the " wide air."
It is the strictly drawn limitations of the concept-judgments
of the ultimates of theology, philosophy, and science, which
have inevitably sundered each from each, and until these are
dissolved in a limitless consciousness of being, natural for each,
the severance will remain irremediable.
For the concept-judgment is a conscious closing and opening
of Thought, a grasping together of sense-material mediated
through sensibility ; and, as such, its own fundamental char-
acteristic is Motion. It always connotes Space-Being as the
prior basis of its very existence. But no concept grasps
Space-Being within itself; and consequently, we never realise
Space-Being as limited, or qualified in any way. An operation
of thought, whose products depend upon process or motion,
cannot therefore cope with our consciousness of Ultimate
Being. For we must always keep before us the fact that
the conceptual " space of three dimensions " is really objective,
and is true quantity. It can be squared, cubed, etc., like any
other quantity numerically treated, and consequently has no-
thing to do with real Space-Being.
88. We have referred in previous pages to the fact that
our senses do not yield us a continuum of sensation. Sensation
is constantly broken up into ' points ' of consciousness and
unconsciousness, as to the object, although this is not generally
apparent owing to the extreme rapidity of the changes from
one experience to the other. We always seem to have an
126 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
existential continuum of seeing, of hearing, etc., while the
actual experience is one of punctured sensation, much as we
seem to have a continuum of sound through the pierced card-
board of the pianola. Vibration-frequency enters into the
conditions of the light by which we see, and the air by
which we hear, and finds its counterpart, if we may call
it so, in the vibrations of nerve-energy, and the pulses of the
blood. Both from without and from within, the brain-energies
are governed and conditioned in their thought-creations and
motions, in feeling-and-willing-experiences, by physical con-
ditions which render an existential continuum of either thought
or sensation an impossibility, from an absolute point of view.
Every sensation, and every concept moulded from its content,
is created out of conscious and unconscious material. But this
sphere of our experience without and within, which is so
vibratory between the conscious and the unconscious, so intense
with light and dark, motion and cessation of motion, gives at
the same time, an irreducible consciousness of space-being as
environing all we experience.
Is it Darwin who speaks somewhere of pulse in the blood as
being a reminiscent survival of the sea-tide influence, in that
stage of existence when all earth-life was sea-life ? Perhaps
such a suggestion requires to be extended far beyond sea-
influences, to embrace the universe in its scope, for pulse,
vibration, wave-motion, limited outline, objectivity, sweeps all
Being as it is conceived, and the ebb and flow in our veins, in
our heart-beats, in our conscious-unconscious thinking, in sleep-
ing and waking, in living and dying, in the rise and fall of
worlds from nebula to extinction, is but a part of that
stupendous system of Being which the Space-consciousness
alone gives to us as Whole.
Now, in the very fact of our being conscious of Motion, as a
quality or characteristic of anything, we have a clear proof of
its being conditioned being. It is this consciousness which is
so deeply planted in the convictions of all ages that All Flows,
and that therefore, there is " no abiding." Man has never been
able to comfort himself with this evanescent quality of Being.
And if this conception of Being were absolutely true to the
nature of Being, it might well be said of the foundations of all
things that they are built in sorrow.
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 127
But of course the conception of Staticity of all things would
just as fully prove the conditional nature of Being. Both
Motion and Inertia are relative terms in a consciousness of
Space which identifies both in Whole-ness, a statement which
we hope to make clearer below in the chapter on Space as
Whole-Force or Energy. It is found impossible to have a
concept of anything, in short, without having also a concept
relative to it, except that whole-concept which is identical
with our consciousness of Space. The Motional is inconceivable
as motion without a relative consciousness of the Inert, and
vice versa. The strings of a violin seem only to vibrate between
the nut and the bridge, but there is just as much vibration at
the nodules of vibration as between them. And similarly, all
motions in heaven and in earth have a corresponding inertia
accompanying them in our consciousness of either. Each con-
tains the potentiality of the other. It is only when we lay
aside the concept of either motion or of inertia that we find in
the consciousness of Space that Whole-Being of both which is
more than they. Space gives no consciousness of either our
conceptual motion or inertia^ but only of Whole-Being, Is.
And here again, we recognise the consciousness of what-we-are
ourselves.
89. The conceptual power within us which judges, dis-
criminates^ or distinguishes, is, in this way, seen to be always
a mark of conditionality of Being. We never can attain to
absolute Being by its instrumentality. And the reason for this
seems still more apparent when we examine, even in an amateur
manner, what we may call the mechanism of the concept. And
Kant's diagnosis of it comes to our help in this place. He
brings the 'concept' and Space as it were face to face, and
marks their behaviour. He says, " Man kann sich niemals eine
Vorstellung davon machen, dass kein Raum sei, ob man sich
gleich ganz wohl denken kann, dass keine Gegenstande darin
angetroffen werden." " One is never able to conceive in one's
self an idea of no-space, although one may quite well think that
no object is present (or, met with) therein." In one's self, space
must be thought whatever is thought. But such a concept,
Kant thinks, may have nothing else in it. And this exactly
corresponds to our ultimate conception of our eye- or outer-
128 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
vision. Let heaven and earth as objects pass away, and still
we should have a space-content in our consciousness. Both
outer and inner vision, in the ultimate content of them, yield us
an unfailing experience of what we may venture to term,
Space-Spread or extension. Although no object were to meet
the eye, we should always have a consciousness of seeing near
or far. That is to say, we should always have space-objectivity
or a spread of space for the eye. And this is the same experi-
ence which we obtain for our inmost vision. But what Kant
does not notice is its mobility. This space-content of our
consciousness is contractile or expansive. It has Form. It has
motion. We can contract it to a point, the Euclidean Point, or
we can widen it until the spread of space-content enlarges to a
' horizon' that widens to the universe, and ' elanguesces ' into the
Space-Being. We have certain effects of intension and exten-
sion brought about by thought-movement and thought-energy.
It is of course the motions of life that we mark behind it all.
And, in such movements of this space-content, motion is yet
more pronounced in the fact of our consciousness of sensation
of mental propulsion, wave-like expanding every way. The
latter is a genuine sensation of enlargement of thought-energy.
But, as with our outward vision, when no object comes into
ken, objectivity still persists with a space-content, horizoned and
limited, so also is it with our experience of the inner vision. In
it there is 'no object' save space. As Kant says, we meet with
no ' object ' in our consciousness of this space-spread, but the
space-spread itself is distinctly objective. It has also mobility, as
we have said, and we venture to say, colour.
This is the well-known ' space ' which Kant discusses in his
" Critique of pure Reason," and which he has rightly defined
to have ' Form ' (K. d. r. V., Von dcui Raume t par. 2). It is the
same form of ' space ' between two masses which we call
* distance,' to which we have already referred. But we must
not mistake it for the consciousness of that Space which gives
neither form, colour, motion, nor any quality absolutely. Under
the domination of what is known as Attention, which is simply
the space-spread in activity under the life-energies, our thought-
energies can make such objective space into space-distances,
space-points, and space-horizons, and space of "dimensions."
But the Space of our ultimate consciousness gives no conscious-
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 129
ness of either quality or quantity. It is only when we have
swept Quality and Quantity from all conscious concepts that
we realise the true Is-consciousness, changeless, formless, and
substanceless.
But this space-spread in our consciousness seems to be the primal
mould of mind from which all our concepts emerge. Thoughts,
ideas, every species of objectivity, continually change and flow
in ceaseless fluidity, but this space-spread as their form abides
in itself. It is always objective. But we should find it hard to
say, in all its motions, when it was ever any object save space.
Even in its objectivity it is nothing but space. We have also
true sensations in its motions ; motions which seem to harden
into all our thought-forms, concepts, and conceptities.
This motion of the space-spread of our consciousness has
centrality in it, too. We could never conceive a 'point' if it
had not this quality. And this form, in expansion, passes into
the formless. We should never have a consciousness of formless-
ness otherwise. The concept enlarges or gives itself up into
the absolute space-consciousness. And in this wide-open
consciousness we realise whole-being, or what-we-are. And it
is because of this complete sacrifice of the form of conceptity
that we have a consciousness of ' Nothing/ We cannot then
be-grip anything. And then, because no concept is possible,
we take it upon us to affirm the absence of Being ! For
instance, gazing outwardly into space, we discern no 'object'
save space, and then we assume that we see ' nothing.' Yet we
have a concept of space in the sky-boundaries which is purely
the product of the inner motions of the space-spread. So
likewise, when we cannot think or conceptualise any 'object'
within our space-consciousness, we think or conceptualise space-
distance, space-object, space-form. And Kant called it also
seeing ' nothing.' It was mere ' form ' for all our concepts of
thoughts and things. But he was in error in supposing that
this space-spread was our true space of the wide-open conscious-
ness, which he elsewhere described as " all-embracing space."
90. Now, for all our sensations, as well as for our cognitions,
this consciousness, we maintain, is an identical consciousness for
their c form.' At the base, so to speak, of each sensation, there
is no consciousness of an object which might connote substance,
I
130 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
or matter, but there is a. consciousness of ' form.' And its
content cannot be distinguished from space. Sounds, sights,
smells, flavours, sensations of touch, and all our sensations with-
out exception, have this point-and-spread space-consciousness
as their original ' form.' So closely is sensation allied in it with
all our ' ideas ' that the remembering of the idea is to experience
sensation with it. The entire system of the senses of our
external experience is faithfully reproduced in our inner ex-
perience. And it is always reproduced through this mechanism
of the space-spread in which we can find 'no object.' This
space-spread is the womb of all * form.' It is the transforming
medium which from the bulk of our sensations engenders or
moulds our concepts. For there is always a sensation of energy
in its motions. It seems also to be the selective and directive
energy which transforms the mass, or as Prof. James calls it,
the 'much-at-once' of our sensations, into the art-forms which
are the pride of our civilisation. No matter what the sensa-
tion may arise from, originally ; no matter what special sense
may be its medium, this energy governing our space-spread
consciousness moulds it as it pleases. For example, a scene
of interest is given to the eye, but in different minds, by the
medium of the space-spread, the scene is transformed from
sensation into varying vivid ideas, conceptualised into sensuous
images ; tonal form ; or forms of colour. Sensation in the
first would probably be transformed into poetry, in the second
into musiC) and in the third into painting. All three would
be transformed and transmuted sensation, and all three would
be cast first as sensation into this mould-form of our space-
spread consciousness, to emerge through it into the concept-
forms of art. Yet the sensation, whether it were originated
by sight, sound, or smell, etc., would be seized by this energy,
and the sensation would be re-experienced in what we call
' Memory ' with all the truth of the first sensation, although
the sight were internal and the sound and smell were the same.
All 'memory' or recalling, may indeed be said to be
the re-seeing, re-hearing, or re-smelling, re-touching, and
re-tasting, or generally, re-sensing what has been previously
known to us through Feeling, somewhat similar to repeating
music an octave higher. No doubt, it appears strange to
speak of an internal sound, smell, taste, etc., but undoubtedly
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 131
with the remembering of the 'object' seen, heard, smelt,
touched, or tasted, the former sensations are reproduced, or
re-formed in the space-spread of our consciousness. However,
in such a case, the order of Memory seems to be reversed.
Before we have a concept of anything, originally, we must
have through sense the ' much-at-once ' sensation, and then
from such bulk of confused sensation our concept selects its
content. The concept thus follows the sensation in the order
of experience. A pain, e.g., is experienced, and then from
its bulk, concepts of intensity, locality, duration, etc., are
moulded in the space - spread consciousness. They receive
form. We then speak of knowing the pain. The sensation is
transformed into unit-knowledge as the gases hydrogen and
oxygen are transformed into unit- water. But, in remembering,
the order is reversed. We first recall the knowledge-form and
then the sensation-form fitting it is experienced. And as no
concept ever stands quite isolated from ail other concepts,
one concept links up with another, and the second concept
may be the one that really calls-up the sensation corresponding
to the first experience, a process which goes by the name
of the Association of ideas. The entire sphere of Memory
is strictly confined to the sphere of our conceptions. The
content of memory is one which has all been defined before
in conceptional forms of the space-spread. When we remember
a thing, it is by the original space-spread form of conception
that it is recalled. For example, we can never remember
anything which has never been put into concept form. We
do not remember ' God/ but only certain feelings and deistic
conceptions which we have formerly experienced in connection
with that term. We do not remember space-being but only
certain conceptions concerning space -being which we have
previously formed. Therefore, also, we have no consciousness
of remembering what-we-are. The formless, matterless, time-
less, quality-less content of consciousness, such as we have
in the true ' I '-consciousness, is never within the sphere of
Memory. It is this that explains why we have difficulty in
remembering anything when most of the elements are awanting
by which we formed the original concept of it. People meet
after long years and cannot recall either face or name. The
elements out of which the former concepts of each other were
132 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
formed are nearly all absent, and consequently memory fails.
Let but the former material be restored out of which conceptions
were framed, and then memory acts. And universally, where
conception is originally dim, blurred, and imperfect, memory
will be feeble, and where the concept is clear, sharp, and stable,
memory will be strong. But, no concept, no memory.
c Personal identity ' has often been based upon the so-called
remembrance of ourselves as being the same person who did
certain things at some past time. But we have not the
slightest recollection of what-we-are in the past, but only of certain
conceptions connected with what-we-are. We only remember
our conceptual experience of the past. And such remembering is
always a present experience. The concepts formed at such
a time in our experience are brought forth from our conscious-
ness, like writing out of sympathetic ink. But we do not go
back thereby into a ' past '-#. All the concepts formed
yesterday are sympathetically present to-day in our con-
sciousness, and we have a present experience, not of p&st-being
but of concepts. And through these concepts we reconstruct
our experience. But as we never have a concept or concep-
tion of what-we-are, we cannot remember or reconstruct it.
Hence, we cannot identify what-we-are through remembrance.
It is the fixed and rigid nature of the concept which also
gives rise to the identity of objects which have changed their
entire contents. A concept of a ship is formed out of the
material of perception such as hull, sails, masts, etc., and
so long as each of these is renewed, the concept 'ship' is
never changed. For the identity of the ship does not depend
upon one thing but of all as conceived together. It is a
unit-concept of composite material, and the concept is never
broken until the change is so great as to annul hull, masts,
sails, etc., each of which is a separate concept and exists
independent of the concept ship, and may be changed without
affecting the wider one which includes all. Similarly, we
have a totalised concept of our experience, as it has been
conceptualised, but never of what-we-are. Our 'identity' of
being, or indivisibility of being, transcends the uses of memory
and its conceptual mechanism, and is based in our ultimate
consciousness of what-we-are as space-being, of which neither
unity, divisibility, nor temporality can be predicated.
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 133
In original experience, then, the order is, first sensation
then concept ; but in remembering, the order is, first concept
and then sensation. And we should notice one difference in
the results of the reversed process. Memory never gives us
the same vivid and intense realisation of the sensation through
the re-transformed concept as we experience in the original
sensation before it is transformed into a concept. And the
reason partly seems to be that we never wholly bind up
in our concepts the entire content of the sensation, just as we
never have a sensation equal to all that sense gives, and
consequently, in re-transforming the concept back into sensa-
tion, the ' form ' of the sensation is never so full as it was in
its original ' form.' The fact, in its general aspect, is expressed
by saying that we never really exhaust all that is to be
conceived, or known, of the experience in its original ' form.'
The Concept is never equal to cope with the full reality of
the Percept. And this is the reason for the limitations of
all our knowledge, seeing that it is based upon such imperfect
concepts.
But the fulness of sensation itself is also limited, although
always embracing a far wider area of consciousness than our
concepts do. For in the fact that both are qualified in ' form '
in our space-spread, and that a consciousness of energy and
motion accompany them, we have a consciousness of limita-
tion for both. That is, we have a consciousness of what-
we-are as being more than either sensation or conception
reveals. We have a consciousness of being beyond ' form,'
in what-we-are. Such sensation-energy, and concept-energy
are conscious qualities which move within Being which is
consciously not either. We all have a consciousness of retain-
ing, or storing up in what-we-are such concepts and sensations.
As Dr Bain puts it, we have " the power of continuing in the
mind impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original
agent, and of recalling them at aftertimes by purely mental
forces " (italics ours).
Memory is thus a nexus between Sensation and Thought,
or between Sensation and Concept. Every concept is built
by what-we-are out of the material which sensation yields.
We have first percept, then recept of the material of the
percept, then concept constructed from what has been received
134 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
through sense and sensibility. Through remembering, then,
we reverse this process. We first have a conscious Concept,
then what was received into that concept from sensibility and
sense by Perception ; or, first, the concept, then the sensation ;
or, again, Memory consciously binds together Thought and
Feeling.
Now, in this relationship of Concept to Sensation, and of
both to the space-form, which in its original form has no
content save 'space/ and in our consciousness that neither
is what-we-are, we have the consciousness of Being which
comes neither into the * form * of concept nor of sensation but
which retains both in its uses. It is a consciousness which
connotes neither form, energy, nor motion, nor any quality
absolutely. It is the wide-open consciousness of what-we-are,
and connotes only Is. By the one we have a consciousness
of all objects, individuals, personalities, and relativity, and by
the other we have a consciousness that all such are Whole-
Being in Space-Being.
But if possible, we should not suppose that concept, sensa-
tion, and what-we-are, are each distinct ' things.' For every
feeling has imaging in it, or thought, and all thinking involves
will, and all three are but conceptual ' forms ' of that internal
1 much-at once' which we again name ' Ego,' Psychosis, Self, etc.
It is the arbitrary closing and opening of the space- form of all
our conceptual judgments which accounts for such apparent
distinctions. But again, without this space-form nothing would
appear. It is on account of the enclosure of a certain amount
of the percept carried through our sensations into the concept,
and so fixed by judgment that we can find it possible to say
" I see it." Before the space-form moulds this enclosed content
of concept, all is dim, vague, and ' blank ' being. The contractile
energy of the space-form controlled by vitality, shuts in itself a
certain content of the sensation, and then we say " It appears to
me." Our consciousness of the relativity of Appearance and
Reality arises from this fact. The relativity is itself only an
appearance, and such consciousness of it is always sublated in
the higher consciousness of what-we-are, in which no ' form ' is
possible.
91. The Retention of our sensations and concepts in the
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 135
whole-receptive ' I ' seems to be due to the fact that they recede
into the wide-open, formless, qualityless consciousness of what-
we-are, and may be evoked or reproduced from the Being-we-
are once more, through the same space-form into which they at
first became known to us as sensations and concepts. Only a
portion of all that constitutes light appears as light, just as all
that constitutes sound is only heard in part-form. The pencil
of light that comes into sensation and concept, as well as the
vibrations of sound, do not account for all that these vibrations
tell of Being. They only tell us of Light and Sound as they
are limited in our sensations and concepts. In the same way,
What-we-are is not all accounted for by what Appears. What-
we-are is also that which never appears. It is that also which
retains what disappears. As we have tried to show, it is
quality-less as well as quality-full. It is formless as well as
form. There is a wide-open, limitless, unclosed consciousness
of what-we-are, as well as a space-form, or closed conscious-
ness of what we are. There is a difference of content, that is,
in the wide-open, true space-being, Is, ' I/ and the closed
conceptual judgment, ' I am this man,' ' Ego,' ' Self,' etc. And
it seems to be from the former state of what-we-are that
' Memory ' draws all the material which is known as cognised
experience.
92. This space-form, or conscious spread of space, is there-
fore our primary consciousness of Quality and Quantity.
Without it we could not have them. It is the mechanism of all
Determination, and Spinoza clearly discerned this to be the form
of Negation. " Omnis determinatio est negatio," was his famous
aphorism. And negation is simply 'drawing the line.' For
what is determined, or judged as something, negates, or draws
the line between or around that something and the other thing
which it is not. But negate as we please, there is always the
conscious sowe-ness that is never determined, and we are
constantly trying to negate away the things which we have
actually determined to be, in order to lay hold of this some-ness
which as being is not yet determined. Hence the perpetual
search into the Unknown for this undetermined Something
which so persistently affirms that it Is. Our speculative
attitude of mind, that is, in the mechanism of our researches,
136 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
is persistently to negate away into nothing, the everything
which we have already determined to exist, in order finally and
absolutely to determine this unknown Something which we are
conscious Is but is not yet determined ! This is the perpetual
process in philosophical investigations which is so well known
to moderns as " finding the Unity beyond the Difference " a
process which may be an endless pursuit. For the unity has
always a difference beyond it again ad infinitum. We actually
believe that we can determine this Something within the form of
our conceptual mechanism of negations ! We try to conceptualise
Space-Being, or determine it by negating it ! This is the
false foundation on which we build our science, our philosophy,
and our theology. We seek for Form ; whereas the Truth is
only found, as we want it, in the Formless. Now, as a matter
of fact, truth in this way, is affirmed by us to be only in the
determined, the conceptual, or the Appearance which we know ;
and not in the undetermined, the inconceivable, the Real which we
know not. We confine ourselves to believe to be true only all
that comes within the sweep of our space-form, the spread-of-
space which closes-in on our concept -judgments, but we cannot
accept truth which is negated to be outside our concepts, and
of which we are only conscious as Space-Being, What-we-
are, Is.
There is reason for assuming that all animal cogitation does
not go beyond this stage of strict conceptuality. Man and
animal, in this respect, seem to have the same order of thought,
viz., perception, reception, conception ; but man has long
' irrationally ' transcended this limit of order upon which all
his knowledge is based. He has found that this order must be
surpassed if the claims of his ultimate consciousness are to
be satisfied. Therefore in his urgent higher needs, he has gone
beyond the concept stage and its restrictions, and laid hold of
truth by instruments which he designates ' Faith ' c Intuition,'
and such like, and which, though convenient, seldom yield to
such truth a genuine certainty. They grope to seize by hands
that which no hands can seize. They try to begrip by concep-
tions that which no conception can grasp save when conception
is full-open with consciousness, and identical with it.
The senses give us * presentations,' and these again are
' represented ' in this space-form, or space-horizonal form of
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 137
our concepts, and thus from the vastitude of the inexhaustible
reservoir of Whole-Space-Being we be-grip portions which are
made so in the motions of our concepts, and for a little while
we hold them true and real as they so appear to us, and then
the forms in which they are so cast must be re -cast, and
re-formed according to the same mechanism of mind, and what
we have so objectified as 'self,' 'ion,' 'world,' 'nature,' 'God,'
' Universe,' ' Man,' or ' Thing ' of any name, ' elanguesces ' under
the space-form motions ; and then its change proves its utter
negation from our convictions of truth. It is really the force
behind this process of concept-mechanism which from time to
time, as the centuries wend onwards, bursts the old wineskins
of the Categories and the Creeds, and for a time seems to
consume all our revered formulae of Faith and Practice. It is
the force of the higher ' I Am ' of our deepest consciousness
which is at work in and under such movements, and all such
movements are undoubtedly more essential to what-we-are than
is the rising and setting sun. For in reposing absolute confi-
dence in Being which is only Being determined by our concept-
mechanism, we have to be retaught, often in sorrow, that it is
not by unchangeably focussing our consciousness upon an
' Object,' however great, nor upon a ' Person/ however
Excellent, that we best interpret the full God-Consciousness
within us, but only in wisely acknowledging the space-form
tent of thought which is temporarily spread for us in the
wilderness, but which is forever to be enlarged and widened
inimitably through every 'form' of possible objectivity till
every shred of objectivity is surrendered, and until such space-
forms stand level with the consciousness of formless Space-
Whole-Being
And it humbly seems to us that this is the process which,
like subterranean energy, underlies Universal History. Life is
but a principal current in the vast tidal movement^ and is
itself confessedly subject to change. And if this statement is
admitted to be true, then we must regard it just as futile to
build any system of philosophical thought upon that basis, even
though it may be scientifically accredited, as to found upon
the last residual concept or 'Notion' which is proved able to
survive the solvents of logical decreation.
But there is no doubt about the attractions which the
138 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
postulate of Life creates for the speculative intellect. It is
believed to be concrete, universally experienced, and scientifi-
cally approved as demonstrable fact The power which this
postulate sways over all human convictions, and the grand value
which is placed upon it by every living thing, cannot be ques-
tioned. It is indeed a vast and profound experience, and one
that extends far beyond that of man. We can hardly imagine
a more transcendent state of Being for even the solemn
conceptions, God, Universe, Nature, World, Man, than that of
Life. ' Can even God/ we muse, * be greater than the Living
One?' Life as a basis of Being seems to exhaust completely
all experience as it thrills through the domains of sense,
sensation, thought, and consciousness.
Perhaps, we should have been compelled to accept this Life
postulate as the ultimate of Being if it had been possible to
keep apart from it the consciousness of Death. But this is also
experience. Life is not Death, and Death is not Life ; and
with such data merely, it is sheer impossible to rise above that
field of Being in which they hold universal sway. Each is but
a limited concept of our space-spread consciousness.
If, for example, we daringly speculate on Being beyond or
after this Life-and-Death field of experience, we find as a result
that every conception or judgment we form simply repeats,
perhaps with more expansiveness, those conceptions and
judgments which we form concerning Life-and-Death experi-
ence here. We never can realise a state of Being in which Life
and Death are impossibilities, and absolute unknowns and
inconceivables. The utmost we can do is to add a vague
* eternal ' to each, only intensifying the duality. Yet, marvellous
enough, this is the state of Being; Unrelated Being; com-
pletely transcending correlated Being of Life and Death ;
which human consciousness, at its deepest, has insisted upon
as only real and true, ever since the human being evolved and
developed to its present level of consciousness. And it is clear
that man has never realised its full truth and reality just
because he has never taken the only way of doing so, viz., by
admitting his consciousness of space to be his primal conscious-
ness of Being. Instead of doing so, he has steadfastly kept
space-being from the data of his judgment as to the reality and
truth of What-Is,
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 139
1 Somehow/ he muses, ' Matter, Mind, Life, should constitute
the absolute basis of Being, but in no wise Space.' And this
he has affirmed even when each in turn, and all coupled together
have been systematised, accepted, and finalised, and still found
wanting ! For with such categories his consciousness and his
concept of Being have never identified themselves in a wide-
open, limitless judgment of Whole-Being equal to that which is
given in his consciousness of ' I.' And until this is done, his
experience is not exhausted of what-he-is. But as soon as this
' I '-consciousness of Being is realised as true space-consciousness
of Being, human consciousness of Reality at once transcends all
possible judgments or conceptions of Unit-Beings, Life and
Death, for the simple reason that it is impossible to judge or con-
ceive or imagine Space-Being to be either one or changing ; to be
either living or dead. In this consciousness of Being, the con-
cepts Life and Death vanish. So also all assumptions fade away
which insist that processes of abstraction or decreation are essential
to manifest Reality, or necessary to the creation and evolution of
Being. Process on such assumptions becomes preposterous,
for, if Space neither lives nor dies, no more does it proceed.
We have no experience, and no consciousness of such processes.
On the contrary, with the space-consciousness as consciousness
of what-we-are, we rise above the Life-and-Death field of
conceptual-Being here, and enter the realisation of that relation-
less Whole-Being which, out of the depths of humanity, has
murmured its complaint through all time against the so-called
'Absolutes' of logical judgments, protesting itself independent
of Life, as man has conceived it, and wholly impossible to
Death.
The consciousness of space-being then is a consciousness of
Being in which Life and Death are inconceivable, transcending
not only such relativity, but all relativity absolutely (as we hope
to show more fully below), and so transcending all relativity
for the simple reason that Space-Being has no conceivable
Other. This also is exhaustive of Whole-Experience. And
thus we seem to grasp better how and why it is that concepts
and judgments which are framed on all that our senses are said
to bring to us, or on all that we conceive of * phenomena,' and
on all that we totalise as ' God/ Universe, Nature, Man, Life,
and Death, constitute but imperfect, limited, and meagrely
140 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
relative ' realities,' far below the boundless, relationless Being
which is affirmed and attested in our conscious ' I.' We also
approach closer to the Why and the Wherefore of that
tremendous insistence through all time and thought, of the
immovable permanence of Being ; the inflexible stability and
uniformity of Nature; the Immortality of man; the ever-
assured Hope, irrepressible by the potent conceptions of Death,
Hell, and Sin, of Bliss unspeakable beyond all sorrow ; of
Perfection above age-long bestiality and degradation ; and of
Beatific Existence more exalted than prophet, poet, or seer has
said or sung. Is it not here, too, that we discern the limited
falsity of the term ' Being ' when it merely connotes the total
ALL, which comprehends ' God/ universe, Nature, Man, with all
their processes of Thought, Life, and Death, while omitting Space-
Being from such a Total? For, even assuming that all lives;
eternally lives ; we never yet escape from the limiting duality of
Life-Being and Space-Being. Consequently, the postulate of
' Life' is as useless as 'Thought,' 'Matter,' ' Mind,' or * Substance '
as an ultimate of Being and Experience ; seeing it is inseparable
from motion and process in generation, growth, and decay ; all
which are necessarily conditioned in our consciousness of space-
being as primal and antecedent to them.
Moreover, how could we explain rationally, save by our
consciousness of space-being, that marvellous conviction in
mankind through all ages that when deprived of eyes man will
yet see ; of ears he will hear ; of brain and nerves he will think
and feel and will ; of all qualities and quantities on which his
existence and life depend he will still be ; and be well? When
deprived of all and everything which he is now conscious of
possessing, man is yet confident in his consciousness of what-
he-is, that he will possess far more, and be more than he now
is, even when body and life, and heaven and earth pass away.
' Spirit' being as abstract and unscientific as all other terms for
what-we-are, our consciousness of space-being alone accounts
rationally, concretely, and scientifically, for such a profound
anomaly. Most certainly, ' Life ' as a postulate, seems totally
inadequate to it.
Consequently, at such a point of view, we appear to under-
stand more clearly why civilisation, which rests on the ideals
which Life creates and embodies, is always, at crucial periods,
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUAL1TY HI
compelled to root out her old foundation-stones and rebuild her
fabric anew. Every Creed becomes untrue, and every Category
defective. Civilisation does not build on Whole-Being as her
fundamental consciousness. She accepts the part-being of our
human concepts as alone truth, and the Nothing-Consciousness
is nothing to her. Take one great instance. Christendom took
over the objective God-Being of the Hebrew conception, and
neglected the Whole-God-Being of the conception of her Master,
and as a result, all conceptions within her theological repertory
are never other than fluxional and evanescent. The Man of
Galilee accepted His own ' I Am ' consciousness as sufficient for
His consciousness of God, totally sundering Himself from the
Hebraic consciousness of God-Being which was derived from
' things ' outside of that consciousness, and the Church in pre-
ferring the latter has never yet come into her full inheritance.
In the same scope of thought, it must be regarded as a calamity
that Philosophy should have turned away from the great
consciousness of Whole-Being, which is so persistently asserted
in the human being, in order to partition out Whole-Being into
a This and That, Finite and Infinite, Phenomenon and
Noumenon, Being and Nothing, Known and Unknown, Mind
and Matter, etc., always contented if she could tie the ' differ-
ences 'into a mathematical knot-being of Unit-Being! What
really does it avail that we adorn such a Unit-Being with such
respectable titles as * Notion ' or * Spirit,' when neither ' Notion '
nor ' Spirit ' will consent to be Space-Being. And as we are far
more intensely conscious of Space-Being as Real than we are
of such ' Notion ' or ' Spirit,' does not the duality stand as sullen,
as dogged, and as determined to be duality as ever it has done?
This conceptual ' Notion ' or ' Spirit,' forsooth, asks us to
consider itself as something far other than space, and as
independent Being from Space-Being ; and this space-spread
realisation we are supposed to accept as the proudest product
of human reason !
93. However, with such facts as given, we also better under-
stand that when such partition of Being was deemed to be the
essential process of the true realisation of Being, and the
closed space-spread or space-form of our consciousness was
accepted as our ultimate consciousness, it was inevitable that
142 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the human mind should invent the logical instruments of
relativity known as Analysis and Synthesis. The conceptual
realm being accepted as apprehending all Being, and Being as
capable of being constricted to a conceptity, the Centre and
Circumference of that realm through all its varieties of nomen-
clature conditioned every system of philosophy. The Centre
became Monistical and the Circumference was believed to be
identical with Whole-Being. Hence such absolute products as
unit-being, self-being, thought-being, notion-being, ^-isolations
beyond being, and the general constriction of the logical foetus.
Hence also the efforts to reduce the ALL to the EVERY, and the
EVERY to EACH, and the minimum of the EACH to TWO, and
the TWO to a SAME. Thought wandered between this Point-
Thing as centre and the Circumference of ALL which was
supposed to ' become ' of itself out of it. The consciousness of
space-being which washes out both limitations did not count.
A synthetic judgment a priori, was held to exhaust the bottom-
less content of our consciousness of Whole-Being ! As if all
synthesis were not excluded from such a consciousness as being
superfluous. For in such a consciousness there is never any
hint of distinctions, or of any necessity to synthetically bind
together that which never has been analysed asunder.
Yet it is said that the perfect scientific method is, first,
to collect your * manifold ' of facts, and then, secondly, to
synthesise or generalise from these the grand primal principle
which commands * Unity ' from the * Manifold.' Philosophy is
assumed to be a science. Therefore, let her from the collocation
of facts of sensation, and thought; of feeling, thinking, and
conation ; analyse and synthesise from these the ' personality,'
the 'self,' just as similarly, from the facts of the cosmos, let her
evolve * God ! '
94. The supposition underlying such a process is that Reality
is originally hidden, and that it must be tunnelled out from
beneath its mountain by the analytical machine, and then from
its piecemeal condition sewed up into a synthetical Form,
named Unity, a ready-made pattern for which we all possess
a priori ! It is never guessed that Reality, as we have it in our
consciousness of Space-Being, is the simplest and most patent
of all truths, or facts; being Fact itself; without which neither
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 143
the process of analysis nor that of synthesis could move. So
real, indeed, is the consciousness of this Fact that we could not,
though we tried our very utmost, feel, think, or conate anything,
as real, apart from it. For it is the consciousness which
dissolves the conceptual bands of every generalisation, though
that generalisation should be even the law of gravitation, and
widens all into Whole-Being, beyond the narrow processes of
either analysis or synthesis. When we say * I,' are we in the
least conscious of being capable of being analysed into
* elements ' of any kind, and then synthesised once more into
a Unity? But if such instruments of logic were essential to
the elucidation of Reality, would they not be at home in their
operations upon the ' I ' ? The genuine consciousness of the
* I ' is, of course, one that places Being above centres and
circumferences, analysis and synthesis, and every operation of
logic absolutely.
It is indeed amazing to see such age-long persistence on
the part of our great thinkers to affirm Unit-Being, Individua-
tion, and personal-being, as absolutely apart-being from every
other being, all put into a Unit-Receptacle, the Universe, as
marbles are put into a bag; such Universe itself having been
built up by a Creator outside of it, where was no space, out of
certain irreducible 'elements,' the material for which that
Creator is supposed to have had in His possession a priori !
Would not the analogy of the Leaf serve us much better, if we
required it ? For here we have the * isolated unit-being ' of our
concepts, and the whole-being of our deeper consciousness, both
frankly affirmed. Where the error creeps in is in assuming the
isolation of the leaf to be absolutely affirmed. It is merely
isolated-being, an individual, when we regard it conceptually as
completely independent of the branch. When we regard it as
being which involves, in its own, twig, branch, trunk, tree, earth,
air, sky, space, we discern also the reality of its truth of
Whole-Being as well as its truth of apparent part-being. And
personality, either for man or God, is susceptible to the same
considerations.
The disastrous confusion which this absolutisation of Unity
of Being has wrought in conceptions of personality is perhaps
principally due to Kant. His magnificent genius reared an
authority for what he asserted, too respectable to be controverted.
144 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
And he declares again and again that his primal apperception
of himself is one which yields only a representation of Unity.
He is One. He is One all by himself. So terribly isolated is
his Self that he never can come near enough to it to even think
it, or know it. It is mere Unit-Being, an unknown ^r-thing.
This was of course, the result of closing his conceptual
mechanism of the space-spread, his space-form, to an in-
finitesimal Euclidean point-thing. It is the power by which
we create our concept of the Unit. But Kant never was able
to show how he, as One, was also whole-being with everything
that was Many, nor how the concept of Unit-being escaped
from the possibilities which condition all Units, of being halved,
quartered, etc., and so made subject to all the processes of
numeration. His limitations are staring, in his view that it is
always a case of having a possible consciousness of ourselves
because we have first a possible consciousness of synthetically
judging ourselves as One, independent of any help from what
we have experienced. It is a judgment from before experience,
or a priori. He actually believed also that the uses of space
and time were exhausted when they enabled us to effect a
possibility of synthesising the self as Unit-Being!
95. Now, it is never enough that we should reach an assur-
ance in consciousness of personal one-ness for ourselves, for
such a concept never permits a departure from itself. It is
always impossible to find the path out of such a closed con-
ceptual judgment to a wider one which includes every personal
unit-being in common whole-being. Fichte felt this limitation,
and thereupon enlarged his ' Ego ' to a concept of universal
activity which was the unconditioned basis of all representation,
although not personal. But this ' Ego ' could never connote
more than limited truth of its reality seeing that our ultimate
consciousness of it was only motion, abstract motion, without
any quantity of being underlying it. The consciousness which
is given in the ' I ' must not only yield unlimited reality for
what-we-are ; we must be assured through the same consciousness
that such reality is unlimited and absolute for all being, other-
wise our practical and rational life will drift apart from each
other. For we all act on the consciousness of all things being
as real in their being as we are ourselves. Through the ' I '
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 145
consciousness of reality we must find for all things an assurance
of reality so indisputable that, were we to try, we should find it
impossible, absolutely, to predicate of any other being any
reality which was other than that reality which we realise in
the ' I.' The consciousness summed up in ' I/ is not a matter
that concerns merely a one-self particularly. It is the sole
consciousness which we have for What-Is absolutely. We
interpret through it all that we are conscious of for anything.
And if we find the * I ' a limited reality, we must expect to find
no other for any other being. It should also harmonise such
reality as mucli through sense as through understanding. It ought
to appeal to our consciousness of the reality of 'matter' as
much as to the consciousness of reality of ' mind.' It should be
as ' natural ' as * spiritual.' And it is the consciousness of the
' I ' as Space-Being, unlimitedly true for all that Is, which alone
meets these demands. That is to say, the ' I ' consciousness, as
a pure matter of common experience, proves itself to be space-
whole in that it never connotes a consciousness in itself of
movement of synthesis as necessary to a consciousness of one-
ness of being, nor yet a consciousness of movement of analysis
as necessary to a consciousness of difference from other beings.
The * I ' consciousness is absolutely independent of such thought-
motions to think itself to be itself or to think itself away from
other selves. In other words, it is never found under the
limitations of conceptually. We think ' I ' as we think Space-
Being.
As a matter of common fact, no person is, has been, or ever
shall be, conscious of having been synthetically united out of a
' manifold ' as one being, and so united from before his experi-
ence. The Kantian 'self of synthetical unity, a priori, is a
logical ghost, a mere conceptity, created in the space-spread of
the conceptual judgments.
96. Personality, in this way, is seen as a concept to stand
upon false foundations. We are assumed to be Othered by the
eternal nature of Being, separated-out, analysed, detached ; and
everlastingly to be so. If the conception of the Communion of
the Saints, or the Communion of all with the ALL, is to be
rationalised at all, on such a basis, it must be as mere Com-
munication but not Communion. All such communications,
K
146 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
too, must be conceived as made across the hard-cut frontiers of
our ' personalities.' All being, in short, is thereby put under
the tyranny of analysis and synthesis, two motions of the logical
demiurgus, and Existence is to be conceived as poised upon the
precise points of these analytic and synthetic forks. When it is
said, for example, " I think you," there is a synthetic judgment
implied for ' you,' as unified from the ' others,' which again,
analytically, are judged to be not 'you.' When again it is said,
" I think," there is a new synthetic judgment implied in the
unification of motions which analytically are judged to be
different from the " I." When it is said, " I am," there is a
synthetic judgment stated regarding an objective 'Self 'which
is yet analytically different from the subjective 'Self who
thinks it. And when the philosopher of Konigsberg declared
the subjective Self to be Noumenon and the objective Self to be
Phenomenon, Analysis and Synthesis, like Castor and Pollux,
were set in the high firmament of Philosophy, brother-gods in a
deistic unity of the logical Gemini. But Hegel, in turn, was
unsatisfied with this dual enthronement, and in his Apocalypse
beheld Analysis and Synthesis to contend mightily, until each
returned into the Other, and was not, and yet was ; ' Is '
othering ' Not ' ; and finally both issuing forth as new Being ;
One forever ; ' Becoming ' !
This Unit-Thing, this personality, may shine alone as a star,
but it shines in a wondrous darkness of space-consciousness
which is of more interest than itself. We could have no better
proof of the inefficiency of such a conception of personality
than this fact. For we are very conscious of the limits of such
personality, and we are not conscious of the limitations of the
space-being. Suppose this brilliant ' personal '-thing to be
' God,' in all its grandeur of sublime Unity. Could we accept
it as ' God ' ? We could almost answer for the world that when
' God ' is called this Unity, He will no longer be ' God.' For
here is limit, and number, and quality, and relation, and Deity
plunged into the abyss of the Flow ; a mere travesty of
Deity. And we may say both for ourselves and this ' God,'
that, if a possible consciousness of What-we-are is to depend
upon the possible consciousness of synthetically judging our-
selves as One, a priori, neither ' personality ' will long survive
the conceptual begrip which must strangle each.
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 147
97. We are convinced that this was the hidden rock on
which German Philosophy made shipwreck. It assumed and
maintained that Absolute, or Whole-Being can be consummated
in Unity, and stamped this impress upon all concepts of
'personality.' Both Kant and Hegel missed the fact, or mis-
read it, in their consciousness of Being, viz., That there is no
hint in it, absolutely, of any possibility of its being circumscribed
as One. There is only and solely a consciousness of Whole-
Being. No verge, edge, division, line, or determination, can be
found between what-we-are and anything whatsoever, speaking
differentially for purposes of exposition. Unity of Being gives
always frontiers, seeing it is a concept of one-ness, but frontiers
for what-we-are is the inconceivable. As we must tiresomely
reiterate, the consciousness of what-we-are gives us simply the
x same result which we invariably find in our consciousness of
space-being.
And this consciousness is as natural in our sense-data as it
is in any of our experience. It is the true natural basis for our
conceptions of Nature and the Natural. In it we are not
othered away from the universe, from ' God,' from Space, or
from Time. This consciousness of what-we-are springs from a
consciousness that has never endured a hint of difference,
determination, duality, or negation, in itself. In the presence
of such a consciousness, we cannot find it possible to speak of
'the identity of personality,' the * identity of Being and Nothing,'
or ' the synthetical unity of consciousness.' The finding of
Hume was the last truth uttered on such Being. " Identity,"
he said, " is nothing really belonging to these different percep-
tions, and uniting them together, but is merely a quality, which
we attribute to them, because of the union of the ideas in the
imagination." No unity could be found there as fact of One.
Hume saw clearly and truly the processes of * ideas and
impressions,' but he rightly did not see the One-ness. This
vision of Unity of Being was the fatal mistake of German
Philosophy.
98. As a consequence, philosophical and theological thinking
has been retrogressive rather than progressive ever since. On
the highest ground, with such conceptual apparatus, could it
have been possible to understand on a rational basis, such
148 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
words as, " He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that
receiveth me, receiveth not me, but Him that sent me"? or
that wonderful class of statements which perplex^many in read-
ing the John Gospel, " Abide in me and I in you," " I and the
Father are one," " I in them and Thou in me " ; " That they
may all be one," and many others, where One-ness seems to be of
one personality, of two personalities, or of many personalities ?
Such statements clearly shatter all that One-ness for personality
which has dominated both theology and philosophy so long.
And while, of course, this view of personality still accepts
One-ness so far, even when it is compounded of two, or many
' personalities/ it will be shown in later chapters that in the
Master's consciousness of What-He-Was, even this One-ness of
personality is completely transcended by that of Whole-Being.
Indeed His use of the conceptual One-ness for What-He-Was
seems to have been a temporary convenience for thought-
purposes, so long as men persisted in holding One-ness of being
for their own being. He used, that is, as was His wont, their
concept-forms for His truth, in order that, as old wineskins,
they might be burst by it. This filling up of old concepts with
newer and far wider truth-meaning, is of course a common-
place in theological hermeneutics. What is wanted now is to
carry it out to the fulness of the extent of the Master's use ; and
it is just this expansion of interpretation which the Christian
Intellect has never yet quite undertaken.
99. Even the most superficial view of personality, as that
concept is constantly used by the Master, reveals a tendency in
His teaching to widen it upward and outward till like a
dissolving cloud it breaks into wide-open space-being ; whereas
a similar glance at that concept, as taken over from German
Philosophy, by the modern mind, shows just as decided a
trend towards a severely contracted unit-being from which all
inclusion of Other-Being is rejected.
Ex pede Herculem. Let the following few instances serve
for illustration of the last statement.
Prof. James Ward says (Hib. Jour. No. 13, p. 87), " It is as
self-conscious that I know myself as a feeling and acting
subject to whom objects appear. It is only as 1 am here that
I am aware of them as there. I am not self-conscious in vacuo^
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 149
but only as confronted by a not-self, and I am never self-
conscious save as I am conscious of this duality."
In this statement of what-we-are almost every term used
involves a consciousness of space-being which yet is never
acknowledged to be other than mere vacancy or zero-being, of
no value to thought. 'Self and 'Not-self are judged to be,
but the space in which we are conscious they must be is judged
as non-being. But this space-consciousness is absolutely
necessary to the beings ' self and 'not-self For 'feeling and
acting' imply motion, and motion compels a consciousness of
space. The same necessity is patent behind the expression
" subject to whom objects appear," " I am here . . . aware of
them there." Now assuming these ' beings ' to be realities, the
whole question of what they are remains unexplained and
unexhausted of the data which consciousness supplies, till it is
shown how we can have a consciousness of this and that,
subject and object, here and there, independent of any
consciousness of space. For the very certainty that such
beings exist, with ' self on one side and ' not-self on the other,
cannot be affirmed till we first postulate space. Perhaps it is
because this space-being is inconceivable, and cannot be
limited by a concept, that he accounts it non-being ; mere
vacancy ; zero-being. But non-conceptuality does not guarantee
non-Reality. If indeed the space-consciousness is so absolutely
essential to the affirmation of the being of 'self and 'not-self/
then the being of space is far more authentically real than
either the 'self or the 'not-self The 'self and 'not-self,'
indeed, are unreal by comparison ; for being concepts, ideas,
judgments, they are abstractions, and are under the limitations
of motion, number, form, and change, which our consciousness
of space never is. And thus we come round again to the fact
that our consciousness of space, not being an abstraction, is our
sole consciousness of reality, or Being.
" While self-consciousness is in one way the very simplest
thing we know," says Prof. Ed. Caird, "the very type of
simplicity and transparent self -identity , and we could scarcely
find any better word to express clearness of evidence than to
say, ' This is as certain and evident to me as that I am I,' yet
in this apparently simple unity, the diversity of all the mighty
world is mirrored. In the consciousness of self we have subject
150 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
and object as essentially diverse, and yet essentially identical,
and every movement of the life of a self-conscious being is a
movement out into what seems an irreconcilable difference,
and back into unity again. The theoretical and practical life
of this apparently simple unit is one in which it continually
goes out of itself to that which is most opposed to it, yet in all
its travels it never meets with any thing from which it cannot
return to itself, it never wanders so far that it is not with a
moment's self-reflection at home. And all that it finds in its
wanderings it can make part of itself, and weave into the web
of its own life" (Evol. of Relig. i. 174) (italics ours).
A masterful self-centred Self! It meets with everything
save that space-being in which it wanders far and near. It is
conscious of itself and of all that space-being conditions, but
has no consciousness of kin-being with space-being. It has not
the remotest connection with space-being. Now, if we were
compelled to be very serious over such a consciousness of our
unit-self, we should be astonished that, being so keenly
conscious of this wandering self, and of its marvellous possible
changes, we yet were absolutely devoid of any consciousness of
space-being for this self. But we are convinced that this self
is no more than a mathematically quantified unit-thing, fresh
from the logical moulds, and that no mortal man has ever had
such a consciousness of what-he-is. We are convinced that if
a man is conscious of anything at all, he has no consciousness
so immeasurably real as his consciousness of space. The
reality of this unit-self is of the most doubtful kind. It is
wholly mechanical and artificial, and its motions and relations
qualify it as limited on every side, and as such it could not well
be removed further from our consciousness of Space-Being, of
whose reality the human mind is not capable of doubting. Our
consciousness of space-being is the consciousness that gives any
reality ; and it has nothing to say regarding this * self.'
100. An example from a thinker of an opposite school gives
also the same testimony to what-we-are as unit-thing, strictly
isolated, and one all by its self. Prof. Pringle Pattison, in his
stimulating monograph Hegelianism and Personality^ p. 228,
says " But though the self is thus, in knowledge, a principle of
unification^ it is, in existence or metaphysically, a principle of
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 151
isolation" " There is no deliverance of consciousness which is
more unequivocal than that which testifies to this independence
and exclusiveness. I have a centre of my own a will of my
own which no one shares with me or can share a centre
which I maintain even in my dealings with God Himself. For
it is eminently false to say that I put off, or can put off, my
personality here " (our italics).
The numeral qualification of what-we-are is refreshingly
stated and leaves us in no doubt as to the able writer's view.
Man is One, and only One. And being so, he must necessarily
conceive all other beings through the same unit-concept. The
consciousness of what-we-are governs every conception of any-
thing. ' God ' is, consequently, a numerical Unit also. " The
religious consciousness lends no countenance whatever to the
representation of the human soul as a mere mode or efflux of
the divine. On the contrary, only in a person, in a relatively
independent or self-centred being, is religious approach to God
possible." It is calmly assumed that this Self and the God-
self are sundered Beings. The full logical process which is
based on this false assumption is seen in the inevitable con-
clusion which is found on p. 227. " For though selfhood, as
was seen in the earlier lectures, involves a duality in unity,
and is describable as subject-object, it is none the less true
that each Self is a unique existence, which is perfectly impervious,
if I may so speak, to other selves impervious in a fashion of
which the impenetrability of matter is a faint analogue. The
self, accordingly, resists invasion : in its character of self it
refuses to admit another self within itself, and thus be made, as
it were, a mere retainer of something else. The unity of things
(which is not denied) cannot be properly expressed by making
it depend upon a unity of the Self in all thinkers : for the very
characteristic of a self is this exclusiveness. So far from being
a principle of union in the sense desired, the self is in truth the
very apex of separation and differentiation " (italics ours).
Both the Hegelian and the Anti-Hegelian thus place Being
within their concept of Unity ; and consequently this Self-apart
from God-apart ; and both, as parted from all other beings, is
the net result. But, we respectfully ask, how could any other
product be evolved from minds whose fundamental conviction
is that Being, or Reality, is " essentially diverse," and yet again,
152 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
" essentially identical " ? The diversity and unity are admitted
to be necessities in the very structure of Reality. The Self, in
such a case, both for Hegelian and Anti- Hegelian, has no
alternative but accept itself as conscious of ' parts ' in itself, and
as capable of making-up itself out of all it meets with, in its
wanderings to and from itself. Is any man ever conscious of
what-he-is being composite in this way, or being sundered
apart from everything, God included, as described ? Is our
ultimate consciousness of what-we-are necessarily dual-and-one
at the same time ? Is Difference as ultimately predicable for
Reality as Unity? Is it absolutely necessary that Reality
should be qualified numerically, and Self thereby be Number
One, while God is also another Number? Is What-we-are
qualifiable by any concept? Can either Hegelian or Anti-
Hegelian describe What-we-are save in terms of Space-
Being ?
Against such we humbly venture to maintain that we have
no true consciousness of either this 'Self or this 'God.' To
put either the one or the other under numerical qualifications
is to put each Unit-Being outside of our consciousness of
Reality, concerning which we have no consciousness of Unity
but only of Whole-Being. It is clear, however, that the space-
consciousness, never having been admitted as giving a
consciousness of Being at all, but only of Nothing, a negligible
null of no account for any purpose, the concept which yields
Something objectively to the judgment of what-we-are is the
only other alternative, and this can only yield a numerical
result. Hence the swarm of ^-things, " Egos," " Notions,"
inclusive and exclusive ' entities ' of varied nomenclature ; not
one of them of the slightest use in the explication of the
philosophical problem. They are logical creatures of the pure
Melchizedek race, without father or mother, unnatural, and only
invented in stress of certain interests. Both such ' Selfs ' and
such ' Gods ' are under the " laws of thought," and consequently
we are compelled to submit to see each being unit-shaped,
discrete, ' principles of isolation,' determined, and limited.
Yet, strange enough, we are unable to even conceive them as
separate beings before we include our space-form within the
judgment which proclaims them excluded from each other.
Our deepest experience is actually not of these ' Selfs ' and
PERSONALITY AND CONCEPTUALITY 153
c Gods,' but of Space-Being which as Whole-Being includes
their objectivity in its Being.
But apart from these defective conceptions of what-we-are,
we admit gladly the interpretation of that consciousness which
associates ' imperviousness,' ' impenetrability/ and * uninvad-
ableness/ with Being. This is the true consciousness of Space-
Being. But these qualities are impossible in a consciousness of
Beings which are liable to be either divided or united according
as we think. These ' persons ' fall asunder before we are near
enough to invade them. The basis of Being which is so Whole
that invasion is inconceivable for it, is not to be found in
such convertible subject-objects, but solely in our consciousness
of what-we-are, that is, in the consciousness of Space-Being.
And we shall try to show in Chapter VII. that every conscious-
ness of resistance which we possess, finds its home ultimately in
that consciousness of Resultant Resistance which only the
Space - Consciousness affords. And in the fact that such a
consciousness of Absolute or Resultant Resistance is to be
found in both what-we-are and in Space-Being, using dual
terms conventionally, we shall claim to find another proof that
what-we-are and what we call Space are not separated
* isolations,' but Whole-Being.
CHAPTER VI
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING
101. In previous chapters, we have been led to contemplate
our subject as it bears upon the formation, or modelling of
thought-things, concepts, unit-beings, personalities, or, generally,
Objects, out of the incohesive chaos of supposed disintegrated
Being. In the present one we attempt to consider briefly the
field of Being from the standpoint of this supposed disintegra-
tion, Division, Otherness, or, Relativity, as it is absolutised in
human convictions, and note the consequent despair which
prevails in the philosophical realm because the high ideal of all
philosophy, viz., Being subsumed in a concept of Absolute
Unity, is constantly forfalted. We view the gulf from the
other side of the chasm.
It is evident, so far, that no matter how securely the
supposed unity of Being may be be-gripped in logical instru-
ments, such "unity beyond the difference" never for one
moment eradicates the persistent difference which always
treacherously nestles underneath the foundations of every
possible 'unity.' The synthetical Hercules still wears the
poisoned shirt of differentiation which by and by turns the
personal-unity into many-wandering dust. There is never an
unnegatable consciousness of Whole-Being in such a ' unity.'
There is only an eternally vacillating " To be or not to be."
And, as a consequence, " the peace that passeth all understand-
ing," can obtain no lodgment in the troubled spheres of Reason.
The plane of philosophy thus falls far below the elevations
of religion, and its affirmations of truth are timid and hesi-
tating as compared with those of theology or science. And
thereby the uses of the speculative powers for the highest
purposes of the human race, sink under suspicion. And then,
154
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 155
as a natural result, the Church, the University, and the
Parliament, disallow her place in sacred devotions, education,
and the social and political development of the human race.
That which the noblest and best feel ought to be a foremost
force in furthering the loftiest ideals of man, is confessed by
them to be a burden and a discouraging drag upon both the
intellectual and spiritual energies of the world.
102. Perhaps, it is in Herbert Spencer's philosophical system
that we find the best illustrations of that complete helplessness
and hopelessness to which modern speculative thought has
been reduced in the omission of the Space-Being consciousness
from the data of its judgments. The intense delight which one
experiences in watching this giant overthrow every logic-mailed
adversary who comes in his way, is fully balanced by the
melancholy which settles over one's thoughts as his every
victory closes not in triumph but in despair. For he is not
bent simply on slaying logic-mailed warriors. He is out to
seek for Something which he confesses cannot be found, but
for which, all the same, he must make incessant search. He
suffers from the disease of differentiation and explores tombs.
He is the ( self,' alas, which is doomed not only to wander in
and out of itself, but never really to be at home with itself. He
is sure he should be able to meet himself, but, somehow, this is
the self which is forever lost. In other words, he is seeking for
the unity of Mind and Matter. And after long, careful, and
bitter quest, it is thus he mourns :
" We think of Mind in terms of Matter : we think of Matter
in terms of Mind. We find the value of x in terms of y : then
we find the value of y in terms of x: and so on we may continue
forever without coming nearer to a solution. The antithesis of
subject and object, never to be transcended while consciousness
lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of the Ultimate Reality
in which subject and object are united. And this brings us to
the true conclusion implied throughout the foregoing pages
the conclusion that it is one and the same Ultimate Reality
which is manifested to us subjectively and objectively"
(Principles of Psychology, i. 627) (italics ours).
The song of the terrible one is brought low. Yet mark the
fine gleam of fixed light in the intense darkness. He has a
156 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
sure consciousness that there is an Ultimate Reality. It may
be protean in its scaly shapes of x and y, mind and matter,
subject and object ; nevertheless, Something Is of which these
seem to be the " constituent functions." Yet he declares this
Reality to be Unknown ! And this assertion is made in the
very face of his statement that it Is ! Where did this conscious-
ness and knowledge of the certainty of an Ultimate Reality
emerge from, save out of the consciousness of himself? Its
very unknownness, that is, its impossibility of being subsumed
' under the categories of the understanding ' ; its defiance to be
classed under x or y, matter or mind, object or subject, yet its
unconquerable affirmation of Is, ought surely to have taught
him that he had a consciousness of Being which positively
refused to be put under the harrows of either Synthesis or
Analysis, convertible at will from duality into unity, or from
unity to duality. Is it not this consciousness of Being, Is, to
which these must ever come for certification of their pretended
separate existence? For the unity does not, at any time,
assert the independent existence of the duality, nor does the
duality certify the independent existence of the unity ; they are
here or there in a consciousness which is ever independent of
their motions. This consciousness of Being cannot indeed be
known in the sense that an 'object' is known, for it has no
outlines of limitation for our understandings ; but neither x nor
y, neither mind nor matter, neither subject nor object could be
known without it, in these intellectual forms. It is a conscious-
ness in which these have outline and limitation, as worlds, suns,
and stars seem to have their outline and limitation in Space-
Being. This consciousness of Ultimate Reality is present in
the philosopher because it is present in every man, and in the
motions of the consciousness of all that has consciousness.
But if Hegel may be called Embodied Synthesis, so Herbert
Spencer might well stand for Incarnate Analysis. Dogged is
the Unity, and as dogged is the Duality. " No effort of
imagination," he confidently asserts (Prin. of Psych, i., 626),
"enables us to think of a shock, however minute, except as
undergone by an entity. We are compelled therefore to
postulate a substance of Mind that is affected, before we can
think of its affections. But we can form no notion of a
substance of mind absolutely divested of attributes connoted
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 157
by the word substance, and all such attributes are abstracted
from our experience of material phenomena. Expel from tJie
conception of Mind every one of these attributes by which we
distinguish an external something from an external nothing and
the conception of Mind becomes nothing" (italics ours).
Could the argument be bettered in any way, with the data
he uses? It is not new, of course. As already quoted, Hegel
said, " A Something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and
losing its quality it ceases to be what it is." Yet, logically,
Hegel ought to have said, "A Something is what it is in virtue
of its quality, and, losing its quality, it is othered into its
nothing." For every something, when considered conceptually,
has as truly the quality of nothing in its Is-ness as it has the
quality that makes it something. The something may go out
of knowledge but never out of Being. But to be othered into
nothing, was for Hegel, and for Herbert Spencer, to be othered
into a contemptible abstraction, a nullity, for which philosophy
had no use till it could again be moved out of abstract nothing
into a motion of ' Becoming,' and qualified. In such a case,
in abstracting the " attributes connoted by the word substance,"
call it either ' Mind ' or ' Matter,' most certainly " the conception
becomes nothing." " We can form no notion " of it. It passes
beyond conceptual understanding. Yet it is still Being-con-
sciousness. But this Nothing-consciousness is nothing more to
Spencer. It is cast out from his data of judgments upon Mind
and Matter. Yet he but confirms our tedious contention that
this Nothing-consciousness, this consciousness of gap, void,
space, give it any null-name conceivable, which conditions
the very existence of our conceptions or notions of Mind and
Matter, abides as the paramount and final consciousness. It is
ever the consciousness we all have beyond all objectivity. It
is the consciousness which steadfastly environs our consciousness
of every Something, and without which no Something, either as
One or as Many, could be conceived as such. And it is never
less than the consciousness of ourselves, that, viz., for which
' Mind ' or * Matter,' or both concussed into a so-called unity,
are terms of impertinence. It is in short, the space-conscious-
ness which sublates all 'minds' and 'matters,' every objective
x and y y and all relativities absolutely, leaving only a
consciousness of Whole-Being possible in it.
158 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
103. This so-called scientific method of seeking a permanent
substance in its impermanent 'qualities' must be characterised
as unsatisfactory. The very fact that these 'qualities' always
give way before our quest for permanence, and clear the path
for a final space-result to which they ever point as ultimate for
each, shows that there is a consciousness which always remains
unfulfilled till the fact of space is accepted as the reality which,
from certain of its motions, we call * something,' and by whose
lack we realise ' nothing.' The same defective method would
compel us to deduce that, when we take away the motions
which we call generation, growth, assimilation, reproduction,
and such like, the fact of Life should cease to be. Now, the
point to notice is that there is a consciousness in us that does
not accept any or all of these motions as absolutely accounting
for Life. And the same consciousness refuses to accept the
so-called ' qualities ' of anything as absolutely exhausting all
that that thing is, in being. These " qualities " which in their
total we name Something, and in their zero-sum we stigmatise
as Nothing, never justify us in affirming that the Being so
presented under these conditions is, or is not ; or rather, is,
and then has ' ceased to be.' There is a distinct consciousness
that, absolutely, no ' quality ' can give the origin of any thing,
and cannot be the basis of our judgment of its cessation of
being.
But ^vhere do we put these qualities when we ' take them
away'? Do we do anything else than simply turn our 'blind
spot ' to them, and shut them out of our conceptive judgment
of the Something ? And do we suppose that by shutting out
every known quality of the ' something ' that we make it cease
to be in the same ratio that we make it impossible to be known ?
We may depend upon it that this process may lead us to an
exhausted capacity for analysing the something, but all the
more it accumulates, on the other side, a synthesis which
reveals, if not the Something then the 'self which is so
exhausted. And when the same process has been done for the
' self as for the Something, the consciousness of equal being for
both is testified in the common consciousness of space which
remains for either. And this space-consciousness, given for
either, also testifies to Whole-Being in which every synthesis
for each is sublated. In other words, there is a consciousness
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 159
of Being indestructibly present in us for what-we-are, as for
every ' Something,' which is ever untouched by any synthetic
or analytic process of our reasoning powers. And this is the
consciousness of Permanent Being which is always the or\efac(
which Science never uses, and never reaches, but only accounts
a null of no value absolutely, and contemptuously pities as
' The Void.' Nevertheless, we shall affirm that the true basis
for our consciousness of Substantia is Space, and not the
imaginary 'substances' and 'somethings' which a spurious
scientific method has invented out of the certainty of uncertain
1 qualities ' for both ' Mind ' and ' Matter.'
104. How stale, flat, and unprofitable, this kind of specu-
lative reasoning proves to be, may be gathered from the sum-
mation of its results for the human intellect given by Dr
Bain. He confidently says : " The arguments for the two sub-
stances have, we believe, now entirely lost their validity :
they are no longer compatible with ascertained science and
clear thinking. The one substance, with two sets of proper-
ties, two sides, the physical and the mental, a double-faced
unity ', would appear to comply with all the exigencies of
the case. We are to deal with this, as in the language of
the Athanasian Creed, not confounding the persons nor
dividing the substance. The mind is destined to be a double
study to conjoin the mental philosopher with the physical
philosopher : and the momentary glimpse of Aristotle is at
last converted into a clear and steady vision." (Mind and
Body, p. 196.) The reverential residuum of their logically
sculptured "Person" and "Substance," bequeathed to us by
devoted Early Christians and honoured Earlier Pagans, is thus
tied-up into an "Ultimate Reality" by Herbert Spencer,
designated Unity with a double-face of subjectivity and
objectivity by Bain, and thrown to our Space-Consciousness
as complying "with all the exigencies of the case!" And we
are left to muse upon the possible ' qualities ' of that mysterious
" one substance ! "
The postulation of 'substance of mind,' implies a postula-
tion of qualities by which this ' substance ' is cognised, and
these Qualities being forever liable to be 'taken away/ this
' substance ' is consequently menaced by non-entity, or ' ceasing
160 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to be ! ' There does not seem to be much satisfaction in such
reasoning. We all have a consciousness of what-we-are as
unceasingly permanent, but if it is ever at the mercy of
' qualities ' which may fly away at any moment, whence is the
consciousness of permanent being derived ? Does not this point
to a defective knowledge of the 'qualities' included in what-
we-are ?
105. Hegel has, in his order of thought, placed Quality
before Quantity. This is the natural way, and if Quantity can
only be known by its qualities, it is the one way for correct
understanding of Quantity. But the postulation of either
quality or quantity, assumed as necessary divisions in our
consciousness of Being, seems to us to work the same havoc in
that consciousness as the postulation of the necessary ' Unity '
and the * Difference.' Hegel has divided the scheme of his
Logic into Three Parts, viz., Being, Essence, Notion and Idea.
Being again he divides into the three grades, Quality, Quantity,
and Measure. These again are treated as if decidedly apart
from each other. A ' transition,' for instance, has to be made
from Quality to Quantity (Logic, Wallace's, 98, 2).
1 06. Now it is evident that but for the power to divide, the
human thought could not possibly grasp such an arrangement
of Being. It is the unquestioned assumption that what-we-are
is divided-being from Space-Being which is the prolific source
of all the divisions, antagonisms, and relativities of philosophy,
ancient or modern. We have then to ask, first, how is division
possible ? We speak of the qualities of something, and of the
something itself as distinct from these qualities. And as this
question of the possibility of division touches the more important
one of our consciousness of Whole-Being, it is clear that before
we can rest in the consciousness of Whole-Being as unnegatable,
we must first show that, all division of Being, though common
enough to conceptual Thought, is unthinkable for our ultimate
consciousness of Being. (See 64.)
Division is not thinkable except as conditioned by the prior
consciousness of Space. Let the reader try to think of two
things, two qualities, two quantities, or two anything, without
a consciousness of space between them, and then say if they are
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 161
divided. Before division is possible as a motion of thought,
or presented to thought, space must be a consciousness. But
this consciousness of space is never accepted by Hegel as
the principal datum in our judgment of division. He accepts
that there is a transition from Quality to Quantity. But
that the space - consciousness must necessarily be present
before such division or transition can be effected for our
understanding, he does not accept. He does not bring the
space-consciousness into the data of his judgment of these cogni-
tions. His aim is of course always to assert that they are
divided, and that their division can be * overcome ' by a
victorious Unity. " The fact is," he says, " quantity just
means quality superseded and absorbed : and it is by the
dialectic of quality here examined that this supersession is
effected " (Logic, p. 184). It is by "dialectic" that unity, one-
ness, somewhat, is effected. And space as a consciousness is of
no account ! It is a nullity in the data of reasoning !
107. It is this unquestioned acceptance of the necessary
reality of discreteness for Being that seems to us to vitiate the
whole question which he discusses. But Thought for Hegel
was assumed as the Absolute, and because that neither division
nor continuation, discreteness nor continuousness could be
eliminated from his "dialectic" of Being, he was perforce
driven to admit the necessary presence of both " qualities " in
our consciousness of Being. " Quantity," he maintains, " is
Continuous as well as Discrete. Each of these two elements
involves the other also, and hence there is no such thing as a
merely Continuous or a merely Discrete quantity " (Logic,
ioo).
As we have already said, this strikes at the very root of all
possibility of our consciousness of Whole-Being as real, and
simply gives us a tied-up unit of quantity and quality ; a total
which may at any moment be divided again into its ' elements.'
We do not wonder that it should be so, when its sole guarantee
of unity is the uncertain 'dialectic' of the logical process.
Supposing this Quality were personal to ourselves, and our self
this Quantity, he./ are we to be certain of the two 'elements'
remaining one united self? Let us remember that Hegel is
explaining how Being, from being One, becomes qualified as
L
162 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Many, differentiating itself through quality and quantity. But
this process is never rational until we can reverse it, and show
how every quantity and quality becomes One. And to be
absolute as a process , it must apply to ourselves. It therefore
assumes that we are conscious that when we say ' I/ we are
likewise conscious of Unit-Being which is made-up of qualities
which have been absorbed by the I-Quantity, and which in
turn he avers is both ' discrete and continuous.' Is anyone ever
conscious of being so tied-up into a unity of this kind ? Have
we a consciousness of Quantity in our I-consciousness ? What
'Quality' does it give except what Space gives? It may be
safely said that no one, in the consciousness of what-he-is, ever
has a consciousness of being " two elements " tied-up in such
a unity.
108. In counting up 'qualities' of any existing thing, it is
innocently assumed that we can ' take them away,' one by one,
as if each were a distinct ' being ' by itself. This illusion is due
to our substituting the wide-open consciousness of space-being
for the ' quality '-being which we think we have ' taken away.'
We then as innocently judge that so far as such ' quality '-
being is ' taken away ' the existing ' quantity ' does not exist.
That is, so far, such quantity is null. In reality, we have only
proved that we can not remove our consciousness of Space-
Being, and that whatever we may ' take away,' we only thereby
accentuate and reveal the space-being for which all such
quantities and qualities exist.
Now, every 'thing 1 that we can think or imagine can be
conceived as a ' quality ' of being. We ourselves can be con-
ceived as 'qualities' of Supreme Being, and conceived as
revealing such Supreme Being. And if ' qualities ' can be
' absorbed ' and ' superseded ' by quantities, then we have to
admit that each 'self,' as only a 'quality' of Supreme Being,
may be absorbed and superseded into the Supreme Quantity.
But such a conception of Supreme Quantity never shows how
we are to conceive such " two elements " as existentially Whole-
Being after the process of absorption. Under such conditions,
even Unit-Being is scarcely conceivable, except it be counted
as a mere tied-up Total-Being. Certainly, Space-Being is never
counted into such a Unit-Being. We should always have
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 163
Supreme Being and Space-Being, and the latter as condition-
ing the former. Which is absurd.
It is clear that the assumption of 'quality' as detachable
from an existing thing, is due to the invulnerable consciousness
in all of us, that nothing is Fixed Being except Space-Being,
and that everything we can conceive and name Quality,
Quantity, Substance, Existence, Personality or Impersonality,
has no permanence in itself, save as it reveals Space- Being by
its disappearance. When we have taken them all away, we find
that they are not distinct one from another, but Whole-Being
in our consciousness of Space. Both discreteness and con-
tinuousness are themselves shown to be null-relations, and
Space-Being the true Permanence.
The Space-Consciousness cannot indeed be divided by any
possible process of ' dialectic.' It is therefore a consciousness
in which all Qualities and Quantities and Relations are sub-
sumed. They are conveniences of thought from which Space,
as a consciousness, is temporarily shut out, and their
' differences ' are but conceptual and logical and in no sense
existential.
109. The impossibility of conceiving Space to be divided 'is, of
course, the basis of the limitless wide-open conception of Whole-
Being ( 106). Without this fact, as absolute, we could have
only conceptions of two things, and consequently, only limited
conceptions of ' united ' things and ' totalled ' things. And it is
here that we can test the question as to space being conceivable
as discrete or divisible. To conceive space as divisible, we must
first assume that each man has a consciousness of himself as being
divided from space. But this is impossible, as no one ever has
such a consciousness. We are never related to space. If we
had such a consciousness, we would also have a consciousness
of space-verge or space-surface as dividing space from us. But
Space never gives us, even remotely, a consciousness of surface.
Only ' objects ' i.e. conceptual creations, give such points, lines,
and surfaces. We only suppose that we are dividing space
when we are merely carrying a point into many * places,' and
then naming it * line ' and ' surface,' while space, as a conscious-
ness, is really shut out from such concept things, and the point
assumed to be the only reality for the time being. In the
164 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
consciousness of ourselves, we are never 'point-beings.' In
the consciousness of what-we-are, there is no line or surface,
no division or separation from anything. We have no
consciousness of any part in the ' I/ as being related to Space
through division or difference. Space never begins for what-
we-are, nor does what-we-are begin or end for Space. Space, as
what-we-are, is the only possible consciousness.
no. It is the assumption that what-we-are is completely
apart from space-being, or that Space is not being at all in the
sense that what-we-are is being, that creates the illusion of
Space and Time as being infinite in extent and infinitely
divisible. Take the following illustration given by the Hon.
B. Russell : " If we travel along a straight line in either
direction, it is difficult to believe that we shall finally reach a
last point, beyond which there is nothing, not even empty
space. Similarly, if in imagination we travel backwards or
forwards in time, it is difficult to believe that we shall reach a
first or last time, with not even empty time beyond it. Thus
space and time appear to be infinite in extent.
" Again, if we take any two points on a line, it seems evident
that there must be other points between them, however small
the distance between them may be : every distance can be
halved, and the halves can be halved again, and so on ad
infinitum. In time, similarly, however little time may elapse
between two moments, it seems evident that there will be other
moments between them. Thus space and time appear to be
infinitely divisible" (Problems of Philosophy, p. 227).
Here we have to imagine that space is being which we can
travel over or along. We and space are different beings. Now,
until this assumption can be established as fact, all such
reasoning is fighting the wind. In imagination this "We"
and this " Space " are different objects. And in the very fact
that each is objectified, to start with, there is proof that neither
being can be even imagined to be infinite. It is the impossible.
The travelling might go on till doomsday, and like the progress
of a cheese-mite round the cheese, there might be an endlessness
in the journey but there could be no infinity. For infinity is
not based on motion in our consciousness ; nor is it dependent
on our ability to place { points ' in space, a feat which we shall
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 165
immediately try to prove to be impossible. But as Time is
inconceivable, apart from motion, and no division can take
place in it apart from 'points,' if what-we-are is whole-being
with space, the supposed motions and points are only the
products of our imagined isolation from space, and the action
of our concept-making space-spread ( 89). In any case, the
argument is useless until what-we-are and space -being are
proved to be two separate beings, and no consciousness of
this fact is possible. Our consciousness to the contrary is over-
whelming.
We cannot divide space from what-we-are. We repeat that
the supposition that we can do so is the initial error in the
assumed divisibility of space. But let us now for argument's
sake, grant that we really are apart from space as what-we-are.
Let us suppose that we are divided in being. We want then
to realise what it is that divides us from space. Something
must be conceived as dividing us. The consciousness of division
is otherwise impossible. We assume that we have a distinct
consciousness of what-we-are, and also of space as not
what-we-are. Then we ask, What are we conscious of as the
third thing that lies between these two beings, by which they
are divided? Is there any thing conceivable? Suppose we
call it anything, earth, air, atom, ether? But these are
dependent upon their ' qualities ' for their being, and when their
qualities are ' taken away,' what is left to divide anything ?
" They cease to be," says Hegel. What else then can be put in
their place as the absolutely dividing thing? Only Space.
We have a consciousness of Space. But cannot this also be
abolished ? It cannot. Why ? It owns no ' qualities? This
is the simple reason. Neither therefore canast it possess
1 Quantities,' for Quantity we are told is but qualities absorbed
and superseded. But without a consciousness of quantity we
cannot have a consciousness of division !
Now, the conception of space dividing us from space may
easily become absurd. For this would mean that there were
two spaces, each a distinct being from the other, the one
dividing and the other divided from what-we-are. Each would
be a unit-space. But again, no unit is even conceivable until
we assume space to surround it. Number One could not be
conceived unless as in a locus of space. We find it impossible
166 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to form any conception of One till space is present to give it its
limitations of One. Hence if we suppose space to divide us
from space, we require new spaces for each of these two spaces,
and so on ad infinitum. Such ' separate spaces ' are mere
conceptual creations ; the chips of mere logic-chopping ; and
we never have a consciousness of such spaces, or of such spaces
dividing us existentially from space, or of space as having any
divisions at all. Our ultimate consciousness is always of being
space. And consequently, we never can think differently of the
space that is assumed to divide and the space from which we
are divided. We are tempted to think that the absurdity
attains to the character of humour when the Hon. B. Russell
gravely discusses " public space " and " private space " (Problems
of Philosophy ', p. 46) with such an air of their actuality as to
lead us to believe that such concept-creatures might experience
taxation or imprisonment !
in. As a matter of fact, as said above in Chapter IV.
neither in Kant nor in Hegel do we find any evidence of the
consciousness of Whole-Being. Neither is it to be found in
ancient thought. No modern ever mentions it. Such a
postulate is unknown in their systems of 'categories' and
'dialectic.' The word, or its equivalents, is abundantly used,
but the meaning is without exception, Unity, Universality,
Singleness, One, Total, or All, every one of which connotes two
or more things united, unified, totalised, or collected. Discrete-
ness is in the heart of every such consciousness, and no dialectic
can convert it into one of Wholeness, with no possible con-
sciousness of discreteness bound up with it. And for the
same reason, we cannot have " an infinite collection," as Cantor
and his followers suppose. Such is only conceivable as a
Total, which again is Unit-being, and therefore conditioned
finitely in space-being. It is never Whole without parts; whole
beyond all possibility of conceiving a part in it. And it is
so because the self-postulating consciousness of Space is never
taken into the data of the judgment of the true infinite Is.
For example, Kant says, " Every limited part of space presented
to intuition, is a whole, the parts of which are always spaces."
But this "whole" is clearly 'unity' in content, and "whole"
is inapplicable to such a consciousness. "The notion of the
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 167
whole is to contain parts," says Hegel. Both philosophers
assume as indisputably axiomatic that Unit-Being is the
per -ultimate consciousness of being, and that "whole" is
synonymous with " Total." For if every " whole " must have
parts, no unit-being can be conceived as not potentially partable.
It is the same story of the molecule being partable into
atoms, and the whole atom being again partable into ions,
and the ion as once more partable into some dim 'electric
charge ' which has nothing to part ! But this is not philosophy.
It is a game of beggar-my-neighbour.
112. Whether we call this "whole" 'total' or 'all/ it makes
little difference in actual consciousness of the content of such
" whole." It is the common play upon the term ' Pan ' (TTCLV) as
' all ' or ' every/ ' universal ' or ' particular.' No content of ' pan '
ever gives a consciousness of Whole-Being. For ' pan ' does
not inclose space in the content of our consciousness of it.
Every meaning of * pan ' is connotive of objectivity, whereas
Whole-Being is neither ' subjective ' nor ' objective.' Hegel's
' Notion,' e.g. t is simply totalised out of * Being ' and ' Nothing,'
and carries its potential discreteness in its own nature. It has
no content of Wholeness in our consciousness of it. If it
were absolutely true, we should have no alternative but to
predicate discreteness of the ' I ' of our consciousness like-
wise, and regard it as a composite of unknown 'parts,' a
* total,' or ' all ' of ' units,' which might again be partable to
infinity. Moreover, we cannot have units, totals, or 'collec-
tions' without connotations of quantity, and quantity is not
found in our consciousness of space-being. Therefore, any
Total is consciously apart from space-being, and therefore never
infinite.
The I-consciousness, the what-we-are, is not totalised or
made-up out of anything, and gives no discreteness under any
process of dialectic. The consciousness of it is one of Whole-
Being, unpartable, and without possibility of being conceived as
a mere number one, a Unity, a Total, being concretely based in
our space-consciousness, the ultimate consciousness of Is. Even
the term ' simple ' as applied to what-we-are has the defect of
implying that it is a Something qualified which cannot be
further reduced to a lower qualifiable element.
168 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
113. It is of course easy for us now to discern where both
philosophers were hampered by the very barriers which they
themselves reared. These barriers were the 'categories of
thought/ one or many, which they accepted as indisputable. In
the ultimate consciousness of both thinkers, Unity was accepted
as the last thing to be said upon Being. They differed only in
the Origin of this category. Kant found the origin of unity
in the unity of the self-consciousness. This 'thing-in-itself
determined all other conceptions of 'things.' It made it
impossible for Kant to conceive that any ' thing,' even * God,'
or the 'universe,' could be more than a Unit-Being. Hegel
took Kant's ' unit-thing-in-itself,' and also the every other
'unit-self-thing' conceivable within the bounds of Being; tied
them up into a universal One, or Total-of-ALL, and called it
" Notion," seeing it was Thought-of-all-Thought. Neither
philosopher ever arose above the domain of Mathematics. With
One they began, and with One they ended. The fatal assump-
tion of both was that ' Self* is a Unit ( 61). Their methods,
however, were different in utilising this conception. Kant, as it
were, systematised from the basis of his supposed single-self
' thing/ and from this origin developed his series of ' unit-things '
to an infinite, or nth-being, which on the side of phenomena
might be called ' Cosmos/ and on the side of noumena might be
named ' God.' Hegel established first his nth-being and then
saw all the " Becoming " ' things ' evolve, or seriate out of it.
Fundamentally, each philosopher had but Unit-Being as the
rock of his system. And this category never rises clear of
the limits of mathematics.
114. The term 'Being/ therefore, is of little use to us if we
first limit it with the attributes of ' Discrete ' and ' Continuity.'
Is alone can be predicated of Being if it is to interpret the
consciousness which is always ultimate in us. Space-being, as
what-we-are, neither yields a consciousness of discreteness nor
of continuousness. And having no limiting verges as unit-
being, it is not conceivable as having a potentiality of continua-
tion in it. Continuation cannot continue before space is assumed
for continuation, and we cannot find in our consciousness of
what-we-are, or of anything else, a limitation, or a verge-line
which possibly might be continued. And until we have such
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 169
a consciousness of limitation, the conception of continuation is
impossible ( 75).
115. We are aware that in arguing in this way, we cut away
the ground of all absolute reality from the sciences of Mathe-
matics and Mechanics. As these move wholly within the
sphere of the quantitative, the objective, and the discrete, the
denial of the absolute reality of objectivity as of the nature of
Being leaves them no locus. We first abolish the necessity
of the unit, the ' self,' the ' ion/ the discrete, in our consciousness
of Being, as well as the conception of its necessary continuation ;
and as a consequence the fundamental point or unit-objective
which is necessary to Mathematics, is disallowed also as
existent in absolute Reality. All sciences which deal with
'Quantity' must be included in the same consciousness of
ultimate unreality. Their permanence is not absolutely
assured, just because they are determined as founded on the
conception of Quantity. For Quantity being determined to
thought through Quality alone, and Quality being conceived as
in peril of being * taken away,' all Quantity must be held to be
in peril of ' ceasing to be ' also. The ' Quantity,' therefore,
which is essentially basal for such sciences, gives no conscious-
ness of reality, of permanence, or of absolute Being. The
so-called satisfactory "certainty" which is assumed so often
for the mathematical sciences, is one based solely on the
questionable certainty of the Object, considered as Being.
That is to say, they have no deeper foundation in our
consciousness than the point-and-Space-Spread, or Space-Form
of our consciousness. And this consciousness of space-spread,
objective as it is with its qualities of * extensity ' and ' massive-
ness,' has, undoubtedly, as Prof. Stout puts it, " relational
character, as it is initially apprehended." As already said, it is
only the " space " of Kant's consciousness, in which no * objects '
may be met with, but which itself is always an object, having
' form,' mobility, focality, contractility, ' stream '-like phenomena,
and, as we think, colour. Kant was perfectly correct in attri-
buting 'form* to this 'space,' but the very fact that he could
find it possible to so categorise it by any term save that of
itself, proved that it was not the very ultimate consciousness we
possess of Space.
170 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
It is the stupendous power of contractility which resides in
it that gives us the ' point which has no magnitude ' which
Mathematicians revere as the Demiurgus which creates their
universe of existence ; just as it is its motional capacity, almost
beyond realisation, of expansion which renders to the children
of imagination their ideals and generalisations of sublimity,
boundlessness, everlastingness, vastitudes of time and eternity.
All nears and fars, depths and heights, broads and narrows, are
dependent upon these contractile and expansive ' qualities ' of
this space-spread of our consciousness. We contract to the
infinitesimal, and again expand to the universal, and with a
facility of speed and ease analogous to lightning or the action
of gravitation force. It also fills itself with light and dark at
will. But it is always objective, for it is in perpetual motion,
and consequently mediates through this fact, our deepest
consciousness of ultimate Space beyond it.
Looking down a tunnel, for example, although no ' object ' is
to be met with in it, yet under the contractile power of this
space-form, the darkness itself thickens into an 'object,' and
our consciousness realises it as an object. The same thing
occurs in brilliant light. A blazing noon reduces the distance,
the near and far of our sky, as does midnight, and ' extensity '
means no more than a moving space-spread or sky-surface,
upon which both thought and eye rest, confessing limitations.
The infinitesimal ' point ' which stands for a null-quantity or an
1 ion,' in mathematics or physics, is the limit on the one side,
and the Universe the limit on the other. For working pur-
poses of thought, at least, these are the ordinary bounds, but,
of course, when we 'take away' the qualities of these limits, we
enter upon the true consciousness of space, and all thought then
falls into the bosom of Whole-Being with that consciousness.
What should principally be noted is that the limitations pro-
duced by the space-spread of our concepts are never limitations
of what-we-are ( 89).
116. There is no doubt in our mind that this space-spread
of consciousness was mistaken by Berkeley for Space itself. He
thereupon asserted that all space was relational, and nothing
else. Hence he found space-distance to be relational, confusing
distance-conception with space-Being. He believed that he
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 171
could conceptualise Space-Being. As a matter of fact we can
always predicate near or far, broad or narrow, or objectivity of
distance the motion of lightning which leaves an outline upon
the retina of the eye and in the thought, being an example ;
but we can predicate nothing of our ultimate consciousness of
space save Is. A space-spread-object, a distance-object, a
1 near ' or ' far ' is objectified to eye and mind, and we are for
the time, perfectly conscious of its relativity to the true Space
from which it is assumed to be divided, but our consciousness
of this space-spread-object and of that space which Kant
characterised as " all-embracing," and Newton as " the sensorium
of God," admit of no possible identification. The one is a
logical or thought-object, qualified and quantified, as bounded by
two points, which are assumed, while the other is existentially
undetermined with the consciousness of ourselves. Abbott, we
think, has put this point very clearly. " We cannot imagine,"
he says (Sight and Touch, p. 176. 29), "either distance or
magnitude except as something seen" and again, " if distance be
recollected as an object of vision, it must have been originally
so" (our italics). The very fact that such distances can be
treated as an arithmetical unit, and squared, cubed, and treated
as all abstract concepts are treated, is proof that they have
no truth in them of the wide-open consciousness of Space-
Being.
Or in other words, Objects may have true 'dimensions'
even when emptied of all content except this space-spread
content, this distance-content. But the fact that such dimen-
sions are recalled and remembered again in our consciousness
as things outlined and limited, proves in itself their conceptual
origin and the deeper presence of that consciousness of whole-
space which is essential to these conditions ( 90).
The root of all duality seems to lie originally in this imaging,
or objectifying of * spaces,' and then attributing to them an
isolated independence of being, equal to that of space-wholeness.
The latter is then assumed, like them, to be capable of being
conceived. Space-wholeness is thus conceived to be relative to
that which conceives it. And by reflection, this objectifies the
' soul ' also. Space is then asserted to be one thing, and
the 'soul' another. And under the powerful intellect of a
Kant this ' soul ' comes to be reckoned as an Ultimate-in-itself }
172 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
and space as an Ultimate Other-in-itself. Philosophy then
accepts as indisputable these Twin - Ultimates as Self and
Not-Self, or Man and Nature, the duality of which must not
be even doubted, the logicians undertaking to prove that S
can never be P, and that consequently, such duality and
difference are absolute and eternal !
117. The discreteness therefore which the 'point' of
mathematics and the 'ion' of physics determine for these
special sciences can only be regarded as limitedly true, true
only as far as the ' point ' and ' ion ' are true. It is the
assumption that the ' point ' or unit-being can be found
existentially in our ultimate consciousness of Whole-Being
that has led to the mistake of conceiving a ' thing ' to be in
space or out of space. The gravity of the mistake, however,
does not refer itself to any particular science. It is when
we have this point, or unit of the space-spread of our con-
scious motions, hypostatised as ' personality ' for man and
God, that the error becomes serious. Our thought apes then
to objectify and measure Whole-Being.
In the consciousness of the All, Is, Space, Whole-Being,
such ' point ' or ' unit ' vanishes. It is neither in space nor
out of it. It has ceased to be with the space-spread conscious-
ness which has merged in the consciousness of ultimate Being.
All its ' qualities,' that is, have been * taken away.' For consider
what it means to assume a ' point ' in space. Let it be the
most infinitesimal * point ' or * unit.' Let it be a zero-point :
a nothing-quantity : any null-object We place it then in
space. This implies that it never was in space before. Where
could it be ? But even if we allow that such a point veritably
exists, have we not always to allow first that space pre-exists
it? Can we think differently? But for argument's sake,
suppose we could think differently, what would this allowance
amount to? It would mean that we were thinking the point
and space to be distinct from each other. Space would be
one object and this 'point' another. This would imply that
space had form, surface, extensity, and be itself surrounded
by space ! It would otherwise be inconceivable as having
form. And this objectified space would require a new space
to surround the space so objectified, and the point would also
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 173
require a separate space for itself, seeing that it was discrete
from the space aforesaid ! Which is absurd.
1 1 8. All our conceptions of point-things such as * beginnings '
and * endings,' are consequently * images ' and simply products
of our space-spread. It is the latent consciousness of being
unable to plant a real point in Space-Being that gives everyone
the conviction of the impossibility of conceiving an absolute
beginning for Time, Creation, Man, Life, or anything. We
never come to any point in Space-Being. And as we always
have a true consciousness of its Being, or Reality, the
absolute impossibility of finding a point, edge, verge, or
surface in its Being, renders all start-places, beginnings, or
endings vain and unreal. Being is always found Whole. And
in this fact we have another proof that if our conception of
the mathematical One, or Unit, had been absolutely true, to
find a beginning for the Universe, for Time, for Universal
History, for Man, for what-we-are, for anything, would have
been the easiest thing in the world.
The entire contents of Universal History, and Time itself,
as we hypostatise it, are therefore based upon imaginary or
imaged point-beings, so be-gripped and formed objectively
in our space-spread, and have no actual existence in the sense
of the reality of what-we-are. For we have no consciousness
at all of Time, or processes of time, in our consciousness of what-
we-are. We cannot put a point, edge, verge, beginning, ending,
process, or line, in the ' I.' It is alone in our consciousness of
the space-spread that we can find such ' qualities and quantities.'
Historians and mathematicians assume without the faintest
fact to support them that, absolutely, we, in being, are isolated
from Space-Being. A point-and-line-difference is thus created
and made, and then we all imagine ourselves, and all we
call historical, to really begin from some fixed point or place
in space, and as we all can repeat or 'represent' this point-
and-line-difference endlessly, one concept following another
unceasingly, the conception of Duration becomes in turn
hypostatised from such data, and then absolutised to be as
real as what-we-are. It is the other way round. It is the
consciousness of what-we-are which makes it possible to
hypostatise such a concept. But in the concept of Duration
we can discern the potential in every concept which leads
174 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
it, free of all its limitations in the space-spread, out into the
wide-open limitless consciousness of Space-Being which is
equal with our consciousness of what-we-are. For it is always
possible for every limited concept to ' elanguesce ' into wide-
open Space-Being consciousness, just as it is possible for
the consciousness of Space-Being, or what-we-are to be be-
gripped by our space-spread motion of mind and narrowed
conceptually down into all forms of objectivity. When this
latter limitation is made, we then assume absolute detachment
of being; look forth from our isolated being upon Other-Being;
and think and speak on that basis of actual past-being and
future-being as stretching independently of what-we-are behind
and before our present point-being. We even institute com-
parisons with the beings we have been and the beings we
are now, and image 'beings' which we may yet be. It is
all the outcome of putting point-beings into Space-Being, and
then hypostatising such images as if they were absolutely as
real and actual as they are conceptual. And the same thing
falls to be said of whatever we " postulate," or make by a " Let
there be," or generalise as a " Law."
Therefore nothing save a spectral point or unit-thing, a
focality of our space-spread, can be placed in space. Therefore
nothing limited can be assumed to be so placed in space. Or,
universally, every object which is held to be real and absolutely
discrete, and determined absolutely apart from space, is unreal
and illusory. But this means also that when we think
space in any way whatever, we can only think Whole-Being
which has in itself no hint of parts or discreteness. The
actual ' point ' of mathematics is a contracted image of the
space-spread of our consciousness, and may seem to be at
one time infinitesimally small and at another infinitely great.
It may take a form of bulk, or again of mere massless linearity ;
it may indeed be any possible form; for this space-spread
of our consciousness is the Ur-Form of all the forms of
our conscious thought. And just because it is Form, with
only a possible ultimate content of space, it is not the very
ultimate Space- Consciousness in which there is no possible
hint of either discreteness or continuation of Being. It was
because Kant objectified Space and Time as discrete from
the " I," which was again held to be itself discrete from either,
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 175
that all these ' objects ' have been regarded mathematically
as separate point-beings, to the ruin of all consciousness of
Whole-Being, though all assume to be capable of a further
point-unity ' beyond their difference ' when put under the
Hegelian * dialectic.' It is for this reason that Whole-Being,
as a true consciousness in all men, lies untouched in modern
philosophy, and while it does, philosophy must remain barren.
For it is the sole consciousness which man finds absolutely
necessary to fulfil his ideals of existential communion, or of all
in all. And when in this sphere of thought, modern mathe-
maticians declare that Continuity has no essential reference
to space (B. Russell's Princ. of Maths., i. 259), we decidedly
agree with them, for when space-being as a datum of judg-
ment is never admitted into mathematical principles to begin
with, it cannot have much to do with them in any part of
their functions. Both concepts of the Point as discrete, and
Continuation as succession of points, are created in judgments
from which Space as absolute Fact is cast out. For both
Point and Continuation are quantitative, and determined as
quantities, and, according to Hegel, really qualities absorbed ;
and being quantities with constituent qualities essentially flux-
ional, it is impossible that any reference to space should be
found in them, for we never find either quantity or quality
in our space-consciousness. It is only indeed as we have said
when quality cannot be found in our consciousness that we
have our fullest experience of Space-Being.
The ultimate consciousness of Being is consequently at
variance with that profession of quantitative being which
Mathematics would fain assert to be absolute. And no amount
of " number continums," and " new infinities," will ever reduce
the antagonism between them. We only obtain other and
more complicated forms of the problems with which we are
made familiar in the existence of irrationals, surds, infinite
series, and that class of puzzles of which squaring the circle may
be taken as typical.
119. But it is the mathematical method, we are afraid, which
has governed all past determinations of the human 'soul. 1
Man postulated his ' soul ' to be One. Nature, the Cosmos, or
the Universe, was another One. This * point ' in space having
176 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
been axiomatically fixed, any regressive thought into ' person-
ality ' only brought forth a unit-point. Both the mathematical
point-being and the theological ' soul-person,' were determined
in the same way. The ' soul ' existed exactly as the Euclidean
1 point ' did, having position but no magnitude. Thus the only
logical conclusion was that maintained by Kant, viz., that this
1 soul' '-unit had no place. It was not to be found in space! It
was a "thing-in-itself" And when this deduction had been
made, the Other, or ' God,' followed the same logical course.
Man, Nature, and God, were discrete, determined, Point-Beings,
having nothing to do with our consciousness of Space ! Con-
tinuity of Being was a dream. Each was one, and consequently
it did not seem so surprising that 'God' Himself should be
regarded as Three ! For once put consciousness of Being under
the mathematical moulds, and nothing can escape from dis-
creteness. And we may now venture to say that until Being is
held to be more than absolute Unity, no satisfactory conscious-
ness of either ' God ' or human " Personality " can be possible.
1 20. Mathematics no doubt has felt secure in such unit-
making methods. She assumed that she was acting strictly in
accordance with the " laws of thought." And we might bow to
her authority, as backed by such laws, if we were perfectly
certain that the " laws of thought " were themselves capable of
dealing with the question of the ' soul.' But these ' laws ' cannot
help us in this solemn matter. They always assume the discrete
to begin with, and consequently never rise above Objectivity,
first and last. For example, the " law of identity," which is
sometimes put in the form " Whatever is, is," provokes the
constant question, " What has been identified " ? Identity
assumes a prior duality for its very existence. But it is easy to
see that, in the term " Whatever," or any of its equivalents, the
conditional and objective are first postulated, and then the
absolute " is " is asserted of the " whatever-thing " ! Discreteness
is postulated in " whatever," and then absolute affirmation is
asserted of that discreteness ! But a thing, A, cannot be
defined absolutely unless it is space-being. For the thing A,
like any 'thing' whatsoever, must always refer itself to some-
thing beyond itself for Is-ness, or being, and therefore the Is-
afrirmation does not belong to it in any sense, but to that some-
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 177
thing beyond it. And alone of this something, which we call
space, is it inconceivably impossible to give any other predicate
than Is. We cannot say of it, "Whatever," for such a term at
once separates it from ourselves, of which we have not the
smallest consciousness If we say " We are," we have said,
"space is." A consciousness of Whole-Being alone is given.
Difference is affirmed away. For Space does not begin where
we end. Consequently it is always impossible to conceive it to
be related.
The " law of contradiction " as well as the " law of excluded
middle," is also supposed to have in it a necessary force under
which our judgments are compelled to take up a determined
position as to the being or non-being of a thing. But clearly
such laws begin in objectivity and end there. The " thing" must
first be. But what guarantees its being ? And why is it
menaced with non-being? In such a case, it is conditioned by
some Reality of which it cannot be affirmed that its non-being
is possible. There is a consciousness here beyond our conscious-
ness of relative being and non-being, in which an affirmation of
Is is alone possible. ' Either Or,' is not a possible conscious-
ness of this Reality. Such " laws of thought " do not therefore
run in this consciousness. And this consciousness is alone that
of Space-Being. This consciousness of space rises above these
" laws of thought," and cannot be brought within them under
any possibility. On the contrary, it is this consciousness
which conditions and gives force to all these "laws," and
enables us to conceive any thing as possible of * being ' or
of ' non-being.'
The { laws of thought ' therefore, when they assume to
absolutise Being on the one hand and Non-Being on the other,
become pretentious and untrustworthy. Being and Non-Being
are not permanent divisions in What- Is. They are mere
thought-creations, concepts of our space-spread, and have no
authentication in our consciousness of What-Is. Our conscious-
ness, in its ultimate testimony, is not of divided being but of
Whole-Being, with no vestige of a possible part, division, or
rupture in it.
The thing A is thus never equal to itself A, except when A
is assumed to be an absolutely isolated thing. But this is
impossible. We have always a consciousness that disputes such
M
178 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
an assumption. For being the thing A, it is limited, determined,
and One, and so related to the Other one. It is a mere
mathematical ' point,' in short, and at bottom is no more than a
contractility of the space-spread of our consciousness. And
even if it be infinitesimally small or infinitely great, it is still a
thing A, and so determined in its being by Whole-Being which
gives neither a consciousness of the infinitesimal nor of the
infinite, as necessary qualifications of Is-Being. Our ultimate
consciousness of Being negates, or affirms away, the division put
between Infinite and Finite, the A and Non-A, the equal and
inequal, and takes away every compulsion in thought to think
this and that, either or, one and other, and leaves but a whole
affirmation of Whole-Being as the postulate out of which every
relative, or so-called relative, postulate is begotten. Every ' law
of thought,' therefore, falls under this consciousness and is
sustained by it in as far as it is.
121. But we might ask here by what 'law' is it that we are
forced to take our consciousness of ourselves as the ultimate ( law '
of Thought? What compels us to make consciousness our
highest appeal in thinking any thing? We postulate, for
example, being and non-being, cause and effect, one and many,
self and non-self, noumenon and phenomenon, personality and
impersonality, and many more dualities, and we are never
satisfied that such correlatives are absolutely and necessarily
true. For we never know or have consciousness where being
and non-being divide, where cause is not effect, and effect is not
cause, any more than we know where thought is not feeling, and
feeling not willing. Can any man undertake to tell himself
where exactly his ' Self is partitioned off from everything else
in the Universe ? And when we are confronted by such facts,
are we not led directly to a consciousness of Whole-Being in us,
in which all these dualities are abolished as unrealities? We
always feel that we must go further than these relatives for the
true consciousness of what-we-are. They are false relative-
absolutes. It is not necessary to account them as absolute in
Being. We crave an appeal beyond these, but we never crave
an appeal beyond this consciousness of Whole-Being which is
always more than a mere identity or unity of being-things. //
is then that we exhaust the consciousness of what-we-are and find
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 179
it whole- with-space ; and it is this consciousness which also
gives absolute repose to every ' law ' or motion of thought.
And it is to be observed that if such dualities were eternally
permanent in the very essence of What- Is, and each self were
absolutely isolated from every other self, and all were but
relative to all, then our ideas, concepts, notions, and such like,
would necessarily originate in each self. They would also
stay forever with us, if every self were absolutely isolated
from every other. But we have no such consciousness of
originating ideas, or cognitions generally, ab initio. And it is
impossible to retain a cognition absolutely. If it does not
escape by the word, it will leave us by the life, and percolate
through the blood and growth. Cognitions may arise in us,
but they do not originate with us absolutely. And if Life is
behind Thought, then the laws of Life must govern the 'laws of
Thought,' and our consciousness be one of ever-ascending order
of Being; culminating in Whole-Being ; level with the conscious-
ness which we all have of ourselves and of Space as undivided
Being.
122. And this view of consciousness, it is evident, compels an
abolition of the necessary fixtures or laws of thought, with
which we are so obsessed under the terms, among others, of
Personal and Impersonal. Such divisions of Being must be
regarded as untrue to our highest consciousness of Being.
To be faithful to this highest consciousness, we must regard the
modern and ancient postulations regarding personality as
imperfect and wholly inadequate.
In modern philosophy, indeed, Impersonality is a more
rationalised concept than Personality. We only believe
personality, but we are rationally sure of Impersonality as a
Fact! Since the days of Hume and Kant, the entire sphere of
sensation and thought has been a sphere of impersonality.
We all have said, " This sensation : this idea : this thought :
this passion : this memory : this imagination ; is not I. I
think such thought ; I feel such sensation ; I recall this memory."
The entire sphere of thinking, feeling, and conation, is
impersonal, seeing that it is not to be identified with what
thinks, feels, and wills. Kant placed the * Person ' far apart from
this sphere of being, in a place-in-itself. It was beyond space
180 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
and time. It was not to be found within the world-realm at all.
We could not know it. We could only, that is to say, know
the impersonal, for neither God nor man could come into the
horizons of our thoughts. Both personalities of God and Man
were ;tr-things, unknowns, and actually believed to dwell in a
place where no space was ! The cleavage of Being into
personal and impersonal he believed to be essential and
necessary by the very nature of Being, with the further
separating fact added to such a fundamental one that, while
the impersonal was undoubted, credible, and cognizable, the
person who felt so certain and knew so clearly of this impersonal
had no eyes for itself, and never could have more than a dark
blind faith in its own existence. The great Universe held no
Person in it, for this vision of personality declared that both for
God and Man, personality must be wholly outside of it. And
yet there are wise and good thinkers who still beseech us all to
" return to Kant " !
123. Man is embodied life and death, and demands both life
and death to ' reveal ' him ; and knowledge of him should reveal
more than the impersonal corpse-side of him. And if the
spheres of the physical, the sensational, and the mental are all
dead and impersonal now, it should not be omitted by philo-
sophy that, in such a case, these spheres must have once been
both living and personal. How else are they known as dead
and impersonal ? Or was death, or the impersonal, the primal
fount of Being, with life and personality coming in as after-
thoughts ? May not death and impersonality also wind it all up
at last in that case ? And in such questionings is it not always
clear that the everlasting see-saw upon the One and Other,
Personal and Impersonal, Life and Death, is a method of
reasoning which calls for a deeper fathoming of consciousness
to annihilate it root and branch as inefficient and unhelpful ?
We want a consciousness which shall negate all relativity, and
assure us that Being is Whole and in no wise cleft in twain.
For as soon as we fix it in our convictions as axiomatic, that
we, as assumed persons^ must necessarily be absolutely apart
from space, which is also assumed to be undoubtedly impersonal,
it follows inevitably that we build upon cleavage-absolute as
essentially a necessary postulate in conceiving Being, or What- Is.
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 181
But it is clear enough that, when once we do thus admit any
cleavage in Being as essential and necessary, and even declare
that it is impossible to think otherwise, interpreting Mind in
terms of Matter and Matter in terms of Mind, Subject by
Object, and Object by Subject, then philosophy sinks into
a vassalage of cleavage-consciousness by which she is ruled with
a rod of iron throughout all her domain of the cognitional, the
sensational, and the volitional. Verily, she shall by no means
come out thence, till she have paid the last farthing.
It is the calmly assumed conviction, entirely gratuitous, that
our consciousness of space yields also a consciousness of
/^/personality, that lays the foundations of all the rents and
seams so apparent in the robes of Theology, Philosophy, and
Science. And from the purely Christian standpoint, the matter
becomes far more serious, for such an assumption completely
falsifies the consciousness which is associated with the doctrine
of Jesus of Nazareth a consciousness in which sea, wind, stone,
tree, mountain, and the very corpse, palpitate with personality
which is as much authenticated to them by Him as is that of
man.
As a matter of experience, we have no more a consciousness
of ourselves as object, thing, person, in the space-consciousness
of ourselves, than we have of object, thing, impersonal, in the
spatial consciousness of the All. The true Reality is not
covered by these terms, but is Whole, and we, as only conscious
of being space, find ourselves as true and real through the
interpretation of that consciousness. In such a consciousness,
and in no other, can we be guaranteed Absolute Reality, and
ourselves to be as incapable of negation as of isolation.
And our conclusion here must be that every particular
determination, whether it is named One or Other, Unity or
Difference, Subject or Object, Mind or Matter, Personal or
Impersonal, is untrue when so determined as absolute and
necessary in such determination ; and that it could in no wise be
conceivable as such, except through a certain detachment of
thought from the space-consciousness, after the manner of logic
and mathematics, and then as hypostatised as real in this par-
ticular determination by an arbitrary judgment which contains no
consciousness of space in its data. It is the entire omission of
the space-consciousness in all our judgments of relativities that
182 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
renders possible every conception of negation and isolation. It
is also this omission which seems to give invulnerable validity
to the motions of mentality which we designate Synthesis and
Analysis. They move in space-consciousness which they ignore,
and vaunt themselves regal when they are actually menials.
For neither process can give a consciousness of reality to their
products. Neither the analytical Self and Not-Self nor the
synthetic * God ' yields the slightest consciousness of that
reality which is so rampant in our consciousness of space. They
are seen but as limited objects, or object-subjects, moving about
mechanically in a space-being which is immeasurably vaster
than they are in our consciousness. Consequently, although
their reality may be acceptable to the popular mind, and have
many uses for thought and devotion, the fallacy of the fatal
omission of the space-datum stands revealed sooner or later in
the irritations of thinking men who can neither find in such a
1 God 'that Wholeness, nor in such a "Self" that immortality,
which their deeper consciousness ever seeks. And the case of
Humanity becomes pitiable in the extreme when it is proved
that we have no warrant whatever that such ' subjects ' and
' objects ' shall not one day vanish from our knowledge and
faith both, leaving not a rack behind. They are not rooted,
that is, in our consciousness of Reality. Wherefore, it seems to
be anchoring Existence in a bog to attempt to make even the
" unity of the personality," and the " identity of the personality,"
into an absolutely individual unity, and an absolutely individual
identity ; or, universally, to attribute absoluteness in any sense
to either subjectivity or objectivity. Whole-Being is the only
consciousness that we dare to admit into that judgment which
gives us ourselves as Realities, and gives it on the natural basis
of space-being.
124. Absolutising the Relative: affirming the necessary con-
sciousness of difference in our consciousness of Is ; this is the
fatal admission of modern and ancient philosophy. Hence
the perpetuity of schism between Creed and Category, and
between Category and the mystical "synthetical unity of the
manifold in intuitions, as given a priori" and the hopeless war
urged against the innumerable yet unconquerable Differences
whose antagonism flauntingly refuses to be ' overcome,' seeing
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 183
that the very heart of the citadel of Consciousness has been
first surrendered to them. Hence also the cold mathematical
point-beings, logic-shaped, which we name Self, Not-Self, God ;
and the chilled emotions which we experience in contemplating
them. A ' great gulf fixed ' lies between each, which, though it is
admittedly real in its uses of division, is regarded as utterly
useless for an affirmation of Whole-Being. The divided ' things '
are held to be real, but not this gulf which divides them ! It is
of no account ! " That which drew from out the boundless
deep " is alone of interest : the ' boundless deep ' itself is a trifle !
125. Is it surprising then that neither Theology, Philosophy,
nor Science, gives much happiness to Humanity ? Is it possible
that either should do so while maintaining and asserting so
vigorously those assumptions and postulates which our deepest
consciousness constantly contradicts ? Are not we compelled to
say that, in comparison with this profound consciousness of
Whole-Being so persistently voiced through deeps of deeps,
these statements of isolated ' Self,' 'Not-Self,' and 'God,' are
fictions ? All without and within (speaking in common
dual terms for expository purposes) cries out against them.
For Happiness of Being should dwell with Knowledge of Being,
and every genuine consciousness of 'Self and 'God' inspire us
with rapture. But we employ our knowledge to cut us off from
Reality, and debar ourselves from that Existential Communion
in Whole-Being which is itself Absolute Beatitude. The trend
of our deepest impulses is towards the Blissful. For it is
toward the deeper revelation of what we name as Self, Nature,
Cosmos, God. Our increasing knowledge of Being should
increase our joy instead of widening our despair. And joy of
the highest can only be realised in a consciousness that gives
All to All to the fullest extent of Being. Is it not this
consciousness that gives the poet his power over the mind when
he shows us the isolated products of theology, philosophy, and
science, whole-fused in the indivisible flame of his passion ? Is
not Plato the philosopher indivisible from the poet Plato when
he speaks to us of the Over-Soul ? Dante finds Hell, Purgatory,
and Paradise, undivided in his deepest consciousness of Being.
He is conscious of horizons in himself which easily circumscribe
these fields of thought. And again these horizons melt away
184 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
in his consciousness of himself in the spatial vastitudes of
What-Is. The true greatness of our Great Souls is in their
mediation of Whole-Being to our contemplations. We do not
rejoice in being isolated from anything. Shakespeare has no
difficulty in finding "tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." So Shelley
can interpret the Undivided in " the desire of the moth for the
star, the night for the morrow, the devotion to something afar
from the sphere of our sorrow." It is the late Theodore Watts
that says, " In the Great Drama, in Agamemnon, in Othello, in
Hamlet, in Macbeth, there is an imagination at work whose
laws are inexorable, are inevitable, as the laws by the operation
of which the planets move round the sun." The miserable
boundaries of the theological, the philosophical, and the
scientific, are likewise washed out in such a passionate con-
sciousness of Whole-Being as Wordsworth describes,
" Far and wide the clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank
The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him ; they swallowed up
His animal being ; in them did he live,
And by them did he live ; they were his Jife.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! "
(Excursion^ bk. i.)
126. But every generalisation of thought, no matter how we
may name it as ' Ology ' or ' Ism,' when it comes to take the
world in its arms, always lays it in the cradle of the space-
consciousness for its final rest. Geology, for example, spreads
out the * particulars ' of its earth-formations and rock-strata
before our eyes, and being assured of their scientific fixity of
tenure, we enter upon residence, as it were, only to find that we
are lodged on the ribs of an aeroplane which lifts us far back
DIFFERENTIATION AND WHOLE-BEING 185
into boundless Time and the vergeless beginning of worlds.
Thence imagination, having no choice, must needs sweep into
fathomless deeps, of which Space is always the sole as well as
the ultimate consciousness in us of Eternal Reality, when we
have left Time itself and all its fretful worlds far behind us.
And what does Astronomy actually mean to the human
spirit? Is it merely a display of stupendous superhuman
jugglery with innumerable world-balls for the bewildering
motions? What really is the fundamental fascination of
Astronomy? Is it merely the definable pleasure we derive
from contemplating immense bodies in incomprehensible move-
ment, and controlled by inexhaustible forces? These vast
1 matters ' and * energies ' are without doubt, sources of astonish-
ment enough. But how feeble would be their effect upon either
thought or imagination were it not for the consciousness of
unspeakable Space which alone confers upon them their being
as well as spectacular greatness. It is really our space-
consciousness that robes these objects of astronomical con-
templation in awe and splendour.
So also we scan the great centuries of History, not to count
merely these conceptual bars of our terrene cage as we grope
backwards the abysm of time, but to catch still further glimpses
of a far-flowing tide of ocean that rolls forever through and
beyond these centenial arches of life, out unto infinite space, in
which we ourselves, worlds, time, and all, repose as upon a
Bosom.
We have mentioned the Drama. But what gives the Grand
Drama its power over our hearts ? Is it the few figures in the
foreground and their spluttering passions evaporating in our
ears ? Is it not rather the mystery enveloping them, the deep
marginless Mind which makes them transparencies of its own
voiceless feelings, and gives to each brief ' personality ' its
shell-like resonance of a never-ending threnody? The deeps
are ever calling to the deeps. For their communion is
existential and whole ; not for meeting and parting ; and this
is the consciousness of a Deep, environing all ; itself the All ;
for which there is no form so true as the consciousness of
what-we-are, nor any term save Space.
CHAPTER VII
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY
1 27. We have tried in the foregoing chapters to sketch the
main outlines of consciousness and the conditions of thought ;
and ventured to show why philosophical contemplation has
so long striven to realise the dream of Absolute Unity of
Being ; why it has never been attained satisfactorily ; why
it is that Differentiation of Being is as rampant in speculative
reasoning to-day as in the past ; why it must remain so until
the fundamental fact of consciousness is admitted into all
concept-judgments ; and why ' personality ' as qualifying human
determinations of ' God ' and * Man,' cannot now be accepted as
a final interpretation of our consciousness of What-Is.
We now attempt to show that the great attributes of Being,
whose combination and universalisation in personal - form
constitute our concept of ' God,' never realise our basal
consciousness of The Highest till we ground them, one and
all, on the space-being of our consciousness. Space-Being as
Whole-Force, therefore, or the attribute of Almightiness, which
theologians construe for the concept of Deity; or Whole-Energy,
as scientists would view it, perhaps, is the theme of this chapter,
because, generally, this conception of Power, Might, or Eternal
Force, seems always, in all ages and among all peoples, to have
been first and fundamental in the contents of that conceptual
Form which mankind has raised up for itself, and held in awe
as The Most Holy.
The chapter which immediately follows will give a brief
consideration of the principal attributes of Deity which appear
to us to be subordinate to that of Almightiness, with no
pretension, however, of exhausting the list, but rather of
seeking to establish each chief deistical attribute as true for
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 187
itself only in our consciousness of Space-Being, and to show
that all other attributes collocated in the notion of ' God ' are
impossible for their purpose except when interpreted through
that consciousness.
We thus seek to interpret our deepest consciousness of most
holy Being on the basis of the most fundamental consciousness
which we have of Nature. But we must enter a caveat.
Huxley once wrote, " In itself it is of little moment whether
we express the phaenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the
phaenomena of spirit, in terms of matter." . . . " But with a
view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology
is in every way to be preferred." We are indeed seeking to
interpret Being through 'materialistic terminology,' but only
as sublating both terms of ' matter ' and ' spirit ' in a wider
space-idiom which expresses the profoundest consciousness of
man as Whole and not merely as One with his consciousness of
the Universe.
128. Nature, or, when viewed as uniform, the Universe ; or
as universally systemised Order, the Cosmos ; has been accepted
to be Matter and Motion, when these terms are used in their
most general aspect, and as the categories under which human
thought struggles to express the highest scientific Totality.
The term ' motion ' may be considered as fairly clear, but
'matter' as used for this Totality, must not be assumed as
connoting ' substance/ but only * Form of Energy.' The term
1 substance ' may be said to have fallen into desuetude for the
purposes of science. And this fact somewhat complicates the
difficulty of forming a conception of Totality for the Universe.
For as the human mind cannot conceive of motion as existent,
independent of something that moves, and when the term
' substance ' is scientifically impossible as a content for ( matter,'
then the term ' matter,' under compulsion of our consciousness
of Totality, must necessarily be reduced quantitatively to an
ultimate degree of attenuation if we are to get 'matter' and
' motion ' conceivable as One. For we do not require to say
that the reduction of ' objects ' and ' particulars ' in the Universe
to Unity is as strenuous a tendency in the scientific world as
it is in that of philosophy or theology. L. Poincare refers to
" the desire of nearly all physicists to arrive at some sort of
188 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
unity in Nature," and says, " In spite of the repeated failures
which have followed the numerous attempts of past times, the
idea has not been abandoned of one day conquering the
supreme principle which must command the whole of physics."
(New Physics, pp. 63, 323.)
129. We note, then, once more, the synthetic tendency which
seems to be ineradicable from the human mind. Both ancient
and modern scientists have been obsessed with this desire to
unitise the universe. And the same difficulty of absolutising
the relative has presented itself to them in Motion and What-
Moves as we have seen to hamper philosophers in Subject and
Object, Quality and Quantity, and such like. And the same
refusal of the space-consciousness, as giving not merely the
unity sought for, but a consciousness of Whole-Being, has been
universally practised by scientists. They have assiduously
separated the self from their atoms and electrons, and their
electrons from the 'gap,' or space, not discerning that the
personal Curtius, as of old in the Roman Forum, must first leap
into the gulf before the gulf can be made to close in whole-
world-being. It is of little use to cry for unity. No unity is
possible except through the * person,' and when that is seen to
be unthinkably separate from the gulf, the gulf closes not in
mere unity, but in whole-being. And as we have tried to show,
all search for an Ultimate in Being, leads straight to this
Gulf-consciousness for the personality.
130. From the earliest times, speculation among savage
peoples as to the difference between a living and a dead body,
a waking or a sleeping, has always found a certain satisfaction
in conceptions which approximated nearer and nearer to those
of space. The living thing goes away at death and returns an
apparition, or an airy, shadowy form in dreams, or as a visible
though intangible ghost. These are conceived as vapour-forms,
films of man-outline, shadow-shapes, objects as impalpable as
space. The thinkers cannot think them comfortably save as
space-things. Such terms as ' forms of energy,' * matter with
no content of substance,' would embody the conception of the
departed personality for these savage peoples as well as these
phrases suit the scientific conception of ' matter ' at the present
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 189
day. The dream and the vision give the same consciousness
of Matter and Motion, for the * person,' as the analytic dream
and vision of the scientist give for the Universe. But while
both are compelled under the necessities of thought to think
under the same forms, and to stand on the same brink of the
same space-gulf, neither will accept the gulf as of the same being
as himself, and thus the unity of living and dead, thing and
thinker, remain* inevitably impossible.
131. The same tendency is evident on the higher levels of
cultured reflection, and the same refusal is also proved. Most
of the early Greek philosophers who carried their speculations
beyond the human being to the universal Cosmos, sought for
the primal elements of all things through a process of reasoning
which decreased in its content of the material, and approached
more and more towards a simple statement of space-being.
Earth was seen to give origin to all that lived on it, but earth
seemed too coarse and inert to explain the mysterious vital
powers of man and beast, and Water was adopted as the more
superior element of common origins. But Water was found to
be conquerable by Fire, which seemed to leap up independently
of water and evaporate it. Fire seemed to be the more
invincible element. Yet Fire itself was noted as vanishing in
air, which appeared to devour it, and Air was likewise exalted
to the ultimate place of origination of being, until even this
spatiality failed to yield that satisfaction which the inquiring
mind craved in a universal fountain-element of unit-being. A
fifth Essence, the Quintessence, was then conceived as the
ultimate source of all things in earth and heaven, and this
was called * Ether,' a term which still keeps its ground in
treatises of modern speculative science.
132. And thus the trend is clear, in both savage and civilised
speculations, regarding the things that are, as being one
irresistibly pressed towards a space-consciousness which both
refuse to admit into the data of their judgments of the origin
of personal and impersonal being. Yet we do not think we
state the matter too strongly when we say that no power seems
greater over the motions of human thought than this trend of
gravitation towards the space-consciousness. Of all the forces
190 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of which we are conscious none is so universally insistent and
compelling. When every ' law of thought ' has exhausted its
force over our consciousness, this space-gravitation abides their
attack and overcomes them. Motions of earth, water, fire, air,
life, thought, of which we are conscious, are all sublated and
reduced in the consciousness of space. And if 'Ether* is not
another term for space, then it cannot be conceived except as
Something in space, with infinite potential of motion in it also.
It is guessed by scientists to be immovable ; and if so, then it
cannot be Something, for only the space-consciousness yields
such a conception. Something cannot be thought save as under
limitations, and determinations, and therefore with a conscious-
ness of space surrounding it and determining it. And in
thinking Ether as something, and as the home of energy, we
inevitably attribute motion to it in our consciousness of energy.
The moment we attribute objectivity to anything, as we have
seen, we place it directly among the All that Flows. But the
very fact that Ether is conceived as one thing, and the thinking
person an Other, is sufficient to reduce both to mere objects
with no possible chance of their unity being effected.
133. Now, it is only in the consciousness of what-we-are, i.e.
Space-Being, that we cannot find a consciousness of either Rest
or Motion. Say ' I/ and you realise but a consciousness which
transcends every such relativity. This statement becomes
emphatically self-evident when we remember that a conception
of rest or motion is only possible to the human mind when
Being is previously assumed to be broken up essentially into
unit-things. This is indeed the pre-supposition of all relativity.
On such an assumption, we conceive one thing to be at rest
relative to some other thing in motion, and vice versa. A
consciousness of Whole-Being transcends all such relativity
absolutely. And it is this consciousness which is paramount in
our ' I '-consciousness. We have not the remotest consciousness
of what-we-are as resting amid other things in motion, for we
have no consciousness at all of what-we-are as a thing, or unit-
being. Neither have we the faintest consciousness of what-we-
are as being a thing in motion amidst othered things at rest.
We no doubt form ordinary conceptions of our thought as
moving, and our body as suffering, growing, dying, etc., relative
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 191
to what-we-are, supposed at rest ; but this is possible again
when we assume that what-we-are is a thing detached from
thought and body. When we realise that both thought and
body, Mind and Matter, are, at bottom, space-being, we cannot
even conceive them to be othered from what-we-are, and in
such a consciousness what-we-are is in relation to nothing
absolutely. That is, we have but the consciousness of Whole-
Being. In this wider experience, then, all relativity, as well as
every conception of rest or motion is sublated and transcended.
It follows, therefore, that the conception of the ' I '-thing in
motion being impossible for what-we-are, so likewise is the
conception of Change. And it is on this ground that we realise
our consciousness of Unchangeableness as a true consciousness
( 161, 162). It is the consciousness of what-we-are. It is also
the consciousness which space-being yields. Space cannot be
conceived to be either at rest or in motion. For the * I '-, and
for Space-Being alike (speaking in dual terms for expository
purposes), the consciousness of Whole-Being is alone possible.
And in this way we also realise that the powers by which we
formulate every conception of force or energy are themselves
de-forced and transcended by a conscious force of Whole-
Energy.
Similarly, we have not the shred of a consciousness of
' matter,' or ' substance,' in the " I "-consciousness, any more
than of its being a thing. And here again the same conscious-
ness is given by space. As we must reiterate, we cannot think
differently of ourselves and space. And therefore we never can
attribute either quantity or quality, matter or motion, to what-
we-are. That is to say, there is a force in us which sublates all
other 'forms' of force. In other words, every conception of force
or energy which we entertain is governed, subordinated, and
transcended by the force or energy of space-being which is our
experience of what-we-are.
134. Strictly, it cannot be said that we have a true
consciousness of a Thing, or of a Thought, but only of motions
which we agree to understand as a Thing or a Thought. In
the same way, we have only a consciousness of motions which
we understand to be " Life." We say that we are conscious of
Thinking, and of Living, but these motions have no actual
192 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
determined and defined basis in our consciousness of them.
Yet, as Prof. J. Ward points out, we obtain a certain identity of
things dual in the fact of thought and life being sublated in the
one concept of experience (Nat, and Agnost., ii. 112). A certain
resolution of objectivity in a synthesis of subjectivity is effected.
But this unity is clearly not an absolute one ; it is not an
experience of Whole-Being, as he himself indicates, for he
affirms that Experience is " in the concrete, a process, and not
a product" (ibid., ii. 130). And being a 'process,' we get no
more than a motion-concept out of such data, even as Thinking
and Living also give in our consciousness of them.
135. But surely we must pass beyond the relativity of motion-
concepts for our ultimate consciousness of force, or energy. Our
conception of Experience must first be placed beyond that of
process, and regarded in its widest range as all-we-^r^ inclusive
of ali-we/*. It is surely necessary to terminate our con-
ception of Experience, not merely in a category of process, but
in one which is permanently existential ; as transcending
relative connotations of motion and rest; and certified to our
consciousness as such beyond all doubt. Thought-consciousness
and Life-consciousness must be sublated in an Existential-
consciousness ; or, our consciousness of Motion, and Energy as
implied in that motion, must transcend all conceptions of
objective motion and objective energy if we would reach a true
consciousness of Energy as resultant for the Being of our
Experience.
For example, we have conceptions of energy as in process
and energy as resultant, or static, but we have not in such
conceptions an Energy which is independent of the conditions
of such process and such staticity. They are still under Change,
whether Energy is termed Will or Gravity, and we require a
consciousness of Energy which sublates both motions of
Thought and Life without impairing Energy as existential in
Being. And in the deepest conscious " I," all process, or
motion, of Thought or of Life, as experience, comes home to a
resultant experience of Energy, wherein is no consciousness of
motion nor of staticity for ourselves. Just as we retain a
consciousness of Being for ourselves without the least shred of
a consciousness of our being ' Matter ' or ' Substance,' or even
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 193
some Thing, so we retain a consciousness of Energy as resultant
in our Being without any consciousness of objective process
active or passive. That is to say, we have a distinct conscious-
ness of Energised Being as totalising our experience of what-
\\e-are, without the slightest consciousness in us of experiencing
either ' Matter ' or * Motion ' as qualifying that consciousness of
Being. But clearly this is the fundamental " I "-consciousness
which is purely our consciousness of No-thing or Space-Being.
For every vestige of either ' Matter ' or ' Motion ' as objective is
absent from it. And it is our Experience. It is also impossible
to think differently of this experience and our experience of Space.
Or, generally, our consciousness of our personal experience
becomes whole with our consciousness tot* impersonal* space-being.
136. Physicists, we are told, find their ultimate universal
fact of Being, to be, thus far in their researches, Motion-sans-
Substance. They do not apparently find it possible to be
conscious of Space as Being. It is left out of their data of
consciousness. And this fact seems to us to be fatal to the
Highest Science. For strictly, there is no further ultimate
fact than Space. They only use the conceptual * space/ which
can be qualified, quantified, related, squared, cubed, etc., but
they ignore the conceptless space. Hence they never realise
our consciousness of Whole-Force, nor that of Whole-Being.
Science is confined to cosmical conceptions only. But if
scientists could find it possible to include Space in their facts
as Being, they could not fail to reach that fact of Energy-sans-
Matter for which such terms as 'Ether,' 'perfect fluid,' 'hydro-
kinetic' and such like are unsatisfactory substitutes. They
cannot deny, at least, that there is a fact ever urgent in con-
sciousness which constantly allures them further, a conscious-
ness which will likely do so for ever, until they have exhausted
the whole content of their consciousness of What-is. They
cannot deny either, that this fact is outside of all scientific
concepts of What-is. They would otherwise be able to
objectify and define it. And if Space be not this fact of What-
is, why is it so tremendously affirmative of Being beyond every
thing that we can conceive or be conscious of? Why cannot
we think differently of even what-we-are and this fact ?
The scientific and philosophic quest is identical in this
N
194 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
respect. Each, however, holds to quality, quantity, and relations
of these, as Being, and Space-Being as Non-Being. This
consciousness of Space-Being, so essential to all 'essentials,'
comes to its own and its own receives it not. When the
concept of Universal Energy is generalised by science, the
space-fact, as we have said, is outside of it.
Yet, undoubtedly, the space-fact alone supplies it, and more.
Say * space/ and then try to deny that you have said, ' Is ' !
But 'Is* is the force of forces. It underlies and conditions
every consciousness of energy we possess. Without it neither
conception nor consciousness of Energy would be possible.
And it is the same for the conscious ' I.' If I am conscious,
' Is ' is the consciousness under-lying that fact. The conscious-
ness of the universe and of what-we-are rests in this identical
consciousness of space-being : Is. And it is Energy Absolute,
or Whole, because nothing negates it or others it ; and it
negates all else, in affirming What-Is. Moreover, nothing
qualifies it. There is only a consciousness of Energy- Whole.
We have no consciousness that such Energy may move here or
there under a greater compelling energy. Is-energy is whole.
Therefore, every consciousness of energy which is not that of
Is-energy is one based only on our changing concepts of
knowing and believing, all of which are subsidiary to the
ultimate consciousness of Space-Being.
137. We require to familiarise ourselves with this position
from different view-points. But as a general statement we
venture to say that it is not necessary to be conscious of either
' matter ' or ' motion ' in order to have a consciousness of Force
or Energy as Whole. For neither matter nor motion is a
necessary constituent of this consciousness. On the contrary,
our consciousness of each of these constituents as conditioned
in the space-consciousness, is sublated in our consciousness of
w^/?-energy. For it is whole. For example, although when
we say " I," we are conscious of neither matter nor motion in
this consciousness of what-we-are, and still retain a distinct
and irreducible consciousness of energy, it is also a conscious
energy to which we can affix no conscious limits. For although
we may be conscious of limits to any energy to which our
earthly conditions restrict our 'matter' and 'motions' of body
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 195
or brain, this does not touch our consciousness of ultimate
energy in the least, for it is the energy which is always felt as
independent of these limitations, and which men have in all
ages associated with their consciousness of 'spirit' or 'soul.'
Its limitations have been steadily, nay, fiercely denied in the
asserted consciousness of ' immortality.' That is, our conscious-
ness of this Energy is whole as to its impossibility of permanent
change of Being. It is also whole as to its impossibility of
dissipation. In other words, it is in the space or I -conscious-
ness that we have the final affirmation of the conservation of
energy as an Ultimate. In our every experiment of its
examination, this affirmation is always maintained. The
consciousness of its being whole is also confirmed in that it is
incapable of transformation. Now, science never gets beyond
the conception of * energy in transformation,' and conservation
of that energy in its transformations. Whole-energy is indeed
an impossible consciousness with the present data assumed in
scientific judgments. Limited 'objects' are assumed, from
whose edges of being energy is declared to pass unchanged
into other ' objects,' across their edges of limited being, and this
process, it is assumed, may continue forever through an infinite
number of limited ' objects.' But the consciousness of space,
which even the scientific mind cannot ignore for the postulation
of locus for all these ' objects ' and ' changes,' is thrust forth from
the data of all scientific judgments on energy, and consequently,
whole-energy, as a fact of our consciousness of the universe and
of ourselves, is an impossible term. Energy is only seen
transformed from one limited form to another, uncreated and
indestructible, yet the space in which it is conditioned for
these changes is disregarded in the problem !
When we test, then, such a consciousness by the experiment
and observation of our I-consciousness, we find there (i), a
consciousness cf energy, equal to Is, independent of any
concept or consciousness of matter or motion, and (2), a
consciousness of the impossibility of its transformation from
\vhat-we-are to anything beyond us, for the reason that we
have not the slightest consciousness of any limit as to where
what-we-are begins or ends in Being. Our consciousness of
what-we-are as space-being refuses such limitations. Hence
we have no consciousness of a transformation of that energy
196 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
which equates with what-we-are, but only one as of persisting
energy, whole against every force which we associate with
either life or death, time or eternity.
138. We can thus conceive Nature as whole-with-ourselves
in a consciousness of Being which is independent of our con-
ceptions of either quantity or quality, motion or matter. And
this conception of Nature permits us also to entertain a rational
basis for the subordinate conceptions that not only does ' All
Flow' but that All flows through-and-throughout All. Com-
munion and not merely Communication is the experience of
all with all, on an existential basis of Whole-Being. For our
consciousness of absolute Resultant- or Whole-Force equates
with our consciousness of Whole-Being, and it is impossible to
have a consciousness of What-we-are without simultaneously
having a consciousness of energy equal to that given in our
consciousness of Is.
139. Both our conceptions of ' Motion ' and of ' What-moves '
are thus swallowed up in a wider consciousness of experience
of Whole-Being. This means also that an experience may not
be necessarily confined to one person, but be common to all
'persons' and 'objects' embraced in this Whole-Being. The
simplest example of this fact is perhaps the case of the child
which, in its origin^ has an unconscious experience which is
whole with the conscious experience of the parent. This
experience is based in an identical existence in which one
blood and one life act as mediating processes in whole-being.
Every leaf in the tree has also this experience common to
all the leaves and the tree itself. But clearly this common
experience may be traced to its widest extent, until all Nature
may be conceived as having a common experience with all its
subordinate ' particulars.' And when our conception rises to
this height, then we have but to realise that all Nature, or All
that is All, has a common experience as conditioned in Space,
in order to have a conception of an Experience which is as
whole as Being itself is whole. That is, the " process " which
we conceive as motional-experience becomes sublated with our
consciousness of existential Whole-Being whenever we introduce
space into our judgment of either. The space-consciousness
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 197
yields a resultant consciousness not only of what-we-are but
of what the All is in the experience of itself; and our
experience of ourselves is common to Whole-Being as the
Is-, or Space-Being.
140. This view of Whole-Experience as culminating in our
consciousness of Space-Being is, in a sense, admitted by
scientists. But they limit its extent under the terms of
Heredity and Environment. They postulate, as real, an isolated
nucleus of being, and an environment to that nucleus which is
also isolated from the nucleus, although asserted to be absolutely
essential to it. And both concepts are limited once more by
Time, and in neither fact is the consciousness of space-being
admitted.
But if we trace back Heredity to its remotest origin, that
origin cannot be defined till it enters our consciousness of
space-being ; and Environment of Being is only a contracted
concept of that Being which never authenticates such a
contraction. Taking Heredity in the widest possible aspect
as an influence exerted upon a being before it becomes being,
in the sense of personality or individuality ; then nothing can be
affirmed as the ultimate influence upon Being of any name save
space-being, and in the same way, the ultimate environment
so essential to the existence of any being, is space-being. Both
limitations of backward moving time and surrounding space-
environment are only identified together in our consciousness
of Whole-Experience of Whole-space-being. And if. Herbert
Spencer's statement holds true that " whatever amount of power
an organism expends in any shape is the correlate and
equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without "
(Princ. of BioL, p. 57), then no being can possibly be isolated
existentially from any other, and all Being is a common field
for every force, and this conception of being cannot be
rationalised save as ultimately Space-whole-being. Nothing
in nature or human nature can be rationally conceived, that is,
to be absolutely new being, whose essential elements never
were extant before, and this is just another way of saying that
no one has the faintest consciousness of ever having begun
quite new, or of having had absolute origin independent of all
other being. Heredity goes back ultimately into Space-being
198 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
as certainly as does Environment, and we have not the least
authority to limit these influences except as forces which
are identically Whole in our consciousness of Space-Being,
or What-we-are. Our ultimate inheritance, as our ultimate
environment, is subsumed in our consciousness as Space-being.
141. It is in this space-category that the through-and-
throughoutness of Being, or the All as flowing through All,
is rationalised. There is a path through All which all things
know, because space is a a fundamental experience for all.
Indeed this through-and-throughoutness is impressing its
acceptance upon all thinking people in our day, and, as a
consequence, the barriers between ' mind ' and ' matter,'
' personality ' and ' impersonality,' as absolutised dualities, are
being gradually broken down. For it has become familiar
knowledge that innumerable expressions of nature-force pass
through-and-throughout the human system, and their sphere
is confessedly not confined absolutely to our bodies. The
passage of solar radio-activities, electric currents, movements
of atoms, molecules and ions, are assumed by all intelligent
people to find free course through-and-throughout the human
system, entering and passing out of it in such a way, and with
such boundless freedom, as to indicate a common basis in
Nature and in man for the path of these forces. If there had
been any considerable doubt about this absolute freedom which
all things assume for themselves, the discovery of radium
would have gone far to dispel it. The analysis of the spectrum
of light has revealed a common physical basis for sun, moon,
earth, stars, and nebulae. Biology has broken down the fixed
barriers that used to keep one species apart from the other,
and has proved that the protoplasmic cell of the plant, the fish,
the bird, the animal, and the man is the same ; and as all
* mind ' and all ' matter,' as well as all ' life ' and all ' thought '
are unthinkable except as movements, and are all resolvable
ultimately into the Whole of space-energy, or energy of which
space alone can be conceived as the ultimate affirmation, it is
easy to see how reasonable Wimdt's statement becomes when
he says, " From the standpoint of observation, we must regard
it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the
mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 199
large. The question of the origin of mental development thus
resolves itself into the question of the origin of life " (Princs.
of Physiological PsychoL, p. 31). "From the simplest to the
most complex cases," says Herbert Spencer, " physical principle
and psychical manifestation agree."
142. Every force in the universe, indeed, seems to find its
way homewards through man, and through all of man, as it
does through all else, even as the wireless message finds no
more obstruction in the person than in the pole. Man cannot
be shown to be in any part of him cut off or isolated from the
rest of the Universe of Nature, except as we arbitrarily create
divisions in being for thought-purposes. Life and death do
not appear to offer new conditions of movements of force, but
are themselves to be regarded as simple movements of force
or energy. At least many movements of energy pass through
the living and the dead at the same depth of consciousness in
each. The living and the dead have a common experience in
this respect, and such experience must be held again as common
to the All of Nature. Experience, that is, is not fragmentary
but whole. It may be said, of course, that these currential
influences are strictly confined to the air and ether spheres,
and that Matter is alone affected by them, but not Mind. But
this is an assumption that is becoming less and less tenable as
knowledge advances. The meagrest experience of every one
is that, when we are cold, a source of warmth will not only
comfort the body but cheer the mind. The heat motions do
not, as some seem to imply, lodge themselves among nerve
tissue, and brain, and stay there, debarred from all contact
with 'mind' or 'soul.' These motions may not always be
motions that give the sensation of heat, and we may not be
able to define them at every part of their course as //^Amotions,
but our common experience is that they pass through the man,
all of the man, stirring his feelings, brightening his eyes,
putting cheer into his voice, and gladness into his heart, and
accelerating his mental motions in such a way as to justify us
in affirming that their circuit is not limited to ' matter ' but
includes * mind ' as well. Moreover, when we observe the same
forms of energy to reflect and react upon others in the sense
that is called * social,' we are inclined to believe that these
200 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
motions of what we call heat have a clear path through both
personal and impersonal parts of man's being. And as they
come to him out of the universe, so they pass through-and-
throughout him into the vast reservoir of the Universe once
more. The motions as vibrations seem to be the same
throughout, though changed in our consciousness of sensation
and thought, will and action, which they incite in their course.
But no motion indeed has ever been proved to come to an
absolute end. It is transformed, transfused, translated, and
what not, but it is inconceivable as annihilated. Only in the
space-consciousness, in which no consciousness of quantity or
quality can be discovered, can we realise this annihilation.
And we have just tried to show that when we receive Space
into our data of judgment, we obtain the true conscious
resultant of both Matter and Motion in one consciousness of
Whole-Being.
143. The irrationality of conceiving ourselves to be absolutely
cut asunder as separate Selves from every other Self and Thing,
apart from Nature, and apart from even God, is more and more
apparent as an order of Being which is out of harmony with
all our ordinary conceptions of existence. For example, the
force or Energy which we name Gravitation exerts a power
over every molecule, atom, and infinitesimal ion or electron of
our being. Can any one even imagine the dividing line that
resists the invasion of the self by this force which transfuses all
Nature? At what part of the self-we-are does this force stay
its action and recoil back from its impervious frontiers ? We
cannot tell where body and soul begin and end, where pain
and pleasure are divided, where knowledge and ignorance are
separated, where life and death meet and part in our constitu-
tion, and can we venture to say that we are conscious that this
force or energy does not pervade the whole Self, 'mind' and
' matter ' of it, and yet pervades all other regions enveloped by
the space-consciousness ? " We have every reason for believ-
ing," says Dr Bain, " that there is, in company with all our
mental processes, an unbroken material succession. From the
ingress of a sensation, to the outgoing responses in action, the
mental succession is not for an instant dissevered from a
physical succession." ..." The only tenable supposition is,
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 201
that mental and physical proceed together, as undivided twins "
(Mind and Body, p. 131). And referring to the structure of
the brain, Prof. D. Ferrier says, " Aphasia being essentially due
to the destruction, temporary or permanent, of the centres of
excitation and organic registration of acts of articulation, is a
significant proof of the fact that there is no break between the
physiological and psychological functions of the brain, and that
the objective and subjective are not separated from each other
by an unbridgeable gulf" (Functions of the Brain, p. 280,
Ed. 1876).
144. Again, it is common knowledge that life itself is
indivisibly associated with elements which are all counted
non-vital. From certain combinations of oxygen, nitrogen,
hydrogen, and carbon, which are perfectly ' lifeless,' we obtain,
according to Huxley, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.
" The existence of the matter of life depends on the pre-
existence of" these compounds. But when these are brought
together under conditions, "they give rise to the still more
complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the
phaenomena of life" (Lay Sermons, p. 135).
Here is involution upon involution of * lifeless ' matter, yet
from which life arises, and without which life could not arise
in the protoplasmic cell, in order to become plant, fish, bird,
animal, and man, and we are called upon to assume that while
all these elements and forms are operated upon through, and
by, the universal forces of the Cosmos, and are necessary to the
life which arises from them as a living ' self/ the self so evolved
from these cosmical elements, and without which it could not
be a self at all, at once thrusts itself clear of them, as well as
apart from the entire universe, and stands forth an absolutely
independent, uninvadable, impervious, isolated Self! This
would indeed invest the Self with a power of wrenching itself
apart from the Cosmos far greater than those cosmical powers
to which the very existence of the Self is due.
And if we are to accept that what-we-are resists all these
influences which move in all other parts of the Cosmos freely,
and thrusts them from itself as the rock thrusts back the wave,
how then are we to account for the consciousness of giving and
receiving sympathy, love, enmity, and all the varieties of
202 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
passion generally ? Do all these motions go on outside of the
bounded impenetrabilities of what-we-are? Does it not
become more and more improbable that absolute isolation
should have been decreed as the solitary lot of ourselves in a
Cosmos where all else mingles in common existence with all
else?
145. For the same hint is given in the remarkable fact that
we always find response in universal nature for our thought-
motions and emotions. A ray of sunshine breaks forth out of
a gloomy day and falls upon an eye as dark with sorrow. A
perceptible influence is transmitted to nerves and brain, emotion
is quickened, and light radiates what-we-are as distinctly as it
has radiated eye, nerve, and brain. It may not be named as
light in the brain, but it is just as impossible to call it light in
space. The actual fact remains that this motion which is
named light in the eye produces as true light in the ' mind ' as
it does in the eye. The influence of this vibrating energy does
not stay in our ' matter,' and neither does it remain in our
' mind.'
No influence, energy, force, or motion of any kind seems to
be impeded in its free passage from space to space (speaking
dually), from space to person, or from person once more to
space. But this is simply to say that space is through-and-
throughout the person as well as the im-person, and that while
All flows, All flows through All. Strictly, if all flows, it must
flow through all. And manifestly, without the space-conscious-
ness this conception is impossible. Thought so gravitates to
this space-consciousness, as we have hinted, that it is impossible
to conclude otherwise than that all motion is conditioned by
space and is therefore limited, although space itself gives no
consciousness to us of limitation. All flows in space-being as
all of which we are conscious flows in what-we-are.
146. This view of Being as whole need not be too much dwelt
upon, perhaps, as the difficulty before every one is not so much
to create a belief in it as to rationalise the fact of the belief
which already exists. Most people are aware that our ablest
intellects are all moving to-day in this direction, and that broad
glades are being made through untrodden land by psychical
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 203
research, and that branch of study known since Fechner's day
as Psychical Physiology. The mental phenomenon of the
association of ideas led to the belief that no idea ever exists
independently by itself, but occupies a common basis of existence
with other ideas, and as the content of every idea has always a
material basis of fact, and would have no existence in our minds
apart from this basis, it has been believed that/a^ and idea had
a common basis of existence. Certainly, nothing has been
found in consciousness to make these convictions impossible.
It is all the other way. The trend of consciousness is towards
confirmation of these convictions. Our very consciousness of
living has for its content the fact of our own lives, where neither
concept of idea nor of life can exist the one apart from the
other. Our lives are again based in precedent life, and all life
is seen to be conditioned and environed by non-vital elements,
and these once more in ' matter ' which scientists reduce easily
to motions, and these in turn, to mere forms of energy, * electric
charges ' in a diaphanous Ether-Something, out of which all
'matter' is eliminated absolutely. That is, the march of facts
and ideas constantly converges towards a Unity or Total, where
fact and idea are concussed into Being. And unless we also
take, at this point, the consciousness of space into our judgment
of Being, Being remains, as with Hegel and Kant, a mere
Unit or Total, and never by any possibility can give us a
consciousness of Being as Whole with no conceivable part in
it. It is in the space-consciousness alone that material fact
and immaterial idea are sublated, confessing that they never
were, and never could be, separated entities but only Whole-
Being.
147. In discussing Being as a Whole, therefore, we must be
understood to be discussing it as it can be thought, and as it is
possible to find it reflected in our consciousness. The Scientist
is not able to think it except as " Form of Energy," " Electric
Charge," " Ether." Philosophers cannot think it except as
Thought. But both Scientist and Philosopher never eliminate
from their terms the consciousness of Motion. Try to think of
scientific Energy or Thought, and then say if you have no
consciousness of Motion in either. It cannot be done. It can
only be found when we say * I,' for this does not flow. But
204 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
if Motion cannot be eliminated from the conception of the
Universe, then neither can we eliminate Motion from our
consciousness of it as something moved. We always go round
in a circle of thought and consciousness. And clearly, this
Something is the centre of such a consciousness, and we who
think it are the Go-rounds. The fact of Ether never gives us
even a perfect synthesis for either the what-we-are or for the
Universe which we try to think on such a basis. Being never
becomes even a Total, far less Whole. It is vain to satisfy
ourselves that this result is a true Unity. It is simply two
things tied together with a name, as mass and motion are tied
together by the name Energy. But the conception of existential
one-ness is never found in such a consciousness. It is really
existentially dual in the facts of being mass and motion.
148. The desire for the unity of the Universe, as we have
hinted, is as strong among scientists as it is among philo-
sophers. And in all their theories of 'Ions' and 'Ether' we
must not regard them as seeking to coerce their facts to their
notions of unity. Quite the opposite. Every fact of science is
slowly pressing scientists towards a realisation of that unity
which seems to lie as an anticipation in their minds. The
'perfect fluid' which Lord Kelvin desiderated, is an instance
that scientists are on the outlook for something that will serve
as a Newton's apple to lead them to the larger truth which
urges birth from their instincts of faith. This in itself is
perhaps the most profound scientific fact of to-day. For it
proves that there is a consciousness of the existence of a basis
for a far wider form of Science than is commonly known by
that term. So far, indeed, have scientists already gone in this
direction that such as Sir Oliver Lodge can say, " The region of
true religion and the region of a completer Science are one"
(Hib. Journ., No. 2, p. 227). But here Sir Oliver indulges in a
guess, for if there is oneness of regions of religion and science,
it must be a oneness based in a scientific fact, and if this fact
were known to him, we are sure he would be the first to declare
it. And yet, our consciousness never ceases to point to that fact y
a fact, however, which lifts our consciousness above mere unity.
The scientific mind, we seem to think, is simply, in our own
times, passing through the same experience which the philo-
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 205
sophical and theological minds respectively experienced in
bygone days, and each has been forced independently towards
the same exiguous goal along the same dematerialising way.
Theology in the far past, eliminated all matter out of her
categories in order to reach the ultimate unity in the more
rarified term, Spirit: a term that represents the most matter-
less concept of energy possible, while Philosophy, as we have
seen, in order to realise the ultimate of ultimates, also emptied
every category of substance out of Being till ' mere Being/ Is,
Nothing, alone remained, which yet was of null-value to her.
Being as a category was subjected to still further exhaustion
till Hegel could assure all men that it was a mere abstraction,
and was not even Nothing ! The same desperate ultimation of
the infinitely exiguous is clearly apparent in the efforts of our
foremost scientists to think matter which is immaterial, and to
found Nature upon a non-substrate substance ! What is plain
to us, in even the sketchiest survey of these three great move-
ments of the Human Mind, is the fact that everything seems to
be ' in the way ' of their realising the grand ultimation of their
consciousness until the consciousness of Space is realised by
each. Space is the force of forces, the energy of energies,
which with hands of nothingness draws all thought and con-
sciousness to itself. It is impossible for the human intellect to
conceive a concept of almightiness more ultimate than is
affirmed by this space-consciousness. Theology, philosophy,
and science are clearly being irresistibly swept under it.
There can be no doubt that the logical result of all this
elimination of 'substance' and 'matter'; this attenuation of
thought to the utmost exiguity of its concept ; this concentra-
tion upon and co-ordination of Nothing, is simply the realisation
of something for which it is not possible to invent a term that
will give it a place in our minds save that of space. We are
forced to affirm, by the nature of the facts before us, that it is
the space-consciousness, and the space-consciousness alone,
which, in all three departments of thought, is pressing ever for
ultimate recognition as common datum of Reality for these
so-called separate sciences.
149. Science, however, has preferred to seek an ultimate
Cause (or rather, unity, for 'cause,' like 'substance,' has also
206 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
been frowned upon by scientists) in the Unknown, in the
theological ' God] and in the philosophical Hegelian * Notion!
Space, as we must repeat, has been a non-entity in the problem,
a mere ' pure and transparent ' consciousness, as Prof. E. Caird
would have said, or, in other words, a negligible quantity !
Science indifferently styles it " the Void," and there the matter
ends. Now, can science afford to ignore any fact in Nature?
For space seems to be considered a fact by scientists. Sir
Oliver Lodge, for example, when arguing for " foundations " in
science and religion, and twitting, in his free manner, the
religious men for their fears and timidity when science pulls the
" artificial props and pillars " from beneath the structures they
have reared, consoles them again by pointing out that suspen-
sion in air is not to be despised as a " foundation," instancing
the fact that the earth itself " floats securely in the emptiness
of space " (Man and the Universe, p. 54).
Space evidently exists to Sir Oliver Lodge, but does not
possess the value of Being. This seems to be the meaning of
" empty." Space is, and yet is valueless, for it is " empty" !
But why should a scientist stigmatise space as "empty"
when, by all tests of thought and consciousness which we
possess, it is staringly full to a sense of wholeness which nothing
else transcends ? And why should the insinuation of weakness
be also made by science in regard to space when, again, by
every known test, it is strong beyond all realisation as a
" foundation " for everything ? Earth is strong, air is strong,
ether is assumed to be strong, but what then is the function of
space when these ' particulars/ and millions and myriads of
others, are all " founded " on it ? Be it known that we feel
timid enough in venturing into this scientific arena, but it
humbly appears to our unscientific mind, beyond the least
shadow of a doubt, that Space is the POWER that ultimately
sustains this incomprehensibly awful Universe. And if this is
not sheer nonsense, but fact, then one should expect that
scientists, of all men, ought to be the first to trace all their
' matters ' and * motions ' to that Source, and find in it not
only an earth-power, an ether-power, a gravitation-power, but
indivisible, Whole-power ; the Grand Potential Resultant. For
if this stupendous Universe ; this Nature-Thing, to name which
all terms fail us ; if this ALL-BEING can float so serenely and so
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 207
securely in the bosom of this power, then this is the only true
Power, and we shall seek in vain for any other. It is certainly
beyond all dispute that when we seek for some basis or founda-
tion for the weight of this vast Universe, considered merely as
Mass, we are always utterly compelled to base it on Space. It
is impossible to think otherwise and remain in harmony with
our ultimate consciousness of What- Is.
And it is a question of what we are able to think in harmony
with such consciousness. But as Pascal more than hinted long
ago, no consciousness of power equals that consciousness of power
which we have for ourselves. Inversely, it may assume a conscious-
ness of weakness, or lack of power, but this is truly the obverse
consciousness of the same fact. And it is a scientific fact that
every power in the universe is measured for each person by
this consciousness of self-power. The greatness of the gravita-
tion power, for example, is measured ' materially ' by each of us,
by our consciousness of lack of such ' material ' power in our
person as compared with it on a physical basis. But when we
say " I," we have the same consciousness as when we say
"space," for in this conscious ' I,' we have no consciousness of
either * matters ' or ' motions/ and yet, as Pascal averred, we have
a consciousness of greater power than is given by the material
Universe. That is, we still have the equal consciousness of the
power which sustains the Universe the space-consciousness.
It is therefore in our consciousness of what-we-are that we
obtain our deepest realisation of Force or Energy.
150. It humbly appears to one who is deeply grateful to
such as Sir Oliver Lodge for any scientific knowledge he
possesses, that Science must sooner or later be compelled to
accept space as What-Is into the data of its problems, and
accept it as the absolute datum. Why indeed should there be
such unconscious scepticism all round with reference to the
space-consciousness ? Is it not more and more evident that
we must still seek beyond 'atoms' and 'ions' these scientific
fairy folk for the ultimate scientific fact? Masses, large or
small ; Forces, local or universal, are plainly inadequate to
the problem which they are called upon to explain. Dumbly,
they ever point away from themselves. And always one fact
remains, viz., this consciousness of space beyond them, and of
208 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
space as our ultimate consciousness of What-Is absolutely.
Let us subdue, if we please, every concept or percept of
substance or matter, and divide and attenuate atoms and
electrons beyond all subdivisions, the fact is unconquerable
that we cannot eliminate the consciousness of space from the
ultimate consciousness of either the universe or ourselves.
Neither does it help us to reduce the universe and ourselves
to a single term of Energy, for if this is to mean anything
at all to our minds it must also pre-suppose space for its
action and existence.
151. Force, doubtless, or as it is preferred, Energy, is
acknowledged by all thinking people to be one of the best
known characteristics of universal being. Every force or
energy is also conceived as either resisting or resisted by
another force or energy. Scientists assume that we can know
force or energy only by the fact of resistance. And this
assumption seems to be proved through the entire sphere
of objectivity at least.
But what does it mean to resist anything? Speaking
generally, it means to overcome a force by another force.
Universally, it is observed that one force meets another, or
what is understood to be another, force, and if greater, it
overcomes its fellow-force, and reduces it.
But just as in tracing back Life, Thought, Substance, Matter,
and Consciousness itself, to an Ultimate, we never reach an
absolute conception for either, so likewise in tracing Energy
up to its ultimate, we never reach, apart from the space-
consciousness, an absolute conception of force or energy. The
greatest conceivable force, that of gravitation, is always con-
ceivable as capable of reduction by a still greater force. For
we always have a consciousness of that in which it is conditioned.
And so on, to endless cogitation.
What, then, we have to look for, in endeavouring to think
Whole-Energy, in harmony with our ultimate consciousness of
it, is a force, or energy unconditioned, a force of which universal
consciousness and experience would be able to assure us
could not possibly be conceived as reducible by any other
force or energy ; a force, indeed, beside which it would be
impossible for the human mind to imagine an Other. That
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 209
is to say, we must look for absolutely Resultant Force or
Energy : not merely Unit-Power, but Whole-Energy. This
consciousness, in short, must not give us a mere combination
of all possible energies tied-up into a grand Totality, but
Energy so consciously Whole as to exclude all conception
of division from it absolutely.
However, it is clear that in discovering this force, it could
not possibly be known to us as force, for thereby it would
be proved objective and a related thing to what it forced.
Whole-Force can only be known as Is ; as Be-ing ; and, as
we tried to show, this is the expression which space always
yields to our consciousness of it. And whereas we have in our
consciousness of space a consciousness of resistance to thought in
its efforts to annihilate it, Thought itself is shown to be conditioned
motion in us, and subsidiary to the consciousness which we have
of what-we-are. And again, because we are conscious of
Thought as conditioned motion in us, there is revealed a
consciousness of What-we-are as sublating all motions what-
soever, yet as not destroying but as establishing an ultimate
consciousness of Energy in what-we-are. And the same thing
falling to be affirmed of What-we-are as ' substance ' or ' matter/
it follows that while all conceptions of ourselves as * substance '
are completely sublated in the consciousness of ourselves, the
consciousness of Substantia, Is, is not destroyed but established
the more for what-we-are. And Mass and Motion being the
two constituents in our conception of Force or Energy, and
these being sublated in the consciousness of ourselves, this
same consciousness of what-we-are yields only a consciousness
of Whole-Energy, Zte- ing- Power.
It is now evident that whether or not we allow Space to
exist as a scientific fact, we cannot annihilate the consciousness
of it from what-we-are. This consciousness completely com-
mands all others, and all others are subordinate to it. It has
this sovereign Force in it. But every conception of Energy
or Force which science can produce betrays a dependence far
below this sovereignty. For example, can any scientist
conceive anything, or anything in motion, as existing space-
less? Is it imaginable by any power we possess? But what
conclusion does this fact compel, if it be not that Space,
or our consciousness of Space, conditions all other con-
O
210 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
sciousness of anything existing, or of anything existing in
motion ?
152. No more can Space be conceived as subject to any
Force or Energy known to science. Suppose we test this
statement by confronting the two together, viz., our con-
sciousness of space and our consciousness of the greatest
Energy known to Science. Can we conceive space as being
subject to even the sublime Energy or Force of Gravitation ?
Does the Force of Gravitation say to Space, "Thus far, but
no further"? Are we conscious of this as fact? Is not our
consciousness all to the contrary ? Is it not our consciousness
that Space says this limiting word to all the forces and
energies of science, even to the highest Energy of Gravitation ?
What we are conscious of, therefore, as Space, must be con-
ceived as that Force, or Energy ', which no Force can resist or
overcome. It is consequently the Resultant Force or Energy
of all conceivable forces universally : Absolute Power : Whole-
Energy. It is at least impossible to affirm any conclusion
upon Energy or Force to be otherwise.
If we are granted so much, we may now consider some
points that seem to fall under this general statement. Every
force known to the human mind points to space as to its
superior, and its superior by the difference of 'finite' and
' infinite.' For every force, even gravitation force, being, in
our consciousness of it, cognisable as a force, it is also in
our consciousness cognisable as finite. For every force is
cognisable only through and by the categories of thought
which are themselves finite. That is to say, the force that
is known as a force is only so known by means of categories
which do not and cannot connote a consciousness of the
Absolute or Whole. But science depends on such categories
as Matter, Body, Substance, Mass, Motion, Acceleration, etc.,
for her conceptions of forces and energies. If these are wiped
out of existence, science cannot have a consciousness of Energy
or Force. If these are wiped out of existence, science declares
that all that is left is space ; ' empty space ' ! And science
never dreams of associating Energy or Force with such a con-
ception. Neither would Philosophy. Neither would Theology.
But the fact remains that when all these categories are wiped out
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 211
of being, this space-being abides and cannot be wiped out. Is
remains with us for this space-being. It resists all our efforts
to wipe it out of being. It resists also all our efforts to put
limits to its being. We cannot finitise it under any circum-
stances of thought and consciousness. All other categories
are swallowed up in it, finity along with the rest. It is,
therefore, once more, Whole-Force. And it is just because
that it is Whole-Force that it cannot be idea-ed, or cognised
as a Force, for to do so would be to find it finite, conceptual,
and not Whole. It is therefore true, infinite Force, and the
difference between all other forces known to science and this
Space-Force, is the difference of ' finite ' and ' infinite ' in our
consciousness of them.
153. We have just said that this Space-Force resists, but of
course the language is due to the necessities of exposition.
Whole-Force is not conceivable as resisting, seeing it is the
sole Force, Is. And we may now notice that what-we-are
yields always this identical consciousness. As what-we-are,
we are not conscious of resisting, or called upon to resist. We
are. And in harmony with our consciousness of space, the
consciousness of what-we-are never gives us the smallest
content of a force, or an energy. Nothing is given us in our
I-consciousness save one of Is ; Being. We are never conscious,
for example, that our forces of will, thought, attention, recollec-
tion, are the I, or what-we-are. We always distinguish. We
say ' my will,' ' my thought,' ' my memory.' We cannot say,
' Attention is I,' ' Will is I,' * Thought is I.' For a consciousness
of finity and limitation is always given in such forces of will,
thought, attention. The ' I ' can wipe them out, as it pleases,
and put them under subjection. We are conscious that they
are finite forces moving in what we-are, but we are also
conscious that they cannot wipe tis out of being. There is
that in us which Is, so profound in its strength as to make it
impossible for us to have a consciousness of resisting at all the
greatest forces of which we are conscious, although we actually
do resist them.
154. That is to say, there is in all of us a consciousness of
Being which no motion or process affects in the slightest, just
212 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
as we all have a consciousness of what-we-are which is never
affected by our willing, feeling, conation, or any possible
motion or process of mind. It is this consciousness in which
all motion is conditioned, transcended, and sublated. And this
fact of consciousness seems to explain why we have no
consciousness of the ' I '-Being, or what-we-are, as being under
any power, force, or energy in any respect. Our bodies are
under force, our minds steadily trend to the space-consciousness
if we think at all ; but no motion is discoverable in our I-
consciousness. And if what-we-are had not been space-being,
it seems that we must have had a consciousness in our
' 1 '-being of energy trending towards Being also, of which we
could have thought differently than of what-we-are. It is
because what-we-are is whole with space-being that we have
the same consciousness in what-we-are of immateriality and
immovableness as we have for space-being. We are not
conscious that what-we-are is under gravitation energy, or
under any energy absolutely, and this is the identical conscious-
ness which we have of space-being. But yet our consciousness
of affirmative being is as deep for the one as for the other.
That is, we are conscious enough of Is-Energy in space-being,
for nothing gives such an irresistible consciousness that it Is,
and we have the same for what-we-are (speaking in dual
terms for convenience) ; and as we are not conscious at all
that either is under any power, force, or energy, absolutely, it
follows that this consciousness of Space-Being and I-Being is one
not only of whole-being but of whole-energy ; Resultant-Force
absolute.
Hence it is that the more closely we realise a full and true
consciousness of the " I," the more impossible is it to realise a
consciousness of force or energy in what-we-are, as science
understands a force. We obtain ^simply a consciousness of
whole-force ; of absolutely resultant energy ; but unknowable
as such under the scientific categories of energy. What we
do find is that all conceptions of force or energy, as science
understands these terms, are more and more eliminated, and
that what remains is simply consciousness of Being ; Is ;
without any other content ; and, clearly, this is consciousness
only and solely of pure Space-Being. We then cannot conceive
the " I," or what-we-are, to be any thing otfier than the thing
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 213
we conceive space to be. Wholeness of Space-Being is the
sole consciousness given us.
155. But we have to complain once more that it is always
this consciousness which is put into the 'blind spot' of our
vision, and if we are religious we name it ' Spirit,' if philo-
sophical, ' Absolute Notion,' and if scientific, ' The Void.' The
real meaning asserted by such terms is also never so much
one of Power as of loss of consciousness of Substance, Matter,
and Energy. ' Emptiness' is the predominant consciousness
in them. We find that we cannot think what-we-are as solid,
fluid, or gaseous, or even as ether. But there is never a doubt
about the power of Is, Being, that is given us in it. From
the scientific point of view it is only conceivable as 'empty,'
and * scientifically,' no doubt, it is ' empty.' But it is evident
that from the point of view of the higher coming Science, we
must regard what-we-are as ' empty ' in the same sense as we
consider Space as 'empty.' And, undoubtedly, the power of
what-we-are and of Space is so great in this ' emptiness,' as to
be unthinkably different in our consciousness of either. Such
a power, force, or energy, call it what we may, is never
measurable by the common tests of scientific forces or powers.
Yet all our conceptions of power or force are completely
dwarfed in its presence, and we can only assert for it, in
what-we-are, as we have affirmed for our consciousness of
space, viz., that all other forces are superseded by it with that
difference which is usually put between ' finite ' and ' infinite.'
It is conceived as 'Empty' necessarily, because no concept can
grasp it by quality, quantity, or relation. It is solely perceptual
with Is-being.
156. Has anyone, for example, ever doubted the stupendous
force that is revealed in that phase of the Is-power which we
designate as Will in what-we-are ? Has not all civilisation risen
by the force of this will, and is it not yet sustained and
progressively accelerated forward by the same force? Is it
not the most powerful of all our civilising forces? Has the
Universe ever given to it its verges of incapacity ? Is it
not yet an increasing force? Man is "a being unable to be
coerced by the whole force of the universe, against his will,"
214 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to quote Sir Oliver Lodge once more. And Prof. Percy
Gardner avers that " in the last result the forces of which the
human universe is made up are the wills of human beings and
the Divine Will which stands over against them and yet works
within them" (Hib. Jour., 35. 491). But this same human
1 will ' is but a finite expression of that whole force or energy
that lies behind it in the " I," so whole in itself as to give no
consciousness of force or energy as science counts force. So
that, if we choose to say that ' mind ' is greater than ' matter,'
we must also conceive will in mind to be greater than any force
in the cosmos, and greater because, in our consciousness of it,
it is nearer to pure identity with space being, or what-we-are.
We are all no doubt conscious that it is what-we-are that
forces, energises, or wills, and we trace without hesitation all
our physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual energies home to
this whole " I " ; but when all energy within us is summed up in
Will, and Will becomes for the " I " what Gravitation is to the
Universe, the greatest energy conceivable, and when again we
seek to find a force which being greater overcomes it and so
reveals Will as force, then there is nothing given us save the
consciousness of what-we-are, in which we find no consciousness
of force at all, but only a consciousness of Is, Being, Space.
The "I," or what-we-are, becomes the whole-energy, or
Resultant-Force of all our internal energies, of which Will
is realised as the strongest representative. And it is proved
to be an absolute resultant in that, as space-consciousness, no
limit can be assigned to its force or energy. Or, putting it the
other way, this Energy which conditions Will and every named
energy within us, this " I," is not itself found to be conditioned,
and so it enters our consciousness with Space as Whole
being : Is.
157. The ordinary presupposition that "all hangs together,"
that each and all are somehow not only related but existentially
and eternally related, is one that breaks in upon all thinking minds.
Every discovery in nature reinforces it. The grandeur of the
gravitation theory consists in its certifying this presupposition
almost absolutely. And the very fact that its affirmation is not
absolute, proves that our consciousness of Whole-Being is not
created by any knowledge which man derives from any discovery
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 215
in nature, but is inherently in him before its partial corroboration
by the Cosmos. It is still further proved by the fact that he is
yet in search of some theory of Being to satisfy the presupposi-
tion of Whole-Being which the gravitation theory cannot meet.
His convictions of Being are wider than the Cosmos has yet
realised for him in his experience of its discovered facts of existence.
And these convictions will be found to be at the back of every
discovery which has been effected in Nature, even as they are
the basis of every advance in philosophy and theology. There
is a force in our consciousness which frets against every fact of
knowledge which asserts less than Whole-Being. And it is in
this force that we obtain every consciousness of force we
possess.
158. And in this connection it is worthy of notice that as
the greatest known force approaches nearer and nearer to
Whole-Force, it is less and less discernible as force. Light, for
example, is discernible as travelling at a certain rate usually
estimated at 186,000 miles per sec., whereas the force of
Gravitation can only be surmised with effort as acting instan-
taneously throughout the Universe, some supposing that it does
travel at a rate 100,000,000 times faster than light, while others
maintain that " no experiment has succeeded in demonstrating
that its propagation is not instantaneous " (Poincare). The
doubtful state of our knowledge of it does not permit us to
assert that it is Whole- Force absolutely. Indeed, just because
we assert it to be a force we cannot say it is Whole-Force ; but
it is evident that the slightest step further beyond the concep-
tion of such a force in motion, compels us to stand simply upon
our consciousness of Space, the one consciousness in which we
have no consciousness of motion or force, as science speaks, yet
the one consciousness also which is possible to us as condition-
ing gravitation-force in motion. And assuming that we do
take this step, then we should no more have a consciousness of
the force of Gravitation, but only of Is-Being, the basal con-
sciousness we have for every force, as well as for its Resultant.
In such a case, our consciousness of space as Whole-Force would
be the same as for what-we-are : Is.
159. Locke's assertion that space has no resistance, is thus
216 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
not sustained. There is nothing that can be conceived which
carries in the conception of it such an absolute consciousness of
whole-energy or resistance as does the consciousness of space.
But necessarily, by our capacity to conceive, our common
working conceptions of resistance imply no forces save spent
forces, or forces that have been overcome by greater forces.
But for the fact that we are conscious of their having been
resisted, we should never be able to conceive them as forces at
all. The Unknowable-Force, Whole-Force, is force or energy
which is impossible of being revealed to us through resistance.
It is Force which conditions all forces known to science, either
as for the Universe or for what-we-are, and, therefore, is our
most utter consciousness of Force Almighty. It is impossible
for us to have a consciousness of Force-Almighty transcending
this Space-Force. And we must note that it is undoubtedly
here, in this great consciousness, that, in this Space-Fact,
Science gives to Theology the primal attribute of her concep-
tion of Deity, as that conception has been developed in history.
1 60. It must be obvious now that this consciousness of
whole-energy modifies every conception associated in science
with forces or energies. For example, seeing that it is
impossible to conceive this whole-force as a force, and that it
yields but a true consciousness, for ourselves and the universe,
of space ; Is ; it thereby annuls all categories of motional energy
in our consciousness of Being, and gives only a consciousness of
Absolute Inertia.
A conception of inertia is given us in every conscious con-
ception of Body, Substance, Matter, but it is not given
absolutely. It is only relative to what forces, that is, the
moving force for which the inert thing waits. But as Whole-
Force is a consciousness solely based in our consciousness of
space, and wholly independent of such categories as Mass,
Motion, Substance, Work, Matter, Body, etc., under which science
conceives force or energy, the scientific conception of inertia
falls to be modified also. Our consciousness of Whole-Energy
is our consciousness of Is. Taken to the highest extent of our
consciousness, this Is yields but a consciousness of Whole-
Inertia. Inevitably. Let us set before us any 'thing.' Then,
let us deprive it of its scientific Body, mass, force, etc., it
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 217
remains inert under its deprivations, always relatively inert to
the force which deprives it of its quantities and qualities, until,
the consciousness being also with us that nothing can be
absolutely annihilated, it enters our consciousness as Space ; Is ;
where we have neither consciousness of force nor of non-force,
but simply one of Whole-Being. The 'thing' is then as
completely under our consciousness of whole-inertia as it is
under that of whole-energy. The consciousness of the thing
as Space sublates its relative categories of energy and inertia in
one consciousness of Being. That is to say, when we assert of
a thing that it is absolutely inert, we also imply that it is
absolutely blank of power to be itself. It must wait upon an
Other. But our consciousness of Space is that it has no possible
Other. Therefore it is impossible to assume that it waits for
any other. Therefore nothing can possibly change it, or move
it. Therefore it permits a consciousness of being Whole-
inert-being, having no possible relation to an Other-Being
to force it.
161. This result, however, is most valuable because it leads
us to the consciousness which we all have of Whole-Permanence.
Kant notes that in all ages every kind of living man " assumed
the permanence of a substratum amidst all the changes of
phenomena." This must be regarded as a most important
confession. And it leads us to ask why such a consciousness
should force itself upon everyone in every age, and in every
experience. For if "All Flows" ; if no one has as yet dis-
covered anything permanent, absolutely, how does this con-
sciousness of absolute permanence persist amid every consciousness
we have of unceasing change? We do not find this 'permanent
substratum ' in the ultimate ' ions ' of science ; we do not find
it in the ' God ' of theology, for no conception has changed
oftener in human experience ; and it is not to be found in the
' Notion ' of philosophy, seeing that we are never assured that
this compounded thing may not forsake its Totality and fall
once more into its constituent factors. Besides, no conception
of ' substance/ ' ion/ ' prothyl ' (Haeckel), * ether/ atom, etc., ever
yields this consciousness of permanence absolute. Every
conception of substance implies conscious change and motion,
or the possibility of these. There is, at most, a relative
218 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
permanence given in the fact of relative inertia. But until we
include the consciousness of Space in our data of judgment, we
cannot have a consciousness of Permanence Absolute, with no
possibility of change to be found in it. But our consciousness
of space gives us this consciousness of Whole-Permanence to
the uttermost. We have a true consciousness that Space
cannot, and does not, wait upon an Other. We also have a true
consciousness that it cannot be changed by any force greater
than itself. We likewise have an unalterable consciousness
that Space-Is, and that this Is-Being persists immovably under
every consciousness of all that Flows, and such a consciousness
of Almightiness and Unchangeableness, or of Whole-Energy
and Whole-Inertia, necessarily forces us to a consciousness of
Whole-Permanence. And it is given easily without the
necessity of assuming " the permanence of a substratum " con-
ceivable as some ' Substance.' For we always have this
consciousness of whole-permanence for What-z^^-are ; wholeness
which yet has no hint in it of parts as its constituent factors.
Space alone, then, as a consciousness, must be regarded as
that which yields this consciousness of Whole-Permanence to
every man, fool or philosopher, because he also has the
consciousness of himself as Space. And we have tried to
point out that this it is which also gives us that consciousness
of the imperviousness and impenetrableness of the ' I ' which
negates every assertion of parts or possibility of parts in our
personality (see 100). And this consciousness of Whole-
Resistance, or of Being which has no greater kind of Being
behind it, is again accompanied by the consciousness of its
Boundlessness. Nothing can be conceived as passing outside of
space. Our consciousness of space resists every attempt on our
part to place anything where space is not. For as soon as we
say ' where ' we say * space.'
162. Every conception of change, therefore, is conditioned in
the far deeper consciousness of space-permanence, and is
sublated by that consciousness. And it is under this conscious-
ness of Whole-Permanence that all motions and changes by
which we note Time are created. Without this consciousness
of Whole-Permanence, motion or change would find no ultimate
reference except to some other motion or change, and such
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 219
references would never pass beyond the conceptions of some
' substratum ' which was moved or changed by some force
beyond itself. In the consciousness of ourselves, this conscious-
ness of change is given in our motions of thought. Without
thought it would be impossible to cognise motion or change in
ourselves. But thought always yields a consciousness of
sequence and time, relative to a far deeper consciousness of
what-we-are, in which we cannot find either Time or Change.
Therefore we cannot, as Kant attempted, place our consciousness
of Time on the same level of our consciousness of Space, as if
they were twin-consciousnesses arising out of some ' substratum '
which was different from either.
163. Moreover, we see now how impossible it is to fix
down Something and Nothing as the necessary and permanent
1 factors ' in our thought of Being. The usual content of
Something is, ultimately, Quality and Quantity, and the usual
content of ' Nothing ' is the complete absence of Quality and
Quantity. In the case of the latter, Hegel maintained that
Being ceased ! This again is the ' Nothing ' out of which it was
supposed Creation was created and made " in the beginning."
On the contrary, both ' Something ' and ' Nothing,' as these
have been conceived in content of meaning, are both negated in
the consciousness of Space-Being. When all consciousness of
' Qualities ' and ' Quantities ' has ceased, the Is-consciousness
still abides, independent of their presence or absence. Something
gives a consciousness that it is, but Nothing also gives this
same consciousness that it is, and while each may have a
different content for thought, each has the same value in fo-ing.
164. It is clear then that the space-consciousness, as one
of Whole-Permanence and Unchangeableness (the supposed
meaning of Yakwe, Enc. Bib., p. 3322), is the root consciousness
for the theological " Same to-day, yesterday, and forever," for
the philosophical " Negative which negates all negation in an
absolute affirmative," and for the assumed " Uniformity of
Nature," upon which all science is postulated. This last, the
Uniformity of Nature, were indeed an impossible consciousness
unless we had a fixed consciousness of the uniformity of Nature
along with ourselves ; and such a consciousness, at bottom,
220 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
means a uniform consciousness of space-being for both. It is
also clear that in this identical consciousness of space-being all
their differences are sublated in Whole-Consciousness of Being
which, notwithstanding their varying conceptions of it, has no
hint in it of necessary and permanent parts and divisions.
165. Our realisation or experience of Force or Energy, as
we have hinted in 160, must now surpass the conception of force
or energy with which Science makes us familiar. Strictly, the
conception of Energy which we obtain from Science is one of
dying force ; energy open to be overcome ; energy fading from
its height of power ; and its point of view is never one that
shows us Energy increasing from less to more but as from more
to less. By the very assumption that Force equals Mass
multiplied by its acceleration, such Force is held in the grip
of finite conditions, and cannot rise to a conception of itself
as independent of either conceptions of corporeity or its
movements. Such a Force or Energy is cut off from any
common basis which the " Unity of the Universe " might
demand for energy of * Matter ' and energy of ' Mind.' The
law of Gravitation, for example, which binds the worlds
together is not supposed to have the slightest connection with
the laws of thought or Moral Law. These are all indeed
' forms of Energy,' and acknowledged to be such by the coercive
forces which they wield experientially over the world of men,
but no common basis is conceivable for them except in such
vague and indefinite ideas as ' uniformity of nature,' ' God,'
' Notion,' ' Fate,' ' Necessity,' ' Destiny,' ' Chance,' and such like,
every one of which finds not the least recognition, in our
consciousness, of being as real as we are ourselves. We have
a consciousness of Energy in our I-consciousness compared
with which the Energy or Force which Science equates with
Mass, multiplied by its acceleration, is a mere bagatelle, even
when that Mass is the total Universe, and its Motion is
immeasurable, and unimaginable. It is this consciousness in
us that calmly says, " Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but
my words shall not pass away." And what both philosophers
and theologians have to assert and affirm with all their strength,
and not merely to assume timidly, is that the Energy or Force of
the scientists is not Force at all, but Force or Energy passing
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 221
into weakness, as streams that die in the ocean, or as meteors
dissipating themselves in combustion. The consciousness of
Energy which has an infinite crescendo towards Whole-Energy,
and not that consciousness of Energy which gives only an
infinite diminuendo of weakness to our conceptions, is the
true interpreter of our I-consciousness, and consequently also
the real interpreter of what Energy should mean ultimately both
for the Universe and ourselves.
And this consciousness is one fully sustained by our common
experience. Matters, Masses, Motions, great or small, are all
Flowing, Fleeting away, coming from ' somewhere ' and going
to ' somewhere/ and confessing as they come and go that
eternal abiding is not in themselves. Self-determined, self-
regulated, self-subsistent, not one of them has the least intention
of professing. Nay, we know them to be so weak by the
consciousness of power which we are conscious we possess, and
which not one of their forces can measure or overcome. It is
the ever-widening experience of man that the feeblest of his
forces is on a level with their highest scientific force, and that
in him resides such Force as subdues all of their powers and
energies to his commonest services. But while we speak in
this way, as of divisions of forces, there is really no consciousness
in man that difference or division exists between the forces
which science interprets and that which with crescendo-force
stands up in him unsubduably to say " I." On the contrary,
every power in Nature is with increasing distinctness seeking
to declare itself as identical in nature and process with that
Energy which is revealed in man by his I-consciousness. The
centuries are steadily lessening the width of gulf which man's
ignorance of his own ' personality ' has cleft between them.
And more and more as universal force is brought under the
light of whole-force, as man is conscious of it in his conscious-
ness of himself, will the fact be made apparent that our
fundamental consciousness of Energy, Force, Power, Might, is
not based in the ' Matters ' and ' Motions ' of Science at all, but
in that consciousness of Whole-Being which is as interpretable
by the term ' Space ' as it is by that of " I."
Shall we be tolerated then by the tired reader, when we
once again require to say that it is the space-consciousness
alone, of all we are conscious, that resists Thought ? Did not
222 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Kant tell us of this immense fact, yet only to push it aside,
and discuss Existence independently of it ? Space abides the
struggle of the Thought-forces, he was sure, although they
may retaliate by contemptuously stigmatising it as " Empty"!
1 66. Are we not called upon to be bolder in these days
and to maintain that nothing gives us a realisation of strength
equal to space? Even the strongest thing seems willow- weak
by comparison. It is indeed to compare * finite ' with ' infinite '
Force. For in space, the stupendous thing we contemplate
as the total Universe rests itself and is upheld, as the sleeping
child rests in and is upheld by the arms of the Mother. In
what, save Space, can it conceivably rest? Have we any
alternative conception ? Here are myriad ' Matters ' and
1 Motions,' not one of which we are able to conceive as inde-
pendent of the Space in which each moves, nor capable of
existence at all save as Space conditions each, and yet we
boldly stigmatise Space as ' empty,' and refuse it a place
in our data of judging Existence, either considered as a
'particular' or as a ' Total.' How blasphemous we must seem,
then, when in the profound consciousness of this space-being,
we attempt to show that out of it comes our true conception
of what Personality itself means, either when we name it
* Man ' or ' God,' and that our conception of Almighty Power
is solely given us by the consciousness we have of it. When
we contemplate, as we are able, in our ignorance and un-
worthiness, mountain and earth and sea ; the great earth
itself as a tiny spot in a stupendous system of mighty worlds ;
and these all as bound by one vast Force of gravitation to
other stupendous systems of worlds ; and then try to compass
in imagination the vastitude of the immeasurable and incom-
prehensible ALL in whose sphere Whole-Power moves and
works, then it is that the infinite series of forces known of
Science, each carrying its delegated burden of existence, is
seen to converge and co-ordinate upon the Whole Majestic
Power we feebly name Space the grand resultant Force of
every force known to or conceivable by us.
167. Nothing truly that the human being can contemplate,
save space, gives such an appalling and awful sense of eternal
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 223
strength. One can imagine surely that Kant's wonderment
over the starry worlds without him and the Moral Law within,
might have received a considerable increase of emotion if
he had included space in the scope of his vision of the
Universe (last section of Kritik der praktischen Vernunff). For
Space, in our consciousness, is the unique or sublime con-
sciousness. And its sublimity is only partially felt when,
each for himself, we bring into touch with it any the
highest conception of anything we account high or great.
For all that is ; the infinitesimally little as the infinitely great ;
moving through birth and death, time and eternity, as we
usually conceive these ; is, to us, in its being and place, because
the space-consciousness gives to it and to each that thinks
it, a common consciousness of Being. The grandeur of the
term ' GOD ' is itself only possible of adequate apprehension
when we interpret it through the space - consciousness. And
we shall see that our Lord gave to this God-term its highest
content and interpretation through this consciousness alone.
Is it not ordinary experimental knowledge that we can always
cover the conception ' GOD ' with that of Space, but can in
no-wise cover the term ' SPACE ' with that of ' God ' ? The
conception of ' Godl as we can think it, must ever depend for
its fulness on the consciousness which we all have of space. For
we conceive Him as a * Person,' and a Person must be limited
by space. And it is similar with all our conceptions. If we
objectify them, if we name them Universe, Nature, Person,
Law, Man, God, Heaven, Earth, etc., we condition, circumscribe,
limit, and space-surround them, and leave ourselves simply
the Space- Presence as the sublation in our consciousness of
the Whole, of which these are but imperfect representations.
1 68. If the reader has followed us thus far, it should not
be difficult now to estimate the argument that no force can
direct itself. No force of which science is cognizant gives
any answer to the question why it should take one direction
in preference to any other. It is not self-determined. The
motions of the Universe are observed to be constant and
universal, and the * universality of the laws of the universe,'
by which these motions are defined, have been accepted by
science as indisputable. " Force produces motion," has also
224 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
been so accepted. But what is not accepted is that the
motion is determined by the force. For it cannot be shown
that any force directs itself. " The simple truth is," says
Croll, in his * What determines Molecular Force/ " in attempting
to account for the determination of motion by referring it
to a force, we are attempting an absolute impossibility."
Now, we have seen that our consciousness of even the
force of gravitation is a consciousness of a force which claims
no Wholeness of Being for itself, and is a consciousness in
which this great force is seen as sublated by a consciousness
of Force which does claim to be Whole-Force, and that this
consciousness of Whole-Force is our immediate consciousness
of Space, the immediate consciousness of ourselves. There-
fore, by the absolute force of this consciousness, we are shut
up to the attribution of sole direction of all forces of the
Universe to this Whole-Power, just as we are shut up to
the attribution of sole direction of our bodily, mental, and
moral forces to the I-Force of which we have only a
space-consciousness.
169. When, therefore, scientists seek through each force-
physical, chemical, molecular, atomic, electronic, or however it
may be termed for the directing force of that force, or for the
influencing power which can be construed as its directive power,
they are doing something very similar to that which is done by
the investigators of Mind when they try to find in sensation,
thought, or will, the 'Self which determines these. Neither
scientist nor psychologist, in such procedure, ever rises above
the * Flow ' of the All, or the consciousness of Motion. Now,
we must first reach a consciousness which has no hint of either
Motion or Matter in it, that is, the space-consciousness, before
we can sublate all motions as conditioned in it, and therefore
all forces which such motions connote. No motion and no force,
not even the highest scientific force of gravitation, ever gives us
a consciousness of self-determined being. The thing we con-
ceive to exist, always reveals more than we can conceive to be
itself; and always as determined by an Other; and, in the
final consciousness of Being, this Other is Space. Now, this
consciousness alone gives wholeness to our consciousness of
Being, and as Being which is self-determined. Therefore
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 225
whatever we conceive to exist must be conceived as determined
by this space-consciousness, that is, as what we conceive it
to be of ' motion ' and ' force.' For everything traces its being
to this Being, and to be nothing apart from this Being.
Therefore, the conclusion is obvious. If any thing is, its being
is Wif-being ; 'sent' being; and given-being is determined-
being, and all determined-being is undoubtedly directed-being.
Therefore, every conception of a thing as subsumed in Whole-
Being connotes necessarily whole-direction by the same.
Intention, purpose, will, motions, forces, powers, influences,
of every conceivable name, must therefore be regarded as the
fragmentary conceptions of our thought from whose data of
judgments of such things, the conscious datum of space-being
which gives Whole-Being, has been forcibly thrust out. Just as
we are not able to realise that thought, feeling, or will, can be
directed save as by I-, or space-being, so likewise we are unable
to conceive that any ' motion ' or * force ' in heaven or in earth,
can receive direction save as from Whole-Being ; Is : Space-
Being.
170. In this connection we may now briefly consider Force
under the predicate of Law, with special reference to Moral Law.
Physical law, mental law, moral law, all laws or motions of
being, must now be regarded as under the sublation of Space
or Whole-Law. And this is the conception of Law which at
the same time we cannot conceive to be possible of resistance or
of contradiction, or of being disobeyed. As a matter of fact,
nothing in the Universe can ever find a way by which space
can be disobeyed. Space cannot be sinned against. That is to
say, Ought-to-be cannot rise higher as commanding something
beneath itself. Ought-to-Be and Being are a Whole conscious-
ness. Or, stating it differently, the 'law' we are conscious of,
as having been sinned against, continually refers itself for its
power to some higher power. Its rewards or punishments
are not in its own hands, but are given by a higher power
according to the report which such Maw' makes regarding those
who obey or disobey. Clearly, then, such ' law ' is limited, and
it is due to the fact of its limitation that it is possible to obey or
disobey it. Whole-Law by the fact of its not being limited,
rises above the sphere where obedience and disobedience are
P
226 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
possible, and where Is and Ought-to-be are but Whole-
consciousness of space-being. And every known 'law/ as a
conscious form of Force, thus becomes sublated in our conscious-
ness of Whole-Force. Or, all consciousness of direction, which
necessarily means limited ' law '-direction, or direction by limited
' law ' or force, becomes sublated in our consciousness of Whole-
Direction, Whole-Law, Whole-Force, or Whole-Being. There-
fore, as we shall try to show more fully below, when we truly
stand in the space-consciousness we have not the slightest
consciousness of being either ' good ' or ' bad,' ' righteous ' or
' sinful.' Our consciousness of what we ought-to-be is sublated
in our consciousness of Be-ing, i.e. the fulness of the conscious-
ness Is, beyond which no consciousness of being is possible.
The I-Am consciousness is then whole, unlimited, knows no
' law,' and cannot be characterised further by any additional
predicates.
And clearly, it is on the basis of this consciousness that
the true absolute forgiveness of sins is possible. In this con-
sciousness of what -we -are, our sins are not merely 'passed
over,' ' covered ' up, hidden, obliviated, ' paid for.' For such
conceptions imply transactions between Two. Two Beings
make ' arrangements, as it were. But the space-consciousness
of what-we-are makes such conceptions impossible. Being in it
is whole. And the I-consciousness, being space-consciousness,
rises into whole-being where all differences are sublated for
even our thought, and sin becomes an impossible conception.
It cannot exist in this consciousness. Hence the truth, " Except
ye believe that I-Am, ye shall die in your sins." In some way,
by one path or other, if we cannot reach a consciousness where
sin-difference is sublated, and where the very conception of sin,
wrong, imperfection, or sense of law-broken, is impossible to us,
we must inevitably suffer the conception of death under the
consciousness of a menacing Ought-to-be. The Master rose
into the I-consciousness, and there found no consciousness of
' sin,' nor any ' law '-limitations, all of which were transcended
in His consciousness of Whole- God-Being. And this is the
force of forces underlying all His teaching, as we shall try to
show below, concerning Whole-Being, or, ' God,' as Unresisting-
Being, Being who has not, and never has had, anything against
any one. * He ' and ' We ' are ' He ' and ' We ' no more. There
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 227
is only Whole-Being. All conceptual ' direction ' also dis-
appears in its limitations of being, and has no longer a place
in our consciousness.
But our conception of a Law involves our freedom to obey
it, and also the possession of power, or energy, to fulfil its
commands. We have seen that our idea of energy arises from
a consciousness of resistance, and the idea of resistance to
arise from a consciousness of being free to put forth energy.
If we did not act we would never know resistance, and if we
had no consciousness of freedom, we would never act at all
But this only carries the problem further back to the question,
How comes our idea of freedom ? And we reply that Space-
Being, while it clearly yields our consciousness of Whole-Energy
even as our I-consciousness yields our consciousness of conative
force, yields likewise our consciousness of Whole- Freedom.
On no other basis is it possible to interpret that absolute
freedom of which we are all conscious. If we suppose, for
example, that man is not conscious of Whole-Being, but only
of divided being, then he never can be free from the possibilities
of the other. He may have freedom under conditions ', but not
the absolute freedom of which he is conscious. And to have
such a consciousness, it must be assumed that he is conscious
of not being othered absolutely. But in his consciousness of
space-being he is assured of whole-being and consequently also
of absolute, or whole-freedom.
Choice, as an experience, does not therefore arise into
experience with our consciousness of what -we -are, but only
with the imperfect consciousness of what-we-are as othered-
being ; one ; and personal. We have no choice, e.g., as to
whether or not we shall develop from the protoplasmic cell,
whether or not we shall take that form at all, or whether or
not we shall be beings. We have not the refusal of being.
Choice does not exist, because neither at that stage nor at
present, have we the remotest consciousness of being one- or
unit-being, and othered by Being not us. We are not there-
fore under force to be, although 'force' arises conceptually out
of our being. Our consciousness is purely ' I ' : Is ; with no
consciousness of ' force ' except of Energy Whole.
171. No consciousness of obstruction, or impeding force, is
228 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to be found in this consciousness. The space-consciousness
alone gives the highest consciousness of Freedom. Whole-being
is not Othered, that is, by any driving Necessity. And this is
the consciousness of Freedom which man has always possessed.
It is the basal consciousness which begets all other forms of
freedom familiar to us as social, civic, religious, or otherwise.
Man himself is free from the otherness of any being in that he
is conscious of Whole- or Space-being. He is Bemg-Yrze, and
has not merely freedom conferred upon him under " laws."
Why then, it may be asked, arises the consciousness of
limitation ? Because, we answer, the Space-consciousness gives
as full freedom for a consciousness of Limit as of the Unlimit.
Space-Being is the limit. We are conscious of space as limit.
We have no consciousness of desiring or needing freedom
beyond space. There is nothing in the conscious being of man
that desires more for itself, in the absolute fulness of his desires,
than what his space -being receives in be'mg space. In his
space-being his freedom is whole, and his consciousness of his
limit is reached in the consciousness that it is whole. Our
limit lies in the absolute fulness of our being ; but, as space-
being, this consciousness subsumes both relatives, limit and
unlimit, in one of wholeness.
It is in this view that we are able to understand how every-
thing in the realm of Nature only realises its true nature in
the consciousness of being space. For space is basal for every
conception of " Nature" It is also in this view that we under-
stand how everything in the universe is under the consciousness
of a possible freedom of transformation into all else that is
possible. All freely goes through all ; all possible changes are
possible for all. The space-consciousness, being basal for all
being, renders this consciousness necessary. Being is Whole.
But we must abide in space. We have no consciousness of
being, except space -being. We must abide as space. Hence
it is that we cannot conceive a force, a will, or a motion, even
when we put these into the high concept-form of ' God,' as being
independent of space. Every consciousness, as every conception,
is conditioned in our consciousness of space-being. And it is
for this reason that we always have a consciousness of boundless^
absolute freedom, at the same time that we have a consciousness
of absolute limitation of liberty. It must also be apparent that
SPACE AS WHOLE-ENERGY 229
the much-debated antithesis between Freedom and Necessity
exists only far below and outside of our space-consciousness.
When indeed the space-consciousness is accepted into the
problem, every antithesis vanishes, and reason comes to
her own.
CHAPTER VIII
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY. IS. ALMIGHTY.
OMNISCIENCE. OMNIPRESENCE. INFINITE. UNITY.
VALUE. GOOD. SUBSTANCE. CAUSE. BEAUTY, OR
GLORY.
172. The root-consciousness out of which the Thought of
Man has evolved and developed his great conceptions of Deity,
past and present, is unquestionably the Is-Consciousness. Neces-
sarily so, for no conception of ' God,' as Being, ever transcends
our consciousness of Is-Being in value. To Be y is the ultimate
statement which can possibly be made of even ( God.' And it
is this consciousness which we also possess for what-we-are.
Therefore, it follows that not even our consciousness of ' God '
transcends the value of Being of which we are conscious.
Fundamentally, we cannot think differently of ' God '-Being and
of what-we-are. That is to say, our consciousness of God-
Being and of what-we-are is, so far, an identical consciousness of
same-being. It is for this reason that God-being and what-we-
are can then be conceived as one-being, or God-Man-being.
But when we realise that this identical consciousness of same-
being is identically one of space- being, then the same
consciousness realises God-Being, Man-Being, and All-Being,
as not only same-being, and Unit-being, but Whole-Being. Is-
Being is thus realised also as Whole-Value.
Similarly, all conceptual ' attributes ' of Being which have
been ascribed to God-Being spring from the Is-Consciousness ;
the consciousness of what-we-are. No doubt, it seems at first
almost blasphemous to say that the ' attribute ' of Almightiness
strictly belongs to what-we-are. But we are never conscious,
and the world in its long history never has been conscious, of
a greater power than is given in the consciousness of the
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 231
Space- 1 consciousness. There is no power in Nature, as we
have tried to show in the previous chapter, which transcends
the power of which we are conscious in being space-being.
And as this power is Whole-Power, it is impossible for the
human mind to conceive a greater. Therefore, for all our
conceptions (and we must remember that even ' God ' is but
a conception in all Religions), this consciousness of Space-Being
is fundamental for the ' attribute ' of Almightiness.
The reason, perhaps, why we despair of claiming this and
similar deistic ' attributes ' for ourselves, is found in making our
narrow conceptions of all we have realised of Being to be the
complete measurement of our consciousness of what-we-are.
We must put this method completely aside. For our conscious-
ness of what-we-are has never yet been wholly realised through
any conception of our knowledge. For example, no conception
of the tree-being ever transcends our consciousness of the
seed -being from which it is realised. The being of the tree
simply unfolds to sense and understanding somewhat of seed-
being, but nothing the tree ever realises can transcend the
Is-Being given in our consciousness of what-it-is as space-being.
So also the original Nebula of the Solar System knew itself to
be, and infinitely more to be, than any of its evolved and
developed parts of Sun and Planets have ever realised of
Being through our conceptions of them. On the contrary, we
are only slowly realising through our blurred and imperfect
conceptions somewhat of the Being which our consciousness
assures us lay in the original Nebula. So also when Jesus
said " It is finished," He expressed a conscious knowledge of
His being and work which never can be surpassed by the
actual historical development of Christianity through all time
as a realised product.
In like manner it appears to be the acme of absurdity to
say that in our consciousness of what-we-are as space-being, we
already know more infinitely than we can ever possibly know
through the instruments of conceptuality. It is true, however,
that in our consciousness of Is-Being as Whole-Being we have
knowledge which never can be surpassed or transcended by any
knowledge which we may yet realise by our c categories of the
understanding.' Omniscience, therefore, as an 'attribute' of
Being, cannot now be viewed as merely an attribute of a
232 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Unit- Being whose limitless conceptual knowledge might be
compared with the fractional knowledge of other unit-beings.
To be conscious of what-we-are as space-being must be
regarded as knowledge which sublates and transcends all
conceptually absolutely. No realisation of what-we-are, of
what ' God ' is, or of what the Universe is, can possibly add to
the knowledge-worth which is given in that consciousness. In
reality, we are always conscious that each conception of our
knowledge of these ' beings ' is constantly rebuked and corrected
by this consciousness of Space- Being.
And in the same plane of reasoning, it must be evident that
this consciousness of what-we-are, as space-being, compels us
also to give a far wider and far fuller meaning to the term
Omnipresence than as connoting merely an intimate contactual
presence of an All- Thing or Person, with every other thing or
person, which is, or is yet to be, held as existentially isolated
from Itself. There cannot now, with such a consciousness, be
any conception of Otherness in such presential Being. Our
true consciousness is of Whole-Being. Here, There, and Where,
are terms inapplicable. They become subsumed in our con-
sciousness of Whole-Being-Space. These terms are only
conceivable as true when we first affirm our conceptions of
being to be as absolute as our consciousness of Being, that is,
of Space-Being.
But lest, in so reasoning, we should offend traditionary
religious susceptibilities, and lest it should be said that we are
abolishing ( God,' we must remind the reader that we are only
dealing here with the imperfect conceptions of ' God/ and trying
to correct by higher truth the ' attributes ' upon which such
imperfect conceptions have been built. For if by the term
' God ' we mean Highest Being, then no conception can be
adequate to express it, and a final interpretation of it can only
be made through our ultimate consciousness of Is-Being ; that
is, through our consciousness of what-we-are, as Space-Being-
Whole. And we do not think that we assume any method
contrary to this highest consciousness. For it is the reader's
own experience that he never has a consciousness of any
bounds to Is-Being, i.e., to his I-consciousness. His I-conscious-
ness ever stands above all he knows, or is capable of knowing, as
its test of reality, and final guarantor of truth. He is never
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 233
conscious of any bounds to his knowledge, therefore, of vvhat-
he-is; Is-Being; which is connotative of All -knowledge. It is
a consciousness indeed which, as a matter of experience,
expresses itself in a boundless desire to realise more and more
knowledge of What- Is. We have not the remotest consciousness
tJiat our capacity for knowledge may come to an end. But this is
really a consciousness that all knowledge lies within our grasp,
though we may not, unto the ages of the ages, ever realise
it absolutely in our conceptual limitations of knowledge. It is
the boundless Space-Being which we are that so speaks.
We are therefore only trying to remove ' God ' from the limits
of logical conceptions, concepts, and conceptities all of them
children of our space-spread ( 89) to a truer consciousness of
Being worthier of our reverence, and more in harmony with the
consciousness we have of what-we-are. And we shall hope to
show that this was the grand work of the Great Master Himself.
Otherwise men could never have been able to realise that a man
like themselves was ' equal with God,' and ' was God,' and who,
having nothing, could yet affirm, "All things have been
delivered unto me of my Father." Surely the potentiality of
omniscience is plainly assumed in such expressions, " There is
nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed ; and hid, that
shall not be known " ; "I know whence I came and whither
I go " ; " He shall guide you into all the truth." With but the
'attributes' of a man he also claims the 'attributes' of God;
and there is a basal consciousness of Being in Him which
enables Him to do so in the purest forms of rationality.
Omniscience never transcends Is-Being as we are conscious of
it. " I am " is self-predicative, the superlative characteristic of
the Jesus-Consciousness, and is therefore omniscient of what-Is.
The ' I am ' consciousness is the guarantee that omniscience is
real, rational, and experiential.
Moreover, the claim He makes for Himself He also
makes for all men. <f I in them and Thou in me, that they
all may be one as we are." " I know mine own, and mine
own know me, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know
the Father." He placed 'human' knowledge on the level of
' divine ' knowledge, and assumed a common basis in His
people, Himself, and the Father, for knowledge in its
highest expression, viz., the knowledge of personality. No
234 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
doubt, this common basis cannot be affirmed to be other than
Life, the Father-term being the highest idiom for such person-
alities, but we have shown ( 92) that Life, and its correlative
Death, are impossible in the more comprehensive consciousness
of space-being, and it is in this ultimate consciousness that we
discern that all such attributes or conceptions of Human and
Divine, Finite and Infinite, One and Many, etc., etc., are
transcended. We do not, however, ask the reader to accept as
yet this reading of the consciousness of Jesus until we have
further tried to sustain our position with regard to the con-
ception of ' God ' as supported by our consciousness of Being
on the basis of the Space-Consciousness.
Infinity.
173. Perhaps nothing illustrates so clearly the impossibility
of accepting the fixed conception of the necessary discreteness of
Being) in its multiplicity of dualities, as the discussions on
Finite and Infinite. For unless we assume that the term
'Infinite' means Whole-Being, it must mean finite-being,
seeing it is placed in limited relativity to the Finite. Finite
and Infinite really mean two limited presentations to our
thoughts, and if there is such difference in Being, absolutely and
necessarily so, then the connotations of the term Infinite are
of limitations and of nothing else. Under the cover of different
terms we really obtain but finite meaning for both. The
Infinite is not the Finite, it is asserted, and in that case it
cannot include the All.
It is less than the All by what is Finite. Can man then
assume himself to be finite? How does he arrive at the
conception ? His limits seem to betray him. His limitations
of position, time, attainments, power, etc., appear to be indis-
putable. His experience with mind-results are also full of
limits. His senses, likewise, sight, hearing, etc., all seem to
press home this consciousness of limitation. But there is one
fact which he usually forgets in accepting his limitations, and
that is the fact that these are not himself. They belong to him,
he calls them his conditions, but strictly, he never finds the
consciousness of himself in any of them.
He appears simply to use his senses for his own good, and
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 235
to direct his thoughts for purposes of his advantage, but
nothing which he attains by the help of either of these ' powers '
can he define as what-he-is. Nevertheless, the scope of his
thought seems stupendous when compared with all that his senses
boast, but, on the other hand, how vast is his consciousness of
Is-Being as What-he-Is, when compared with his thought!
And it is here that he finds no end or limit to himself. He
cannot shut what-he-is inside any such concept, conception, or
conceptity. Here there is no edge or verge in his consciousness
of what-he-is, unto which he comes and looks beyond. Wherever
he looks he sees what- Is in the identical consciousness of
himself, and in this consciousness of Is, he finds no limit. That
is, he cannot find himself finite, even if he try his best.
Is man then Infinite? If this means that he is to be
regarded as absolutely and necessarily sundered apart from
the Finite, we are only conscious that we have shifted the
absurdity from one hand to the other. For no consciousness
we possess ever assures us that we are sundered from what is
called the ' Finite.' For what we call ' Finite ' Is, and we are no
more. There is in us an ineradicable and irrepressible con-
sciousness of Is-ness for all we call * finite ' as much as there is
for what we term ' infinite.' Such duality therefore must be
subsumed in a deeper postulate in which no determination can
find a place for itself. We must be able to state Being without
the This or That, Either or, finite or infinite. We must get
the natural basis in our consciousness which yields reality of
Being for both the ' finite ' and the ' infinite,' and so reach
common Being, Being which is Whole with no clefts in it,
and giving no consciousness in us of its possible cleavage.
And our consciousness of being space-being fulfils this demand.
All relativity ceases in it. Man is then conscious of being
neither 'finite' nor 'infinite,' nor pressed within the limita-
tions of these relativities, but Whole with Being absolutely.
And this alone satisfies his consciousness of what-he-is.
Such terms as ' Finite ' and * Infinite ' should be looked
upon perhaps as mere variants of the Eastern " That art Thou,"
and the Western " Being and Nothing." However the Unity
of them may be asserted in some imaginary "presupposition
beyond them," the 'difference,' which is arbitrarily assumed
between them to start with, is never wiped out afterwards in
236 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
any sense. And the reason is that no nexus of reality is given
in which they are made one, far less whole with all that is.
Neither the 'That' nor the 'Thou'; neither the 'Finite 'nor
the 'Infinite'; neither the 'Being' nor the 'Nothing' will
admit themselves to be space-being. Each maintains itself
a lone apart-being from space-being and from all being, and
no unity can be predicated, completely sustained by our con-
sciousness for such being, so as to realise a reality equal
to what-we-are. And without this consciousness the unity is
incredible.
It is interesting to remark how confident the modern mind
is with regard to the absoluteness of the relation between
Finite and Infinite. Theologians almost assume a monopoly
of the Infinite in the " eternity " of the Creeds. Philosophers
so far agree with them in this in " thinking that the idea of the
infinite is the source out of which all religion springs, and that
the clear consciousness of it is the last result of the develop-
ment of religion." The " idea of God or of the infinite," is
termed "the primary presupposition of all our knowledge."
The idea of the Infinite is made to equate with GOD ! Prof. E.
Caird so speaks in affirming his agreement with Herbert
Spencer, and says, " Further, I accept Mr Spencer's view in
so far as he regards \ho. final difference of the finite, beyond w hid i
lies only the infinite, as being the difference of subject and
object, of inner and outer experience. These are, as it were,
the pillars of Hercules, between which the current of our life
flows, and beyond them lies only tJie ocean " (EvoL of Religion,
i. 124). Italics ours.
Ah, it is that ' Ocean ' beyond ' subject ' and ' object,'
( inner ' and ' outer,' where the ' pillars of Hercules ' no more
dispense gratuitous and 'final differences,' which is the grand
secret of the consciousness of Infinity. When Philosophy
leaves these ' differences ' far behind her, and launches into
that " OCEAN," and the space -consciousness which it figures,
she will then realise that Being is Whole, and not a swarm of
Units, absolutised in their permanent ' relativity.'
1 74. Strange, also, is the irksomeness of this " final difference "
between finite and infinite to the Mathematicians, who in the
persons of Cantor, Dedekind, Royce, Russell, and many others,
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 237
are moving every force in their power to bring to birth a true
" new Infinite " about which no doubt were possible. Our own
mathematical capacity is of the poorest, but our sympathies
\vith all such efforts are deep, all the more that the 'new
infinite ' seems as pathetically hopeless as the old.
What mathematicians aim to do is evidently to meet the
requirements of our consciousness of Whole-Being, but what
they actually produce is an ' infinite ' as pitifully bound-up in
the limitations of relativity as the old ' infinite.' For neither
the consciousness of themselves nor their consciousness of
Space is subsumed in their infinite novelty. Royce, for
example, paraphrasing Dedekind's definition of what is meant
by the infinity of a system or of an object, says "An object or
a system is infinite if it can be rightly regarded as capable of being
precisely represented, in complexity of structure, or in number of
constituents, by one of its own parts" (Hib. Journal, No. i. p. 33).
The consciousness in which this ' system ' or ' object ' is
created does not include within its data the consciousness of
space. The entire ' system ' is postulated to be an existence
in abstraction. The ' system,' the person thinking of it, and
the consciousness of space, are all differentiated and separate.
The 'system' might therefore have everything within itself or
its capacities, but if it had not the being of the thinker within
its being, it might be ' infinite ' enough, but it would not be
Whole-Being. And unless it included Space- Being within its
being, its pretension to be Whole-Being would be disallowed.
// is really the confusion between the two conceptions of Infinite-
Being and Whole-Being^ and the acceptance of the one for the other,
that causes the difficulty with the question of Finite and Infinite.
For this Infinite-Being is never considered absolutely relativeless
as is Whole-Being-Space.
This is clear when the conception of the ' new infinite '
comes to be applied to the consciousness of ourselves. This
Prof. Royce attempts as follows : " Now what would be the
conscious state of a being who had attained complete self-
consciousness, who reflectively knew precisely what he meant,
and did, and was ? To such a being we easily ascribe godlike
characters. God Himself we often conceive as such a completed
Self. If other selves than God are capable of such complete
self-consciousness, they are in so far formally similar in nature
238 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to the divine. But what our observation of the self-representa-
tive system has shown us is, that in their form, however trivial
their content, these systems possess a structure correspondent
to the one that we must ascribe to any ideally complete Self,
in so far as it is conceived as self-conscious. A completely
self-conscious being would contain within himself, as a part of
his whole consciousness, not, of course, a mere picture, but a
complete rational representation of his own nature, and of the
whole of this nature. In consequence, as we have now seen,
he would be, ipso facto ^ an infinite being. To define the ideally
or formally complete Self, is thus to define the infinite. Conversely,
to define the infinite is to define an object that inevitably has the
formal structure which we must attribute to an ideal Self. The
two conceptions are convertible" (p. 34). Italics ours.
The fallacy underlying this conception of Infinity is the
assumed absolute wholeness of //zzV-Being. For this God-Self ;
this " ideally or formally complete self," who defines the Infinite,
is never more than assumed Unit-Being. We are always
conscious of Space-Being as not included in this Unit-Thing.
It is not whole-being therefore. Yet Royce bravely asserts
that u to define the infinite is to define an object ! " Can
philosophy be wise when she builds her house on such dis-
integrations? It is vain surely to hope for help from the
concepts of mathematics, No defined concept or conception
ever measures Infinity. And, as we see, the mathematicians
assume a ' Class ' of numbers, and find that one number or part
in that class can perfectly and precisely represent that Class,
both in the complexity of its structure and in the number
of its constituents, and then they assert that the Class in
doing so is infinite! Similarly, the philosopher assumes a
' Self which, in a complete self-consciousness, collects into a
' class ' of itself all that it can reflectively know of what it means,
and does, and is. In such a case, it is supposed a part can be
found in that complete Self which will rationally represent the
whole nature of the Self, and thus affirm infinity of the Self.
The C/w/V-Self is assumed to exhaust our consciousness of
Whole-Bemg \
But this never includes all Classes nor all Selves. However
such a Class, or Object or System may be able to represent
itself ' to all eternity,' the representation never takes itself out
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 239
of itself. Such a conception of infinity is hopeless until we can
have an assured consciousness that no other possible Class can
exist save this One ; and even then, we have no true concep-
tion of Infinity, seeing that we who think that class, say a Self,
and its complete self-representations are never conscious of
be'mg that Self. We are always outside the Chosen Class,
Object, or System, or Self, or One, and no conception of
Infinity results as a consequence equal to our consciousness of
Whole-Being.
But let us suppose that this Self which is a Class by itself,
is 'GOD,' and includes all things, and has a part in Himself
which can perfectly and rationally represent Himself, but that
this Self is not Space, and does not give Space-Being to our
consciousness of it. Is this Self Whole or only a Total? We
have a true consciousness in such a case, of God and Space, and
the one conscious Being is different from the other Being.
Both, clearly, may be Totals, and yet not absolute Whole-
Being. But if that is so, then both such God and such Space
are limited and Finite-Beings. That is to say, each remains
within its own Class of Unit-Being, although each within itself
may be rationally and completely represented by one of its parts
endlessly. It never in its infinity becomes whole-\\i\h the
other infinite Class.
Therefore without space, as a consciousness, included in the
data of what each self-class is, no conception of true Infinity, i.e.,
whole-Being, is possible. And this is so for the simple reason
that without the space-consciousness for all, as for every self-
class, every self can have but a consciousness of existential
isolation from the other, and therefore an obsession of finite-
being which no series of self-representations can overcome.
The very consciousness of re-presentation forbids any affirmation
of infinity for its process. For, in our consciousness, it is
Motion, and Form, and no consciousness of either Motion or
Form gives anything but Limitation and Finitude. At bottom,
it is a method of infinitising which does not advance beyond the
old methods. A series of units running on to Endlessness may
give a true consciousness of vastitude indescribable, but
Endlessness even of reproduction is not Infinity, for it may be
merely Line-endlessness and Mass-endlessness, and as such
never more than a collection. And a Class, though a Total, is,
240 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
after all, but /##-Being, and not Whole-Being, as we have
said, for we and Space are still outside of its Being by the
testimony of our consciousness. Or, generally, if it is objective
it is finite, and its " infinite " ' representations ' can be nothing
else. And every class, self, or other quantitative assumption is
objective.
175. We maintain then that it is impossible to convey to
any consciousness a true realisation of a genuine existential and
experiential infinite, unless our consciousness of Space be taken
as the basis of it. And this cannot be done unless also the
selves-we-are are taken as conscious of being space. Homo-
ousiousness, or homo-ensity of Space and the selves-we-are,
constitutes the sole basis for an expression of that Infinite
which lies in the consciousness of every one as Whole-Reality.
For the true infinite of our consciousness is, fundamentally, the
what-we-are asserting its wholeness or common being with
Space. We do not create de novo a consciousness of Infinity,
either by running away and away to endlessness with a numerical
series, or by swelling it massively by squaring and cubing, or
classing and collecting after the manner of the infinitising
materialist, or by evolving perfect representations of an * object '
out of one of its parts. We only increasingly realise true infinity
to our thought as we increasingly realise ourselves beyond that
thought. And the more we do so, we are irresistibly driven, in
our ultimate thought and consciousness of what-we-are, to realise
more and more that space-being which, as what-we-are, gives us
a consciousness of Whole-Being, and not merely an inadequate
' Infinity ' of relationship, always dependent on artificially
assumed 'point-being,' 'objects,' classes, systems, or selfs, with
which we, ourselves, are never conscious of being in any existen-
tial connection at any time.
Hegel rightly perceived that no consciousness of the Infinite
is possible on the basis of conceptions of Form, Motion, and
Process. These, though put to endless lengths, and apparently
boundless bulks, never in the least account for our consciousness
of Whole-Being, which is really our consciousness of what is
misnamed ' Infinity.' For, as a fact of consciousness, quite
indisputable, neither a conception of Motion nor of Rest yields
us more than a consciousness of relationship and finitude. The
SPACE AND THF ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 241
one is always potential of the other. Motion relates to Rest,
which our consciousness tells us is potential in all motions
absolutely, just as, likewise, rest relates to motion.
176. But Hegel while scorning the false * infinity/ of Immen-
sity, erred as far on the other extreme of Intensity. Instead of
following the theological instincts to found ' infinity' on the
immensity of eternity, and on the mathematical non-stop series,
total or fractional, he abandoned everything for his own focalised
Thought, and poised himself upon his motionless Point-Being.
In doing so, he did not escape from finitude. He only viewed
it differently by passing from the one end of the telescope to the
other.
We give his statement of it. He is condemning the Critical
Philosophy for adopting the abstract categories of thought, and
then ranking them as predicates of truth. He says " But in
using the term thought we must not forget the difference
between finite or discursive thinking and the thinking which is
infinite and rational. The categories, as they meet us prima
facie, and in isolation, are finite forms. But truth is always
infinite, and cannot be expressed or presented to consciousness
in finite terms. The phrase infinite thought may excite surprise,
if we adhere to the modern conception that thought is always
limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very essence of thought
to be infinite. (" Nun aber ist in der That das Denken seinem
Wesen nach in sich unendlich.") The nominal explanation of
calling a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a
certain point only, where it comes into contact with, and is
limited by, its other. The finite therefore subsists in reference
to its other, which is its negation and presents itself as its limit.
Now thought is always in its own sphere, its relations are with
itself, and it is its own object In having a thought for object, I
am at home with myself. The thinking power, the * I,' is there-
fore infinite, because, when it thinks, it is in relation to an
object which is itself. Generally speaking, an object means a
something else, a negative confronting me. But in the case
where thought thinks itself, it has an object which is at the same
time no object ; in other words, its objectivity is suppressed and
transformed into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore in its
unmixed nature involves no limits, it is finite only when it
Q
242 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate.
Infinite or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less
defines, does in the very act of limiting and defining make that
defect vanish. And so infinity is not, as most frequently
happens, to be conceived as abstract away and away for ever
and ever, but in the simple manner previously indicated "
(Logic, 2nd ed., Wallace, p. 62).
We may take this explanation as a very fair specimen of
Hegel's view of Infinity. And just as we have seen that the
mathematician neither gets a consciousness of himself nor of
space inside the process of his infinite continuum, so similarly,
Hegel, it is clear, never gets a consciousness of Space inside of,
or sublated in, his ' infinite ' self. The motions, or the thoughts,
of the self change, but the self itself never changes from his finite
to his infinite, although it passes from subject to object, and
again from object to subject. The whirl round after itself, a
totalised subject- object : a point-self; a number-one-being;
never in the slightest gives us the consciousness of infinity, but
only of finity in a new aspect of the same process. The process,
in our consciousness of it, lies completely apart from Space-
Being. It is therefore a finite process, as distinctly as the
4 arithmetical continuum ' of the modern mathematician. While
Hegel's 'self is "at home with itself," it is in a 'home' which
by some strange jugglery is not in space at all !
Hegel reasons, as he says, in " the simple manner." He
first assumes that thought " in its unmixed nature involves no
limits." That is to say, Thought is assumed as Infinite.
"Truth is always infinite," he says boldly, without giving any
concrete basis for such a consciousness in himself. Therefore
when the self can think itself, it is within an infinite : it is at
home in the infinite ! But this surely is to defy criticism. For
the thought of any self is not, and never can be, " unmixed " in
its " nature." The psychologist may speak logically of pure
thought, but experientially no thought can exist apart from
feeling, or feeling apart from willing. Experience is not a thing
of couplings and contacts but of life and marrow. Its growth
is whole. One might imagine Absolute Thought to be ' pure,'
but if a self cannot subsume space within itself, how can it give
us a consciousness of its infinity ?
Moreover, all thought is motion. Thought is inconceivable
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 243
otherwise. But motion itself is inconceivable without space.
Therefore, it brings us no nearer to a conception of an Infinite
by postulating Thought as infinite to start with. Both Thought
and Self are always seen as * objects ' moving about in an
immensity of space which blankly refuses to be sublated by
either the processes of such a Thought or of such a Self. Both
' objects ' are, indeed, ' pure ' creatures of the logical process.
And the process of the mathematician and of the Hegelian
philosophy appears to us to be different only in that, in the
former, we conceive a ' Self engaged in a straight-line race
towards a goal he never reaches, whereas the latter races around
his Self as centre-pivot with no hope of completing his circle,
seeing that he never discovers its centre. What is perfectly
plain is that neither ever rises above the conditions of finity
given necessarily in the assumption, mathematically, of a finite
given quantity ', and, philosophically, or logically, of a finite given
Self. Contrary to Hegel's assertion that " Thought has no
limits " as Thought, thought cannot be conceived as anything
else than limited until it is brought under the only category
that can yield a consciousness of infinity, not only for its own
motions but also for the being who thinks thought. And as
Space alone yields this category by which we conceive either
' man,' nature, or ' God ' as infinite, and as Hegel never brings
his Thought within a category that yields a consciousness of
real infinity for anything, choosing to construct everything in
his imagination, we must humbly confess our inability to accept
his philosophy of the Infinite on the basis he has chosen for his
reasoning. Were we reduced to the necessity of interpreting
" God " through the media of the " infinity " of philosophy and
mathematics, no * God ' would be possible to us.
We rather dare to say that a candid and impartial con-
sideration of this question of finite and infinite would show that
the difficulty of welding them into Wholeness, in our thought
of them, springs from the very limitations in thought which
Hegel denies. It runs through the entire vast field of modern
reasoning. As we have tried to explain, the 'unit' of
arithmetic, the Euclidean ' point ' of geometry, the c subject '
of philosophy, the ' ion ' of science, the ' life ' of biology, the
' soul ' of religion and the ' God ' of theology, are all the fictitious
creatures of Thought which contracts itself out of Space, as to
244 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
data, and seeks for its ultimates apart from the space-conscious-
ness. Each is posited as if absolutely unconditioned by space.
Consequently, each has no place within our experience. Who-
ever met, out of fairy land, an arithmetical ' unit,' a mathematical
' point,' a scientific ' ion,' the thing called * life,' the ' soul,' or the
1 God ' of our theologies, or the ' object ' and ' subject ' of
philosophy ? They are conceptual limitations, without exception,
of these motions of what-we-are which we name Thought, and
which are actually so limited that they have been conceived as
absolutely independent of that Space without which they could
not be! It is surely time to know that until we can conceive
what-we-are to be infinite neither can we conceive Thought to
be so. For Thought is Being's motion, in what-we-are, and
in all that Is ; and the ultimate consciousness of both merge
absolutely in a simple Space-Consciousness. If we must
conceive Being at all, it must be conceived whole as Space.
And in this conception, wide-open as our consciousness of Being,
all the host of point-to-point ' continuums,' ' ions/ * selfs,' * subjects,'
1 objects,' and arithmetical ' units,' give up their fanciful isola-
tions, and merge in Being's motions, infinite always in Space-
Infinity : or more truly, Whole-Being.
Unity.
177. What we have said in the foregoing chapters regarding
Unit-Being and Unity of Being, may be taken as furnishing
sufficient reason why we judge such an attribute as impossible
to Whole-God-Being. But as an instance of how philosophy
creates such conceptions as existential isolations, we may take
another example from Hegel. He has detailed an account
of the creation of the 'One.' He tells us that out of Being and
Nothing, which are the same, something Becomes, and from
the movements of this Becoming there dawns a new thing
which he calls Being-for-self. This Being-for-self " as reference
to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the negative to
itself is a self-subsistent, the ONE. This unit being without
distinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself"
(Logic, Wallace, p. 179).
The severe artificiality of this account of the One is
apparent on the surface of it. For however we may permit our
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 245
thoughts to focus upon a ' being-for-self,' which is to be regarded
as " self-subsistent," it may be safely said that no person ever
is conscious of such a being. No imagination, force of fancy,
or any power of the human mind can formulate in the under-
standing a " being " apart from the consciousness of space.
To counter this statement it might be said that Hegel includes
space in his Being-Nothing, which are the All to him. But,
unfortunately, he scorns the reality of this Being-Nothing and
stamps it as abstract, and as an actual contemptible scaffolding
for his real building, if it be even so much as that. Besides, it
does not appear necessary to formulate a "being-for-self" at
all, when the conception is just as clearly given in the " being-
nothing" at the start. Our consciousness of space being
unaccounted for in this abstract " being-nothing," we perforce
have it all through part passu with our conception of his
" being-nothing," and cannot rid ourselves of it. And despite
our every effort to regard " being-nothing " as all, we cannot
subsume space, the Real, under the "being-nothing" which is
Abstract, and so we are compelled to dualise the " being-nothing "
on the one hand, and Space on the other ! We have, in short,
this " being-nothing " intellectualised as an isolated conception
with which space has nothing to do, and thereby it is objective,
and One ! In the same way, when we speak of the Universe
as all, we objectify the Universe, and regard it as One ! In
short, when space is not included in our judgment of what-is,
our consciousness of what-is must be a consciousness of unit-
being. When it is included, our consciousness of what-is must
be of whole-Being, with unit-being sublated.
For the same reason which we have given, this "being-noth-
ing "cannot be held as "self-subsistent," as Hegel declares, for
it is conditioned in its very visualisation, as an existent, in that
space in which it must exist. And if it is so conditioned, how
can it be said to " subsist" of itself ? Our consciousness refuses
to separate it for a moment from space, even though it be but
an abstraction of the mind. Every element which composes
the notion of Being in our consciousness is based in the space-
consciousness, first and foremost. It is impossible therefore
for this "One" to be "immediate." It is mediated through
the space-consciousness, though it is understood as having
nothing to do with space ! Lastly, the idea is inconceivable that
246 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
such a " being " should be able to " exclude the other from itself."
For the ' other ' must always be, in the last analysis, Space, and
to exclude this ' other ' from itself is identical with an exclusion
of self from self!
Is it necessary to call attention to the unsound system of
reasoning which tends to Finality and what is called Unification ?
This is the process which is ever before us in such systems that
give us the * point,' the ' ion,' and the ' life ' for the Sciences ;
the ' subject-object,' and ' being-nothing ' for Philosophy ; and
the ' soul ' and ' God-Person ' for Theology. Each is construed
and run into a cone-vertex of thought, or traced more and more
contractedly into an infinitesimal pivot-point which shuts out
all vision, and puts the human mind into a cut de sac. There
are advantages, no doubt, in such a course, but for absolute
God-Truth it is ruinous. They are all mere conceptions,
created by our judgment, and no further real or true than
judgment can make them. Not one of them but is already
perishing under change.
A system of thought based on the consciousness of space
has a great advantage in that it neither leads to finality nor
to unification (terms which imply ' end-ness ' and " one-ness "),
but to Wholeness. The 'Absolute Notion' of Hegel, for
example, is a receding perspective of endless contractility. The
mind constricts its vision to a cone-vertex or to a pivot-point
on which the All of existence is believed to rest like a ball on
a table. With the consciousness of space as our basis all this
is reversed. Mind-vision, like eye-vision, looks as from the
standpoint of the cone-vertex towards the cone-base, in
infinitely expanding ' extensity ' which widens with space-being
to its utmost until our own space-being becomes coincident
with All-Being. Such a system does not therefore tend to
isolate one department of thought from all others ; Theology
from Science ; Science from Philosophy ; or Philosophy from
both ; but has a constant and natural affinity with all knowledge,
and with every element which in future may be included in
its sphere. The tendency is not towards an Absolute ( One,'
or Thing, but towards an Absolute Whole which cannot be
determined save as we determine space-absolute, i.e. without
any consciousness of parts.
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 247
Value, or Worth.
178. The consciousness of Space, therefore, alone can give a
consciousness of * Infinity' in complete agreement with all our
experience. For our experience is that a consciousness of
Infinity or whole-Being is a necessity to us. It is not merely a
curiosity for the Boundless and the Eternal. Our experience of
the VALUE or worth of what-we-are compels us towards a
consciousness of Infinity. For it is a consciously whole Value
which what-we-are puts upon itself, and in this experience it
proves its identity with Space-Value.
But no conception of unit-being ever yields a consciousness
of absolute value, and it is this fact which degrades the concep-
tion of ' God ' when viewed as one-Being and not Whole.
For if what-we-are had an absolute verge, or dividing line,
which isolated it in being from all other beings in the universe,
and even from that universe itself, that dividing-line or verge
would be found expressing itself in a consciousness of limited
value or worth for what-we-are. Consciousness of limited
being could not create a consciousness of unlimited worth.
Consciousness of relative being could not give us a conscious-
ness of absolute value. For the values of the other relatives
have to be included in an absolute value. No single Self,
therefore, could possibly assume an absolute value for itself:
i.e. a Whole-Value without any part-consciousness.
But this is just what what-we-are does, and our experience
always confirms it as most natural to do so. The Value of which
what-we-are is conscious for itself has no limit in our consciousness
of what-we-are^ and that value also exactly balances all and every
value that can be put upon the " Not-Self" or the Absolute Being.
Our judgment of the value of what-we-are is based on an
existential judgment of What-Is.
For example, the world as compared with what-we-are, is
valued at very little. Nay, many worlds are as nothing. A
universe of worlds would be set aside by what-we-are if they
were offered in exchange. And so, universally, the Total of
the content of the Universe, or of Nature, would be felt, in the
consciousness of what-we-are, to be inequal in Value to that
value of which we are all conscious.
For this Self-valuation is an infinite or whole-value, and
248 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
balances with that value which the All gives to our conscious-
ness of it. Or, to put it the other way, the consciousness
in what -we -are of being -value is identical with the con-
sciousness in what-we-are of the value of the All. This is
the answer which fundamentally every 'Self gives to the ques-
tion, " What shall a man give in exchange for his life, or
' soul ' ? " Whole-Being is thus whole-value, subsuming all con-
ceptions of value.
But clearly, the value attachable to our consciousness of the
Whole or the All is the value which is identical with that which
is attachable only to Space. For Space is our fullest content of
the consciousness of the All. Now, if we remember that our
ultimate consciousness of what-we-are, which we identify with
' living soul,' is one of space, and that our consciousness of the
All, Space, the Every where -Being, is the same consciousness
which is formulated in our conception of ' God/ it should not be
difficult to see that the absolute value which the ' Self puts
upon itself is due to the fact that it is really consciously whole
in being with Absolute Being, and cannot have any other than
an absolute value for itself. That is to say, the Value of what-
we-are is identical with the value of Space. The consciousness
of the Infinite or whole Reality yields the only consciousness
also of the Infinite or whole Value. Or, Fact and Value, on the
basis of the space-consciousness, are identical. It is only as
" relatives " or " dualities " that difference of values can be
predicated of either.
Let us also at this point remember that the value of which
the ' Self '-we-are is conscious includes ^personal' Value, and one
in which all other values of life, perfection, etc., are included.
And as no conceivable value eclipses the ' Self-Value, which is
always equal to, and identical with the All-Value, it follows that
the value which we must give to the All, must be one inclusive
of the * personality ' of the Self. Both (if we must so character-
ise them for purposes of reasoning) can only possess personal-
value, or that value which we predicate for the space-self we are.
Also, if we substitute Being for All, it will be impossible to
contemplate Being otherwise than as absolutely full instead of
absolutely empty. The Self is unable to find a higher value
than in ^-ing. " Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal
of personal worth" (T. H. Green's Proleg. to Ethics, p. 193),
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 249
and this shows us the absolute weight of worth which is per-
manently resident in the term Is : what-we-are.
The Good.
179. Therefore, the infinite value set upon the ' self by itself
coincides also with our consciousness of the Infinitely Good. And
only out of this consciousness of * self '-value can this conscious-
ness of infinite or whole-Good arise. The ultimate judgment
upon the ' Self as Good or worth, is identical with the ultimate
judgment of the Absolute Good. That is to say, it is impossible
for us to have a more ultimate judgment of the Absolutely
Good than we possess for ourselves, and, as we build our
conception of an Absolutely Good ' God ' out of this conscious-
ness, it is evident that we do so because the being we are is
identical as space-being with whole-Being. Otherwise it would
be impossible for us to have such a conception. For we cannot
form any judgment of any being independently of the only
being which we are and experience.
Kant fixed the conception of value or worth in his doctrine
of ' Good-will.' And in doing so, he narrowed Value to the
limits of process of Being. Now, not even from the ' good-will '
of God could we obtain a true consciousness of whole- Value.
For we cannot conceive ' Will* without also conceiving change.
To say ' good ' of will is to presuppose ' bad ' as possible in such
will. Its value is thus merely relative, and inapplicable to
Deity. For we should always demand, if ' God ' had such a
Will, what then determines His will to be ' good ' and not ' bad ' ?
And, how does Evil Will arise ?
It is clearly our consciousness of Being, and not of any
characteristic of Being, which satisfies our consciousness of
Absolute or Whole Good. No consciousness of process, will,
change, motion, or force, etc., ever carries in it the consciousness
of self-subsistent whole-Good. In order to obtain this conscious-
ness, we must fall back upon our consciousness of what-we-are
as Space-being, and, in our consciousness of Space-being, * good '
and ' evil ' are transcended as relatives. In our consciousness
of Space no affirmation of either 'good' or 'evil' obtrudes.
We have solely the affirmation of Absolute Beatitude in the
affirmation of Is : >e'mg.
250 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
The consciousness of space-being and our consciousness of
its whole-worth, or infinite value, is therefore the foundation of
every Ethic. Every standard of Perfection of Being, or
Conduct, must conform ultimately to this consciousness of
Space-Goodness. For no judgment of man concerning perfec-
tion can transcend it. Every worth or Good in Nature, as well
as every Good in man or in * God,' as we are able to think these
concepts, is relative and secondary to this absolute Good of
Space. And as we know Good and Evil as relatives, it follows
that the consciousness of this Absolute Value, or Good, is more
than what we can conceive as Good. It is the absolute basis
upon which, and with reference to which, our finite and relative
conceptions of Good and Evil are formed. An absolute Good
cannot be compared, for example, with an absolute Evil, in this
sense, for this would mean that we might have two absolutes.
Therefore, the Good of Being is beyond characterisation as either
Good or Evil, even as Space is. It is only conceivable as
Absolute Beatitude. No fault can be found in the Universe
because no fault can be found in its Ultimate Being, i.e. Space.
All ' relationship ' lies far below this level of Being, and conse-
quently, all conceptions also of Good and Evil, Sin and Right-
eousness. This is the consciousness of Being in which such
ethical concepts are sublated and disappear.
It is also this consciousness of Being that determines what
the absolute Ought in Life and Character really means. There
lies in the being of everything, an absolute standard of Value
for itself, which consciously or unconsciously fixes the varying
ideals of character and conduct as through the evolution of the
ages that standard dawns upon the discerning minds of all.
And that standard necessarily lies in the Absolute Being, the
Space-Being, or IS. To a man, certainly, there can never be a
higher conception of Goodness than is given in Being itself, as
we have just shown in the Value he gives it. To Be, sums up
and swallows up our every conception of Good. Conversely every
conception other than this one must be, by comparison, more or
less definable ethically as ( Evil.' There is truly no good but
whole-Good.
The supreme value therefore being one identical with
supreme-being, or our supreme consciousness of being, the
self-we-are, or Space-Being, it follows that our consciousness of
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 251
the greatest ' Evil ' will always refer itself to this standard of
Good. The abstraction, or withdrawal of Being, or what
amounts in our consciousness to an abstraction of Being, that
is DEATH, will consequently always seem to us as the greatest
Evil. Hell, Devil, Satan, Wrath of God, are all terms which
fundamentally denote deprivation of Being. For life denoting
existence is construed as deprivation of being when it passes
through the experience of death. But as there is always in
man a consciousness of space-existence, or existence-absolute,
he is never permitted to conceive the death of the body here as
final, and so he projects his consciousness of evil in this world
into the world ' beyond.' "Death eternal" therefore is his supreme
conception of Evil. At bottom, it is a consciousness negatively
expressed of how supremely valuable Being is, and how awful
anything approaching to deprivation of it would mean. And
from this conception it is a natural deduction that as long as
men do not conceive their being to be identical with Space-
Being, this fear must abide as a power over them. When we
realise that the consciousness of our being space, carries in it
the ultimate consciousness of deathlessness, as well as of
absolute perfection, seeing that only in the space-consciousness is
the sinless, deathless consciousness possible, all fear of absolute
annihilation, and of eternal continuance of evil, will vanish.
For we can conceive change, decay, death, as overwhelming all
things, but we cannot conceive this of Space. Space does not
die, nor can be conceived as possible of death, dissolution, or
change. So likewise Space is the absolutely Sinless realm.
And it is this consciousness of absolute purity of Space that
always determines, at bottom, our consciousness of the absolute
rectitude of what we call Nature. For Space is the ultimate of
Nature-Being. When space-being is not included in our
judgments of Nature, nature falls under the same baneful
relativities of ' good ' and ' evil ' as man himself, and it becomes
then impossible to predicate absolute rectitude of anything.
Theology having been, hitherto, based upon the objectified
* God,' and not upon the consciousness of ' God ' given us through
Space-Being, every consciousness in man regarding his relation
to his God has, as a consequence, been overshadowed and
finitised. God is conceived as One, and man as quite an Other
one. God is localised as a resident in some far-off realm, as a
252 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
King or Judge, or Law-giver ; and deemed to be in perpetual
strife re-adjusting all that His creatures are or have been
perpetually putting wrong. Relationship also is never perfect
between them, because the Being of Him and them is never
conceived as identical. Show men that, according to the
deepest testimony of their consciousness of themselves, they
have common Being with all that Is, and the conception of an
absolute relationship, perfect and indisruptible, arising out of
that testimony, must follow. This result, however, can only be
attained by an interpretation of both the Beings of ' God ' and
Man through the Space-consciousness. The objectified ' God '
of Theology will then pass from our consciousness, and the true
* God ' will then be seen to be the nearest of all to us, to be far
from the function of judgment, for Space does not judge, and
to be all that Space Is, Almighty, Infinite, Real, True, and
Good absolutely. And we hope to be able to show below that
the unique consciousness of Jesus moves upon this basis, and
alone explains his unique conception of Personality, 'human'
and ' divine,' and every predicate which He employs with
regard to both.
Substance.
I So. In such a view, it will be also perfectly rational now to
bring into our categories those of * Substance ' and ' Cause '
which have been slowly eliminated lately from thinking minds.
To us this fact is only another proof of the tremendous force
that resides in the Space-Consciousness when in order to realise
itself in the human thought, it must necessarily thrust out of
the human intellect every category which seems to oppose it.
This is freely acknowledged by thinkers who are compelled by
their fundamental postulates to renounce ' Substance ' and
1 Cause ' from their data. " So strong is the sense of the reality
of consciousness, and so persistent the influence of the ghost-
theory in determining the way in which its reality shall be
conceived, that in every age some of the greatest philosophers
have striven to establish or re-establish the position that
consciousness, thought, or the Ego is a substance " {Metaphysics
of Nature, Prof. Carveth-Read, p. 219).
That is to say, What-we-are seems the most substance-full
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 253
consciousness we possess, and if substance is to be found any-
where it ought to be What-we-are. But we cannot have a
consciousness of any quality or quantity in What-we-are in
order to conceive it as Substance, and hence the difficulty of
affixing the category of substance to What-we-are. " When we
speak of substance" says Prof. W. Wallace (Kant, p. 175), "we
wean only what persists or abides in time, and we contrast the
permanent with the changes of its phases. But the substance is
not a separate thing over and above its modes or manifestations.
It is simply that change or alteration cannot be understood
except in reference to something permanent. It is easy then
to say that substance is a fiction of thought : Kant's reply to
that charge is, that to treat successive sensations as having one
source common to them (what we must constantly do in our
experience), implies, as a ground of its possibility, an identity
or persistency in the consciousness which serves as the common
vehicle of the successive feelings. Unless tJiought supplied this
persistent, permanent background, it would be impossible for us
to realise the relations in time known as succession and
simultaneity" (italics ours).
Here 'sensations' are traced to a 'common source,' and this
implies an ' identity or persistency in the consciousness,' and
our Thought is the creator of this ' identity ' ! We have no
doubt about the ' persistency ' in our consciousness, but we have
never a consciousness of our Thought as creating or supplying
anything. Thought, as motion, is itself supplied and created.
Our consciousness of this ' persistency ' lies far deeper than
Thought, and is only found in our consciousness of Space-
Being.
1 8 1. As we have seen ( 106), Quality is supposed to reveal
Quantity, and Quantity is believed to rest upon the deeper
category of Substance, taking Substance to have the content
which Spinoza assumed for it. Now, no quality, " mode, or mani-
festation," ever gives a consciousness of substance for itself, and
consequently it never leads us to an actual substance. What we
usually do is to assume that such and such a quality, mode, or
manifestation, is associated with such and such a substance, and
that this substance really exists. It is pure supposition. The
quality, etc., never connects itself with the real Substance. As
254 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
soon as we test the quality, and compel it to yield up the Sub-
stance which it pretends to reveal, it immediately disappears.
No ' object ' is left ; and then it is said, " It has ceased to be."
In reality, we have then got to the true basis of the ' Object's '
Is-ness. Something still Is, although the quality, mode, or
manifestation has failed to remain with it. And to know this
Something, it was expedient that the quality should 'go away.'
If we were just to the facts of this consciousness, we should
realise that the quality, etc., in going away, was, ipso facto,
revealing its real Substance, viz., Space-Being. There is indeed
an absolute necessity that all qualities and quantities should
go away, or vanish, if Reality, Substance, is to stand forth clear
in our consciousness of it. That which we-are is never so
consciously all that we mean by Reality, Substance, or Being,
as when it is impossible for us to put a finger or a thought
upon one of its 'qualities.' And it is just here where we find
the reason for our consciousness of the indestructibleness of
Substance, even when all its qualities are ' taken away.' What-
it-is, is really Space-Substance ; what-we-are. And as a con-
sequence we can no more conceive our own annihilation than
of anything that exists. We are compelled to consider space-
being as ultimate, or rather, w/z<?/-substance, of which all other
objective ' substances ' are indicatives.
When, therefore, it is said, " there is no existence without
qualities, and, equally, there are no qualities without a substance
to which they are referred" (Prof. Pringle-Pattison's Scottish
Philosophy, p. 171), it is not always evident that the logical
' existence ' referred to here must be Space-Being. For it is
admitted that an existing substance may part with all its
qualities, and in that case, Space - Being is its true Being.
For this deforces all negation. And, universally, as all sub-
stances may part with their qualities, i.e. as 'heaven and
earth may pass away,' it follows that Space -Being, which
would alone remain, is the sole possible consciousness we
can have of what is Real, and that alone which is Real
below all which we conceive as Quality and Quantity. It
also means that^fte vtrefr- ii/w-uf Qualities and Quantities,
totalised in the terms 'heaven and earth/ are the true
* Qualities' of Space-Being. Consequently, the consciousness
we all have of the reality of any ' substance/ is due to the
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 255
fact that such 'substance' is fundamentally Space-Being, the
only source of our consciousness of Reality.
If then we take Substance as a term which denotes That
which alone affirms itself to Be, and out of which all that Is
arises, its clearer meaning will be best stated as Space-Being.
The following extract from Lotze's Metaphysic, p. 76
(Bosanquet's Trans.), will also show that even in the conception
of Substance the human mind has been unable to think
differently of it and space. He says, " According to a very
common usage the name ' Substance ' was employed to indicate
a rigid real nucleus, which was taken, as a self-evident truth,
to possess the stability of Reality a stability which could not
be admitted as belonging to the things that change and differ
from each other without special justification being demanded
of its possibility. From such nuclei the Reality was supposed
to spread itself over the different properties by which one
thing distinguishes itself from another. It was thus by its
means, as if it was a coagulative agent, which served to set
what was in itself the unstable fluid of the qualitative content,
that this content was supposed to acquire the form and stead-
fastness that belong to the Thing. ... It was by means of
a substance empty in itself that Reality, with its fixedness in
the course of changes, was supposed to be lent to the determin-
ate content."
Here, the expression " substance empty in itself," is simply
the vain endeavour of the human imagination to conceive
something as nothing, and is only another proof for our contention
that every consciousness of what is Ultimate is a space-consciousness,
and tliat necessarily tJiis space-consciousness is the Ultimate of all
ultimation, and is therefore the Absolute consciousness.
There is indeed a consciousness in all men of something for
which the term Substance, as meaning a content of everlasting
stability and permanence, is but a weak interpreter. And
while we freely render a deep homage of respect to such
scientific Ultimates of Being as Ether, Vortex Rings (if they
still survive), Absolute Fluid, Vital Impulse, and such like, we
must decidedly refuse to believe that any conception of
Substance will ever be more fully or more perfectly affirmed to
human reason and faith than by that which is stated in our con-
sciousness of What-we-are, a consciousness which, we must
256 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
always repeat, is simply one of Space-Being. And in this
consciousness, it is evident (what Spinoza failed to reach, and
for which he was decried as Atheist) that the term Substance
and the term Personality -, have, so far, an identical content in
the same consciousness. That they are not absolutely identical,
and that our consciousness of space-being transcends both
personality and impersonality, is of course bound up in our
argument.
There is no question whatever that until we base all
reasoning upon our space-consciousness, the category of
Substance will be a scientifically impossible one. Berkeley
insisted that we cannot rationally speak of the substance of
Matter^ but Kant also showed that it was just as irrational
to speak of the substance of mind, and it is only when we
stand upon the Space-basis which sublates the categories
of both 'Matter' and 'Mind,' that we can discern how true is
this world-old consciousness of substance and how much both
philosophy and science omit when they discard it.
It is true that the ' self '-we-are absolutely refuses to be put
under the category of ' substance,' as it is usually intellectualised.
And the reason is that whenever we permit that category to
enter or dominate our judgment of what-we-are, we are at once
confronted with a consciousness of surface, solidity, materiality,
and so of limitation. But this is contrary to our deepest con-
sciousness of what-we-are, and unreality is stamped upon such
a ' substance.' It conveys the meaning of our being an
" unsubstantial pageant," and under the menace of change and
evanescence like all other concepts of thought. It conveys no
permanence of our being. This conception of self is imperilled
by a negation which it cannot withstand, and there can be no
true conception of what our being substance means until it is
based upon that consciousness which no negation can assault,
viz., the consciousness of space. As soon as we realise our
space-being, and that affirmation in the space-consciousness
which negates all negation absolutely, its affirmation against
all negation of our being becomes conscious to us, and we then
discern where we obtain that strong and persistent determination
to affirm reality of ourselves under the most adamantine
category which seems available to us. For Substantial^ or
Being, seems a conception so impregnable and invulnerable
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 257
to all invading influences of change as to tempt the 'self to
found itself upon it as on eternal rock. But what really is
the rock -consciousness is that one of space which gives to
this Substantia its only assurance of absolute reality, and so
determines it by itself. The consciousness of space becomes
then the absolute one of substance, and in that consciousness
of space we have at the same time a true consciousness of
space and substance as an identical consciousness. No conception
of solidity can approach in strength the consciousness we have
of the substantiality of space. The 'self/ in short, realises itself
as eternal permanence. And even our consciousness of " God "
in the self ascends no higher. Space thus becomes both a true
consciousness of Substance and a genuine wide-open concep-
tion of knowledge. The lowest concept of substantiality is sub-
lated under the highest one of Space.
Cause.
182. In the case of Cause, when a thing is, and it can be
shown that all else that exists holds the condition of its being,
or existence, because of the existence of that thing, then that
thing must be the only thinkable cause of the existence of
that all. Now, Space Is ; it is the only ' thing ' we can conceive
as existence-absolute, and all else is conditioned by it, and is
a priority conditioned. Therefore space is the only thinkable
cause of all that exists.
For it is impossible to conceive a cause, either personal or
impersonal, to exist previous to, or independent of, space.
No conception of any being as causing anything can be
postulated in our consciousness until we have first postulated
space-being as the necessary condition, or "presupposition,"
of that being's existence. Besides, Cause as a concept, connotes
Power and Motion, but these are impossible concepts in con-
sciousness until Space be first posited as their condition
of being and acting. Therefore no cause is thinkable till a
consciousness of space is pre-supposed for its being and
action. 'Things' do exist. We are conscious that they have
not caused themselves. They are not self-determined. They
must have been determined by an Other. And Space is the
one and only Reality which is conceivably Un-Caused. Therefore
R
258 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
it is impossible to think of any genuine Cause unless we think
it to be Space. Space thus fulfils our consciousness of Cause
Absolute, or Whole- Cause, pure from any conceivable relatedness
to a separate Effect.
Hume's difficulty in finding a true nexus for Cause and
Effect receives its solution in this connection. In thinking any
thing, every concept seems to stand out in our minds as if
distinct and single in itset/from all other things or concepts. For
example, we think the concepts Man, World, God, Tree, House,
Matter, and readily assume the illusion that in reality, as well
as in thinking, each is verily distinct and separate, absolutely,
from the other. This illusion runs through the long list of dual
and so-called relative concepts, such as Absolute and Relative,
Cause and Effect, One and Many. The illusion is of course due
to our thinking space as absolutely apart from every concept when
we think it. We do not include space in our data of conscious-
ness when we include in it these concepts. We turn our ' blind
spot ' to space and only see the concept by itself. In our
judgment of the object the space-datum is absent. Hence each
concept seems absolutely fixed and divided from the other ;
standing "over against" it, with no possible connection between
the two save that the one seems always present with the
existence of the other. We cannot bridge the distance between
them, and there is always the third thing, our ' Self,' which is
just as far apart from both. Isolation is thus the only con-
clusion possible, for no nexus seems to exist in which to
sublate them as ' one.'
Hume, we think, could not find a nexus between Cause and
Effect because he conceived each of these categories as independent
of, and apart from space. The very consciousness of space which
made their division possible to his thought, he ignored as of no
value to his problem. But this is the crux of the whole matter.
To leave out space in the problem is to stultify our conclusion
with regard to truth. It is the inclusion or exclusion of space,
as a factor in our thinking of anything, that determines
respectively, absolute identity or absolute discreteness in our
conceptions of reality. Without space in our thinking, and as
a datum of judgment, all is abstract fancy. Nothing thought
can be thought as real apart from the space-consciousness.
Therefore to think apart from it is to weave logical or thought-
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 259
things which have no reality corresponding to them. The
* unity beyond the difference ' of any two ' relatives/ is not some
imaginary 'Being,' 'universal/ or Spinozistic 'substance/ but
simply Space, the Is-Being, if we dare to call it so, and it is
never ' beyond ' anything in any sense, but fundamentally is
them, seeing they cannot be without it.
Therefore, there is always Cause beyond the ' relative ' which
is termed 'Cause.' And that Cause is Space-Being, the only
thinkable Cause of any reality. In this Cause there are no
relatives, but only Whole-Reality. For every 'relative' finds
its relativity abolished in the identifying consciousness of Space.
Actually, the ' cause ' which is held to be relative to ( effect ' is
itself an effect. This is proved by the fact that we cannot think
a 'cause' that has not itself been caused. For we can always
find it possible to ask of even ' God/ Who caused Him? And
so long as ' God ' is conceived as Personal and One, and not
Himself Space-Being, this is a true possibility. But with
Space-Being conceived as Cause, all such possibility is
impossible. We cannot ask, Who caused Space ? For such a
question has necessarily to postulate space for the cause of
space, and thus it is impossible to escape from the space-
consciousness. Space must be considered as Whole-Cause.
The categories of Substance and Cause, therefore, when filled
with the content of space-being, are at home in our conscious-
ness of what-we-are, and also in all that we realise as ' God '
and ' Nature.' They likewise justify the consciousness of the
ages in maintaining them as not meaningless, and vindicate
the Weltbewusstsein which brought them forth, as qualifying
both ' Matter' and ' Mind.'
A consideration of such categories, all tending more or less
to a consciousness of Unity for each, shows them to be
harmonised only and wholly in the Space-Consciousness. Not
one of Kant's famous categories, as has been said above, has
the faintest consciousness of Wholeness accompanying it. They
are all mentally figured to us as units , each for itself, and in no
wise existentially Whole, but only as possessing a capacity of
being totalled together. And Hegel merely effected this
Totalising in his one great category of the " Notion." And as
we have seen, Unity as a category is hopelessly defective in
interpreting our consciousness of God, or of \Vhole-Being, in
260 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
which category alone we possess a true interpreter of Whole-
Harmony. And this leads us now to a consideration of
Whole-Being as Whole-Beauty : " The Glory of God-Being."
The Beautiful.
183. Truth of Nature is, fundamentally, Truth of Space.
Form and Colour, so necessary to the interpretation of Nature's
truth, pass away with the heavens and the earth, but Space
abideth forever. Space is Whole-Truth fulfilling itself through
the mediating forms and colours of the heavens and the earth.
All Form, again, is reducible to Point-form, lines and surfaces
being constructed out of points, the structure of the ' point '
itself being due to the capacity of contractility in our point-and-
spread consciousness, and such point again having solely a
space-content.
184. The ' point} because it is of all forms the least filled
with a content of Whole-Being, carries in itself an inferior
content of beauty, by the fact that it represents pure isolation,
and refers itself only to itself. The circle, when considered as a
point, has a similar content. And it is this content which
renders the circle less beautiful than a perfectly straight line,
and far less beautiful than a curved line. Neither the straight
nor the curved line have such a consciousness of closed, isolated,
rigid being, as either the * point ' or the ' circle-point.' For
they always represent possible expansion, freedom, unfinished
purpose, and something not yet realised. The point and
point-circle, leave nothing to infinity. All is conceived as
realised and done with, forever. Form no more goes forth on
its everlasting way, but remains fixed, hard, and eternally
obdurate, representing Being without feeling, without need of
anything or anyone, and without any expectation of kindred
being from without, or begotten being from within. It is also
without response, and being perfect in itself, remains silent to
all questions, and returns no sympathy. When it is personified
in our consciousness, it may be the nucleus of all our deities,
and finally become the Cosmos of the Greeks; the "/^;;/" of
Moses; or the Pan-Being who can drive all men mad with his
cry. It really has no existence save as a creation of the point-
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 261
and-spread consciousness ; the creator of all our unit-objects ;
for Nature never owns it as only such a point-form. If she
creates such a point-form, she clothes it in sympathetic,
instructive light, and we call it 'star,' or she fills it with life
and love, and we name it the ' eye.' The isolated unit-being,
perfectly itself and no other being, which modern philosophy
has styled ' self/ ' God,' * Nature,' has no existence except in the
thought of man which has cast forth from his judgment of
Being the great consciousness of Space. In our conception of
such 'self,' 'God/ and 'Nature/ there is never a consciousness
of colour in them, and less of life. And neither is there
a consciousness of motion. They are truly Point-beings ;
Form-dead.
Time and Change enter our consciousness with the content
of colour. Pure point-form does not change or grow old.
Colour always gives a consciousness both of elapsing time and
change. We are perfectly certain of returning to a point-being,
and finding it conceptually unchanged, but we never have this
certainty with a coloured point. As formed it is fixed, but as
coloured it is under the menace of time. But as coloured it
gives also a sense of beauty greater than we obtain from mere
form. For colour in its very consciousness of variation finds
fuller response in ourselves, as everchanging in motions of
feeling, thinking, and conation. We are therefore more in
harmony with it. And even when all colour is subsumed
in white light, this harmony is deepened, because then the
subsumed colour answers to our subsumed feeling, thinking,
and conation, in one consciousness of ourselves. And in this
way we come to realise that both Form and Colour are
mediates of what we term the Beautiful, only as and when
such mediates answer to the consciousness which we have of
what-we-are.
Perhaps it is not necessary to allude to Ruskin's contention
that truth of Form is greater than truth of Colour (Mod.
Painters, Part ii. chap. v.). His judgment was based on Locke's
arbitrary division of the qualities of a body into primary and
secondary. Bulk, figure, number, situation, motion, and rest,
were primary because they were of the essence of the body, and
without which it could not be, and all its other qualities were
only 'powers/ or secondary characteristics, which apparently
262 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the body could exist without. Colour therefore, in Ruskin's
judgment, sank to second rank. But we have seen that neither
Form nor Colour, nor any quality whatsoever, is essential to
our ultimate consciousness of what-is, and, moreover, we are not
here trenching upon Ruskin's particular field of Art Criticism.
We are discussing Whole-Harmony, Glory Absolute, of which
such Art is itself but a special branch.
All Art, as we understand that term, confines itself to the
limited. Thought and feeling are restricted to the possibilities
of Form and Colour. Nature and human nature, for art
purposes, have no other bounds. We speak, of course, with
reference to the Architect, the Sculptor, and the Painter. The
Poet, and the Musician, have their peculiar forms and colours
also, but the plane of their work is on a loftier altitude. Every
known Art, indeed, seeks to interpret Reality in its Beauty, and
if we include Man in the term * Nature,' then all Art will be
great and greater as it interprets not merely the forms and
colours of the heavens and the earth, but also the deeper
consciousness of What-man-is. And this interpretation has no
bounds save as we can conceive Space to have bounds. For
1 Nature,' in our ultimate consciousness of its content, is Space-
Being.
Now, just as the Point-being, or Form, with its derivative line
and surface ; and all Colour with its variations between the
dark and the inimitably bright, are conditioned in Space, and
are inconceivable except as ultimately Space-being, so all
Art is ultimately conditioned by the right interpretation of
Space. Any Form and any Colour arrangement must
ultimately take into account the paramount fact of Space.
The Art will be ' bad ' just in proportion to the * bad ' Space
involved in such art. For it is always the Space-Consciousness
which rules both Form and Colour, however they may be
treated. And as the Artist himself is, at bottom, Space-being,
the fullest expression of his art will hang upon the identifying of
his own being, or ' soul,' with Space of universal Nature. This
fact is often heard in the remark of criticism, " He puts a great
deal of himself into his art." Every one instinctively feels that
what is presented in true art is not merely delicate appearances,
forms and colours, but the artist's spirit, and this will always be
the test of art that can be approved by the highest standards.
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 263
185. The highest function of Art, therefore, is not merely to
interpret Body, or the Objective, through Form and Colour, but
the ' spirit ' of Man along with, and through the consciousness
of Space-Being. All line-and-colour work, whether it is
mediated through stone or pigment, has this ideal as its funda-
mental potentiality. And it is for this reason that we find all
Art constantly converging instinctively upon the Space-Ideal
through a gradation which, beginning with Architecture, passes
to Sculpture, then Painting, Poetry, and Music, the last being
the supreme effort to preserve art within the limitations of
Form before it completely passes outside of all Form whatso-
ever, and enters formless ecstacy, and the deep existential
communion of space-being with Space-being ; or where the
'particular' is subsumed in Whole-Being. All harmony of
thought and feeling reach, then, the ultimate Whole- Harmony,
and Beauty is freed from the limitations of all forms and
colours absolutely.
Ruskin himself has pointed out this independence of art in
its highest impressions upon the human spirit. For although
in the great bulk of his art-criticism he confines himself to the
objective as an ultimate reference, he naturally surpasses it
when he touches upon space. He shows that we can have a
consciousness of Beauty, independent of any object, which lies
neither in Form nor Colour, norfmLeveri > Light itself, but only in
Space. After descanting on the " effects of calm and luminous
distance" on the mind of the spectator, as perhaps " the most
singular and memorable of which he has been conscious" he
says " It is not then by noble form, it is not by positive-
ness of hue, it is not by intensity of light (for the sun at noon-
day is effectless upon the feelings), that this strange distant space
possesses its attractive power. But there is one that it has, or
suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal
degree, and that is, Infinity. It is of all visible things the least
material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth
prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most
suggestive of the glory of His dwelling place" (Mod. Paint.,
Part iii. sec. i. c.v. 5) (italics ours).
1 86. In this passage, it is apparent that every term fails the
great Art Critic to express what he wants to say about Space.
264 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
For space is not visible nor material, nor finite, nor withdrawn
from the earth, nor a type of anything, although it does give
the ' most suggestive ' suggestion * of the Glory ' of the Highest.
It is likewise not to be expressed as * Infinite,' as that which is
merely relative to the ' Finite ' of the Schools. Neither is it
' space- distance I which we have seen to be objective and finite
enough, although he oddly calls it ' distant space ! ' Whole-Being is
evidently what Ruskin means. And as such, there is indeed no
Beauty to be compared to the beauty of Space. It is the charm
within and behind and beyond all form and colour, and it is this
because it best reveals the Self to itself, through all the
powers of itself. What-we-are finds in Space-being, and only
in Space-being, the most complete reflection of its own space-
loveliness, the glory of Being independent of Objectivity.
It is a common experience, felt by everyone, that something
attracts one towards masses, forms, lines, curved or straight ; to
gradations, proportions ; symmetrical material of every shape ;
colours of all variety and tone. But the beauty of such is
but borrowed. Absolutely, it stands before us always in the
unmediated Space-being we pass by unheeded. Landscapes,
seascapes, rock-scenery, stone-structure, the human form, or any
form, all and every ' object ' which we call beautiful, is so because
of what it has taken from Space. In our usual limited way of
judging, we place the emphasis of beauty on the Object. Art is
usually satisfied with this accomplishment. It really belongs
to that Space-being without which the Object could neither
be, nor appear. The Object, in every case, both as Form
and as Colour, but mediates the beauty of space to us, or
raises us to realise ourselves in Whole -Being -Beauty. And
only when we realise Reality can we realise Whole-Beauty :
Glory Absolute.
But in actual fact, no artist need ever hope to draw space,
or give Space through art-forms. As Ruskin hints, it can,
at most, be a suggestion. It is not possible to press the
most meagre point of space-being within the limits of art.
This is the reason why nearly all artists come short in even
suggesting the space-mystery and beauty of the eye. Straight
line of eyelash is blended with the curved lines of the eye
itself, and both with the delicately graded colour of the iris.
But there is a line-less, colourless space given in the pupil,
SPACE AN 7 D THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 265
which is the despair of all artists, and which the sculptor is
most fortunate to be able to intimate or suggest by an efficient
curve and hollow space. It is where the infinite mystery of
the space-being is seen as identical with space, the purely
absolute beautiful, seeing that no mediating 'matter' comes
between the spectator and itself. If it were possible to see
space, this is where we should see it. And when rightly seen,
then the infinite, the divine, the personally divine, rises likewise
upon the vision. The eye gives an infinite regression of space-
being, 'within' or 'without,' and the eternal is unmistakable.
So the ancient Israelites saw their 'God' in the clear space
of the sky, just as Byron also truly described the same wonder
in his lines
"The blue sky
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven."
It is indeed where the space-consciousness is most emphatic
that Beauty, the ' multitude in unity ' of the Roman school,
the ' Glory of the Lord,' of the Hebrews, is most confessed.
The sea, the towering mountain, the vastitude of plain, the
panoramic masses of cloud, each in its objective sphere is
sublimely beautiful. But such beauty is not due to each
because it is sea, or mountain, or plain, or cloud, but because
of the space-quantity (if we dare to put it under such a
false term) which each heaps upon the mind, and which gives
the inspiration of ' glory ' that we feel. Literature, of course,
teems with this expression of space-beauty. And although
students of philosophy miss this note in their great science,
we must not forget that behind the categories Substance, Cause,
Infinity, One, and many others, there lie hidden wonder and
glory and mystery unspeakable. Philosophy simply ignores, in
the data of her judgments of such categories, the one datum
which is essential to the revelation of their glory. For when
we admit the space-consciousness into our judgment of such
categories, they live and move, and are no longer mechanical
and dead. Nature, Motion, Force, Thought, Person, and such
like, lose their isolated repulsiveness, and become robed in
the splendour and sublimity of Whole-Space-Being, Whole-
Harmony, the prius of all Art absolutely.
266 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
1 87. Having referred to the hopelessness of Art to express the
eye-space, or space associated with any form or colour, we
may notice nevertheless the overwhelming power in the eye
to attract the artist. It is instinctively felt that in the eye
the ' spirit ' conceals itself. It is the chief exponent of objective
1 personality.' Than the eye, nothing in the human frame affirms
so profoundly the something we generalise as 'personality.'
The limbs, the body, the head, the features, one by one, are
all passed by when we seek for the person. Everything else
may yield an individuality, an object; there may be thought,
will, and feeling, manifested, and all the impersonal elements
be present ; matter and motion, just as we have in animals ;
but we are only satisfied when we gaze upon the space-
presence which is revealed, not in the lines and curves and
colours of eye-lash, eye-brow, eye-lid, and cornea, but in the
sky-filled pupil, the space-thing, and when we find that, we
find also what satisfies us in ' personality.' We are then
conscious, that is, that we see a person.
The power of the eye in all animals, as well as in man,
need not be emphasised. Life and Space blend together in
the Motions of the eye, as they never are blended in any other
sense or feature, and yield an identity upon which personality
can be based in our thought and consciousness of it. Life
indeed must be a motion of space, for, without Space, Life were
not. It is in the eye, and nowhere else, that we find both
as an identical and personal power.
This seems important, for it appears to establish a distinct
connection between the pupil-space of the eye and the vaster
eye-space of the sky. It seems to explain why men have
always been able to discern a Personality in the Sky-Space.
It is the eye of Nature, and just as human personality is most
strongly revealed in the eye-space, so it has been natural for
men to conceive Personality for Nature in the sky-space also.
The space-consciousness is the basis of both conceptions of
personality, particular or universal.
1 88. But the beautiful, we need not say, passes beyond the
aesthetic and blends itself with the Ethical. To KO\OV means
good as well as fair. When Jesus said, "Let your light so
shine before men, that they may see your good works," He
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 267
appealed to the beautiful as much as to the good. Men see
beauty in a good work. " She hath wrought a good work on
me," characterised the work to be as beautiful as it was good.
And, in general, all through His frequent use of the word
Kalos, the Master, whose aesthetic taste must have been of the
most exquisite delicacy, weaves the beautiful with the good
inseparably. It lay immediately in His consciousness and
doctrine to do so, for the highest expression of the beautifully good
is Self-sacrifice^ and He Himself is by this standard adjudged
the most sublimely beautiful of all that is beautiful. As a
matter of fact, and, we may say, of necessity also, the Artists
have instinctively seen the highest beauty here, and the
greatest of them have exhausted their genius in interpreting
it to the ear and eye. It may be said that two branches of
Art, viz. Painting and Music, revel in the field of beauty which
Jesus unveiled for them. Our art galleries and masterpieces
of music are witnesses. Neither should modern art be blamed
if it seem to wait behind the art of Greece, and come short of
her victories. The task set before the modern artist is higher
than the Greek knew, in the highest plane of beauty, and the
lowly consciousness of the modern that he never can achieve
his ideal, is itself a deeper beauty than that which governed the
Grecian conceit of being equal to portraying all he discerned.
But this leads us to ask, Why do men see beauty y the
highest beauty, in Self-negation, Self-sacrifice, and devotion unto
death ? It seems strange that the grandeur of existence should
consist in negating the very thing which has taken millions of
years to evolve and develop. But it is this principle of Self-
denial even unto death, which exalts and ' glorifies ' all the
saviours, the martyrs, the philanthropists, the patriots, and,
noblest of all, the Mothers of the world. He who has given
himself most completely to the Other, whether that Other be
an individual, a nation, a race, or a world, will be extolled by
all men as not only good, but beautifully good. Art will ever
labour to exhibit such Life-sacrifice in the most beautiful forms
and in the fairest colours expressive of such a consciousness
in all.
And it is here that we learn that true beauty must be lived
before it can be limned. The highest aesthetic sense is " that
unspeakable Beauty which in its highest clearness is Religion,"
268 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
as Carlyle says that which evokes from itself such self-negation,
" doing good deeds, not dreaming them the whole day long,"
singing and painting in blood, and not in tone-signs and
pigments.
It is this truth and sense of the highest beauty which lies
at the root of all the Master's desires to be ' glorified ' with
The Father, and of His associating this fulness of ' glory ' with
' finishing ' His work. For the very Name of Father connotes
self-sacrifice in giving life-being to the other, and its equation
with ' Cosmos/ or ' Nature/ must be regarded as the ultimate
conception of all self-sacrifice, seeing that all that exists
objectively is given through Him. To be glorified, or made
beautiful with the beauty of the Father, was therefore to
finish His work in the grand self-sacrificing way of the Father :
the All-Giver of All.
But in the chapters following we shall endeavour to show
that the conception of ' Father/ in the consciousness of Jesus
was not interpretative of His ultimate consciousness of Being,
but only of His ultimate consciousness of Objectivity, and that
such term never subsumes within itself the consciousness of
Space, but only that of the objective Cosmos, or ' Nature.' The
Father-term which stands based in that of ' Life/ while it
represents self-sacrifice in giving its own life to all that lives,
is itself negated by a higher power of Being which lies beyond
and above Life. It is this power in man which directs the
" laying down " of Life, preferring death to Life. And so all
that underlies the Father-term, that is, Heaven and Earth, or
all Objectivity, " passes away," but this power abides. When
all Relation, Quality, and Quantity are no more, that which
has given heaven and earth to be, remains permanent Being.
And the highest self-sacrifice is found in this Power which gives
up all that is summed in the terms Cosmos, Nature, Life,
Father, out of its own Being, and so is All in All. But,
clearly, this negating power beyond all Life, is not conceivable
to us save as Space-Being. It is the same consciousness which
man has when he freely denies Life, negates himself to
Nothingness, and is beautified with Space-Beauty. And it is
because Highest Being so sacrifices, so 'empties' itself, and is,
to our consciousness, Space, that all similar sacrifice of self, and
negation of relation, quality, and quantity, in man, is not only
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 269
highest good, but also highest " glory," or Whole-Beauty. All
1 attributes ' of Deity are thus harmonised in Space- Being, which
likewise becomes our absolute consciousness of * God-Being.'
The question then arises, Why do not men yet see a Person-
ality or obtain a consciousness of personality, in the sky-
expanse? We answer, For the same reason that men are
coming slowly to see no ' soul ' or * spirit ' through the human
eye. When the sky came under the analysis of astronomical
criticism, innumerable objects were found there, but no Person.
The astronomer, like all others, sees the * object ' but not the
Space-Being. And similarly with the eye, the various items of
its physical structure are set in the vision of Science, and its
space-power is annihilated. We shall have it asserted by-and-
by that the consciousness of personality given in the human
eye-space is illusive, and misleading ; and that, like the sky, it
has nothing more behind it than what death is pleased to leave ;
and that, in short, there is no such thing as personality in
existence.
Perhaps this conclusion will be justifiable, too, for it is the
only logical ending of all thinking that casts out space from its
data of judgments. Man, in such circumstances, cannot help
seeing blind. Even * God,' when viewed as such an 'object,' can
have no personality attributed to Him equal to that of which
we are ourselves conscious. But when space is taken as the
basal consciousness of our own personality, there will be little
difficulty in finding Personality, or All-we-are, in our every
consciousness of Space-Being. For there must be few people,
surely, who have not verified in their own individual experience
the power of the space-consciousness which is mediated through
the eye. If we are attentive enough to our consciousness when
we have before us an unusually clear space, no matter where,
we shall always feel the subtle affirmation of personality in it,
which was so strongly realised by the ancients. It is this that
affects us so profoundly in crossing vast plains, wide seas,
descending deep valleys, threading broad forests, or standing
on mountain peaks. The same consciousness overpowers us
that impresses the mind so permanently in the space of the eye.
There is no form : there is no speech nor language : their voice
is not heard : but there is a consciousness as of something that
lived, that thought, that brooded over, and around, and within
270 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
us, and entered into vital communion with us personally. It is
in such moments that we are truly revealed to ourselves, and
realise that we are far more than our conceptions of personality
are able to measure or define. Our actual experience is of
personality transcended. We realise, then, space-being, within
which such motions as feeling, thought, and conation, as we
understand these, are ecstacised beyond their common uses,
and we experience the exaltation of Being's "consummation
and the poet's dream." With Plato and Elijah, we stand in
the Cave where the mysteries of personality are revealed
amidst flame and shadow, rushing wind and rending rock.
There is never any doubt in such experiences about per-
sonality anywhere. It is all-personal. Moreover, in such an
experience all the senses are transcended, and we see the
unseen, hear the everlasting silences, and touch the intangible.
Life and all its connotations are also sublated, for death in
such a consciousness is the inconceivable, and all conscious-
ness of time is blotted out. It is true experience of Space-
Being, and what-we-are does not so much then require to
respond to Another as to acknowledge itself. Every response
is soliloquy. We enter into high communion, but not with an
Other. We only learn what-we-are, and have always been, and
realise that our deepest ignorance is uttered when we say " I
Am."
We also realise that every object only fulfils itself when it lays
itself down in this consciousness of Nothingness, and in its own
extinction realises its own Reality. When unit-being consents
to be shred of every quality and every quantity and all con-
scious relationship, when all form and colour resolve into space-
being, then the true divine Being dawns upon the ' soul/ and the
' glory of the Lord ' is revealed. The Unit fades into Whole-
Being, and the determined conception forsakes its assumed
absoluteness and draws back into boundless consciousness.
Therefore, the open sky affirms personality to-day just as
decidedly as it ever did of yore, and just as clearly as does the eye
when we gaze upon each other. But we must not seek a " Self"
or a "Soul" thereafter the similitude of the philosophical 'self
or the theological ' soul,' which are supposed to lie behind the
eye. If we conceive such a form of personality to exist either
in sky or eye, we can only create disappointments for ourselves.
SPACE AND THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY 271
Deity, without or within, dwelleth not in temples made with
hands, nor is even defined in thought and fancy, percept or
concept, but is itself the dwelling for all, as whole space-being.
And we should perhaps note also, that it is in the eye-space
alone that all nature is most fully represented, in its manifesta-
tions of light and darkness, day and night. There is revealing
and concealing in eye and sky, and perpetual identity of
common being. The highest light lies in tha eye but also the
darkest darkness, while personality declares itself where there
is no form and no colour given, but only a space-consciousness.
So men of old were able to discern that Space-Being identified
itself with eternal light as well as with eternal darkness, and
out of the Deep, the Darkness, or rather That which doth not
appear, beheld not only Light arise, but all Creation, and ' God '
Himself. And, undoubtedly, What the light and darkness of
the eye-space reveals and conceals in the eye, is not other than
That which the ancient Israelites discerned and adored in the
vastitude of the azure expanse, " as it were the very heaven for
clearness " (Exod. xxiv. 10).
CHAPTER IX
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION
189. In this argument, we take for granted that man must
always interpret both himself and the universe through whatever
degree of consciousness he may have of them. It is by the
content which our consciousness furnishes, throughout its wide
experiential range, that we must determine every result in
religion as well as in science and philosophy. This appears to
be the unanimous judgment of all accepted authorities. If we
are granted this position, our field of view is clear, and con-
veniently circumscribed. It certainly seems to nucleate a
subject which has of all subjects the most far-reaching ramifica-
tions. It seems to place us also where our universe of thought
is seen moving through its nebulous stage, anterior to its plane-
tary divisions ; and the mother-matter of all our Isms and
Ologies is discerned so far in its evolutionary process. This
nucleation of our thought appears to us to be necessary. For
just as Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, which embraced in itself all
existence, sent its three roots down into the one reservoir of
being, so do our three great divisions, Philosophy, Science, and
Religion, descend together into the common gulf of conscious-
ness to find there that existential identity of common being
which in their after development and extension seem so strained
and sundered by the conceptual motions of Thought and Reason.
All history, indeed, illustrates this principle of radical
development from the point of origination. The most complex
and involved mercantile institutions of modern commerce have
all sprung from the primitive methods of aboriginal barter in
the simplest necessaries of life. The sceptre which symbolises
to-day the highest forms of cultured government is but the
golden image of the potent ancestral cudgel. The vast and
272
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 273
varied collections of Art in our National Galleries have all grown
out of savage imitative decoration and ornament, just as the
magnificent monuments of Architecture are all evolutionary
expansions of those ideas which are based upon the barbarous
homes of the early peoples ; the cave, it is said, expanding to the
pyramid, the tent to the pagoda, the wooden hut to the Grecian
temple, and the bower in the forest to the arch, which is the
leading feature of all Gothic structures. So the diversified
panorama of ' religions ' which, in its historical aspect, is seen
moving through the long vista of past centuries, widening and
diversifying as it wends onwards through Time, visibly world-
wide in our own day, is at the same time discernible as a move-
ment whose beginnings and increase, whose inception and
power, can be focussed within the scope of the sphere which we
characterise as the human consciousness. Does not the scientist
find an epitome of the Universe in his atom ? A globe, let it
be as huge as imagination can make it, rests conceivably upon a
very small point of surface, and similarly, a Religion, though
comparable to a solar system or a universe, rests solely, as a
conception, upon one principle, the principle, viz., of Relation.
Man exists ; he is ; but he is conscious of existing related to all
else that exists. And every religion, at its foundation, is con-
ceived as relationship. Even in the most highly developed
forms of it, expanding to the great aggregates which dominate
history, and known to us as Buddhism, or Mohammedanism, or
Christianity, this root-principle of relationship determines, as a
consciousness, all else that we find within them. All nature-
worship, fetish-worship, sun- and moon-worship ; every kind of
worship ; on through the worship of the ' super-natural ' ; rising
higher and wider in its developments to the Being who is
visualised as seated on a great Throne ruling heaven and earth
all are governed by one simple principle which commands
each of them root and branch, viz., The relationship which
consciously exists between the worshipper and the Something,
or Someone, who is worshipped. This fact remains unchanged
throughout the thousand-and-one modifications by which one
' religion ' becomes differentiated from another.
190. As far then as this extent of his consciousness carries
him, man realises his entire Theology, or God-knowledge, to be
S
274 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
summed up in three conceptions: (I.) The Self; (II.) The
Something not himself; and (III.) The relationship existing
between these Two. But his consciousness of either of these
fundamental factors has never in the past attained to finality of
experience, and consequently the conceptions of ' Self,' of the
1 Not-Self/ and of the relationship between them have under-
gone innumerable permutations and combinations. A final
consciousness of the Self and the Not-Self, which it will be
impossible to change, that is, one which will give existential
identity to both, will be alone able to give finality to the con-
ception of their relatedness. For this Relationship is not to be
regarded as a true existentiality on the same level of reality
with the Self and Not-Self. Both philosophy and science have
shown us that all such relationship considered as a tertium quid,
or third thing, has no other than a logical status of being, much
as we express the existence of potential in physics, and entropy
with reference to heat. It is always determined by the concep-
tions which stand above it, viz., of the ' Self and the ' Not-Self.'
But relationship cannot be ignored, although it may be regarded
as a pure convenience of the understanding, for the all-im-
portant fact of Ethics, which deals with the conduct and
character of human Life, rests upon it, and is evolved from it.
Religion, strictly, is first a matter of Existence before it is
one of Relationship, but the consciousness of man with regard
to Who he is, and Who his God is, has never been a final
consciousness, and consequently the content of his consciousness
with regard to this Relationship between them has ever been
changing, ebbing and flowing like a tide, and subject to every
contingency of race, tribe, land, and all those influences that
govern generally the development of things not yet perfect.
Therefore when we say that all Religion is Relationship, we
must be taken to mean that particular Religion which has been
interpreted through the human understanding from an existen-
tial basis in consciousness, but which has not yet been fully
exhausted by the understanding. For the full content of the
human consciousness of Existence is never absolutely exhausted
by any religion which has sought to interpret Existence through
the medium of Mind. Even the greatest religions are but
1 broken lights ' of that which Is, and of that which lies in what-
we-are, and consequently they are under perpetual necessity to
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 275
be re-interpreted from the existential basis of What-Is, and
What-man-is, by the new life, the new knowledge, and deeper
instincts which awaken with the new centuries.
The foundation of Religion, therefore, consists of what man
is conscious he Is as an existence extending far beyond his
conceptual knowledge, and beyond his ordinary degree of con-
sciousness, and over which he has no absolute control, seeing he
did not originate it, and cannot absolutely annihilate it. He
kills the body ; he changes his mind ; but he can neither kill nor
change what-he-Is. The forms of existence alter: heaven and
earth pass away : but what they are remains. And Space, as
we have tried to show, and our space-being, alone fully exhaust
our consciousness of that which Is.
191. For, indeed, when we have completely annihilated
Yggdrasil, our Tree of Life; when the All it means of Exist-
ence has been torn up out of its deep of darkness, when we
have extinguished branches, trunk, roots, and all its objectivity,
we cannot annihilate nor in any wise obliterate the Ginnunga
Gap ; the eternal Deep out of which it grows. The indestruc-
tible Space it was, and out of which it arose in the consciousness
of our Scandinavian forbears, still remains to-day, as yesterday,
and forever. And this, for our consciousness, is the final con-
sciousness of what Being Is, even as it is the final and identical
consciousness of what-we-are.
Man is therefore compelled to interpret the All as well as
himself by this final consciousness in himself of what-he-is; that
is, by and through the consciousness of his space-being. When
he does so, the tacit differences which he assumes for ' Self and
1 Not-Self vanish away. He passes beyond them and finds
What-he-is to be Space-Being, eternal deep of eternal Deep.
These concepts or conceptions of ' Self and ' Not-Self he finds
to be but films of judgment, ever-changing, and ever-created
and decreated, like mists in morning air, and in no wise
exhaustively interpretive of what-Is.
192. Personality and Impersonality, therefore, we may or
may not predicate of whole space. But the same alternative
applies to what-we-are. Again, if we predicate anything of
what-we-are as what Is, we must necessarily predicate the
276 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
same of absolute Space. For, thus far, the consciousness of
impersonality, in what-we-are, is as deep as that of personality.
And the personal is no fuller a consciousness in us than is that
of the impersonal. It is the assumption that we have a more
exhaustive consciousness of the one than of the other, that has
led, we think, to the endless and fruitless attempts to objectify,
or to define what the ' Self actually is. Kant, as we have seen,
narrows down the consciousness of personality until he contracts
it beyond further contraction. It becomes really the impersonal
least a man is. Prof. James, on the other extreme, enlarges it
from mere ' nothing ' to be all that a man owns, and calls
his, or "Mine." But some, like Jesus, have a consciousness
that all that is, is His ! Kant called his extreme, x, and James
might just as conveniently have called his extreme, y, for what
both really give us in their analysis of consciousness, is an
objectified, impersonal thing^ or thought-form, which no one is
ever likely to accept as what-he-is.
193. It humbly seems to us, then, that the narrow conception
of ' personality ' which broadens through all religion and
philosophy must be abandoned. It is only real in the sense
that the edge of a horizon is real, or as the curve of the sky
has actuality. All these boundaries exist merely in our
arbitrary thought or judgment of them, and commensurate
with that degree of conception which we have been able to
attain regarding them. Nothing exists, in reality, or on the
level of its being, with the burden of such limitations laid
upon it. The seven colours in the spectrum of sunlight, for
example, have no such numerical boundaries in actuality, and
we cannot tell where red goes into orange, or orange into
yellow, nor at last where violet is lost in colourlessness. So
likewise we cannot tell where sensation becomes thought, nor
thought will ; where pain goes into pleasure and pleasure into
pain, nor where body joins with mind, nor mind with 'soul/
nor ' soul ' with space.
We do not ignore, of course, the utility of such discrimina-
tions, for we cannot do without steps in the thought-ladder
though the ladder itself is whole ; and so long as we understand
what 'personality' stands for in religion and philosophy, the
use of the conception and term may be gratefully accepted. But
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 277
when it assumes to connote veritable and terrible * isolations ' of
actual existence, and is held as defining something absolutely
apart, even from ' God,' both in the Creeds and in the
Categories, then its utility must be stamped as futility, and
this help to knowledge condemned as a help to confusion.
" That nature and man are in some way continuous, that man
is what he is only in virtue of his ontological relation to the
world, that apart from it he can have neither being nor
meaning, neither a moral nor a natural life, cannot now be
questioned" (Prof. Sir H. Jones, Hib. Jour., No. 2, p. 248).
Both ' personality ' and ' impersonality ' should simply be taken
for what they are in reality, viz., mere mental products of the
imperfect yet increasingly perfecting consciousness, and which
find yet a deeper identity in the space-consciousness.
How otherwise can we rationalise the Communion we all
have one with another as social beings, and all with Nature and
the Universe? It is the consciousness of what-we-are that
gives us the true and only scientific basis for the fact of society
with man, and worship of " God." For all such relatedness to
that which we usually assume to be the Other, call it specifically
Man, Universe, or God, first finds its origin in the communion
which the ' personal ' and the * impersonal ' obtain within our
space-being. What-we-are communes with itself. What-we-are
is not, and never can be, an ear without a voice in it, nor a
voice without an ear to listen.
194. In the space-being, the process of personalising and
impersonalising continues like the rising and falling wave, and
it has its first true consciousness of relatedness to the All, by
virtue of this existential communion established within its own
being. Tennyson has left an account of a concrete experience
of this phase of what-we-are. He says : " A kind of waking
trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when
I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me
through repeating my own name two or three times to myself
silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the
consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed
to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not
a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of
the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words,
278 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of
personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only
true life" (Tennyson, A Memoir , i. 320).
" The clearest of the clearest " is the same space-consciousness
which Shakespeare notes when he describes man as " most
ignorant of what he's most assured, his glassy essence" Few
notable writers but refer to this experience in the consciousness
of the c mighty ones.' But they also declare their ignorance
to speak of it. The reason is quite apparent. They have no
category of knowledge under which they might sublate it to
the understanding. The only category possible to it is that
of space, and this category has steadily been ignored. It is
nevertheless a true experience of an existence which has been
stigmatised as ' impersonal ' because man has never taught
himself to regard himself as identified in his being with what
Is Space-Being. Hence, although he acknowledges the
experience, he upholds the impossibility of its interpretation.
Yet if any one will go over the items of thought in which
Tennyson expresses his experience, he will see at once that
Space as a consciousness is the one word that interprets it all
to the full. " Individuality" dissolves into " boundless being " :
" Not a confused state," for space cannot be conceived as dis-
ordered, and nothing else gives such a consciousness of
" clearest," " surest," " weirdest," and of being so " utterly beyond
words." Death as " almost an impossibility" can only be said of
space, for space thrusts out all death, root and branch, and is the
deathless thing. Death cannot be even named with space. It
is out of our space-consciousness that we have dug the attribute
of deathlessness which we bestow upon 'God.' So also the
poet felt that " the loss of personality seemed no extinction but
the only true life." The fact is, that until we lose our ' per-
sonality,' as we understand that word as yet, we cannot realise
the " true life." " Die to live." Our highest gain is in entering
what has been always termed the ' impersonal.' And the
highest gift of death, we do not doubt, is this deliverance from
distracted isolations and differences of Being. There is the
highest authority, as we shall try to show, for this statement.
195. We have deemed it necessary to return to this question
of personality in order to have the consciousness of the ' personal '
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 279
and the ' impersonal ' clearly before us. Otherwise, we should
not be able to understand why it is that man universally, in
his profoundest realisation of religion, has invariably interpreted
tJie content of his deepest consciousness that, viz., which gives
him the Absolute Thing he calls his ' God' in terms of both
the Personal and the Impersonal. His experience is thereby
one of light and dark, mind and matter, eternity and time.
For, like absolute space, he, as space -being, is existentially
ever beyond these ' particulars,' and has such Reality as cannot
be subsumed under any term which connotes less than space-
being.
But given the term Space-Being to include and make whole
both the ' personal ' and the ' impersonal,' and prove that both
are true predicates in the experience of man, as conscious of
himself as of space, and it will be possible to predicate
' personality ' and ' impersonality ' of Matter and Force as well
as of man. Without this position, it is not possible to name a
' God ' who shall be as true for Science and Philosophy as He
is for Religion. We always limit our God-Idea when we
interpret it through our consciousness of personality alone.
He really is as much ' impersonal ' as * personal/ as we at
present define these terms.
Now, this is the true end of all right knowledge, and to
assume that this is impossible of attainment, is to affirm that
these three great departments of human experience have no
common foundation in either man or the universe. It assumes
also that ' God ' has only taken up his residence in one sphere
of existence, and has limited the sphere of His revealing.
Prof. Fraser has put his finger on this difficulty. In his able
monograph on Berkeley (p. 15 1) he says : " But a grave difficulty
lay in his (Berkeley's) way. It is one apt to perplex those who
meditate deeply in philosophical theology, though I am not
sure that Berkeley yet saw, or ever fully saw, its magnitude. It
had been seen by Spinoza : it was afterwards seen, from very
different points, by Hume and by Kant. It rises in the form of
questions like these. Is the name ' God,' after all, more
intelligible than the unperceived and unperceiving ' matter '
and * force ' that Berkeley had dislodged on account of their
unintelligibleness? If the one can be resolved into the
residual, must not the other ? We cannot see or touch unper-
280 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ceived matter, but have we evidence, in sense or otherwise, for
the invisible omnipresent God ? "
196. This goes to the heart of most of our modern problems
of existence. The strong undaunted spirits have boldly said,
" God cannot be known." Theology has almost confessed her
assent to this statement, but has condoled herself with the fact
that He can be believed. She has taken refuge in Faith.
But this is only satisfactory for a brief space, for what is it that
must at last guarantee the truth of our faith or belief? Is it not
the same consciousness that guarantees the fact of reality ? our
own reality ? any reality ? And no other fact of consciousness
is so affirmed as that of space, as being our final consciousness
of the real. But this is the sphere of thought for Science,
for Philosophy, as well as for Religion. Here where we find
the best guarantee for truly knowing ourselves, we also find the
best guarantee for a true knowledge of God. Knowledge is no
more religious than it is scientific. Like Faith, it belongs to the
Real, whatever name may be given to that fact.
" We cannot blink the fact that there is existence," says Dr
J. H. Stirling (Secret of Hegel, ii. 81), "and that man's life has
been to understand it." It is this possibility of understanding
it which surely makes life so precious. This belief gives soul to
all knowledge. We are, is asserted by both faith and know-
ledge. The initial motion of consciousness is one of reception.
Necessarily so, for Want is the prime passion of creation, and
all things from the dawn of being wait to receive duration of
being, and this attitude cannot be described as other than one
of Faith.
197. This faith is not, of course, the religious faith of the
Creeds. It is the faith which precedes not only Thought, but
consciousness. It is the faith which directs the child's lip to the
breast, the rootlets of the tree to the stream, the motions of the
protoplasmic cell in its path towards consciousness and correct
development, and every element in existence to adjust itself to
all the laws of that existence bestowed on it But this is also
knowledge, and both faith and knowledge are thus seen to be as
much conditioned in the impersonal as in the personal. For
example, one experience happens to all, ' impersonal ' or ' personal,'
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 281
matter or mind. This experience is the acceptance of Being by all.
The being has yet to be discovered, either in the organic or
inorganic world, which, on entering existence, refuses to accept
it. This faith is the Fount of all other forms of faith. Without
exception, every existing thing enters the gates of Being with
limitless acceptance of it. The joy of the sons of the morn-
ing is not a rhetorical phrase. It is a scientific fact. Even
when the fulness of a cup of bitterness has been drunk through
eighty years, as in man's case, we have no genuine evidence
that any one desires to be unmade, remade, or recreated
into another form of being ; to be something other than what-
we-are ; and this fact steadily points to a true fundamental
consciousness of our being what-Is; or complete and whole in
Being.
No faith in anything ever transcends this confidence in
what-we-are ; no faith in anything in the world, in Nature, in
the Universe. Our Faith, or confidence in Space, alone equals it,
for in this we have the fullest guarantee of Reality not only for
1 self but for the All of existence.
198. Our faith in and knowledge of anything, therefore,
cannot exceed our faith in, and our knowledge of, Space. And
it is interesting to note that when such a profound thinker as
Hegel seeks in his Philosophy of Religion to set before his
mind, and before the minds of his readers, a worthy Theophany,
or God-Image, he is compelled of necessity to employ language
which has only space-content. That is, he describes God in the
language of ' Impersonality '-sans-substance.
" Scientifically considered," he says (vol. i., pp. 90-94) (Spier's
trans.), " God is at first a general, abstract name, which as yet
has not come to have any true value." " Everything depends
upon what has entered consciousness." " This beginning is an
object for us or content in us ; we have this object, and thus the
question immediately arises, Who are we ? ' We,' ' I,' the spirit
is itself something very concrete, manifold. I have perceptions.
I am, I see, hear, etc., all this I am, this feeling, this seeing.
Thus the more precise meaning of this question is, which of
these forms of consciousness determines the shape in which this
content (' God ') exists for our minds ? Is it found in idea,
will, imagination, or feeling? What is the place where this
282 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
content, this object, has its home ? Which of all these supplies
the basis of this mental possession ? "
" If we think of the current answers in regard to this, we find
it said that God is in us in so far as we believe, feel, form ideas,
know. These forms, faculties, aspects of ourselves namely,
feeling, faith, ordinary conception are to be more particularly
considered further on, and especially in relation to this point."
" To begin with, we shall keep to what we have actually
before us, this One, Universal, this Fulness, which is this ever
unchangeable transparent etherial element" (p. 94) (italics ours).
After diligently searching for a basis of thought on which to
found his God-conception, Hegel is compelled to begin by
describing our consciousness of God, in its content, as " this ever
unchangeable transparent etherial element." No words could
express our consciousness of space, the ' impersonal ' thing, in
fitter terms. What he wants to express is, of course, Being; but
he also finds that no conceivable category of mind can give this
fact of consciousness a more perfect body to Thought and
Knowledge than the category of Space, " the ever unchangeable
etherial element." The reader should note also that God is one,
to Hegel ; a Universal ; which never connotes Whole-Being.
But this identical content of consciousness Hegel also finds
for the " I " as well as for " God." " What I have in my con-
sciousness is for me. '/' is the vacuum or receptacle for
anything and everything" " Every man is a whole world of
conceptions that lie buried in the night of the ' Ego' " " The
' Ego ' is the . . . the universality which includes in it every-
thing. ... In the * Ego ' we have thought before us in its
utter purity" (Logic, Wallace, 2nd ed., p. 48). We find the
same testimony everywhere in Prof. E. Caird's writings. He
says of the Consciousness of the Self: "A world in itself, con-
taining and resolving in the transparent simplicity or unity of
its ' glassy essence' all the differences, etc., . . . the simple
and transparent unity of self-consciousness" . . . which, he
repeats, " returns into transparent unity with itself." Or again,
" when he (man) shuts himself up within his own soul, he finds
there nothing but emptiness and vanity" . . . "The intense
sense of personality . . . has disturbed man's consciousness
of unity with the world, and thrown him back upon himself,
only to awake in him a painful sense of emptiness and weakness"
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 283
. . . (Hegel, pp. 145, 149, 182, 205). He also gibes at Herbert
Spencer in that he "lets every distinction of the finite, even
the last distinction of self and not-self, drop away, and rests
in the emptiness of the infinite, as if it alone were the reality
of all realities" (Evol. of Relig., i. p. 147) (italics ours).
I98A. In the history of the development of human concep-
tions of ' God ' there is nothing perhaps so interesting nor so
pathetic as the effort which the highest minds have made
to conceive ' God ' as objective, and the utter defeat which
has befallen that attempt through the opposing consciousness
in man which, as consciousness of Whole-Being, transcends all
conceptions of limited being absolutely. We know no better
illustration of this baffled endeavour than that which Kant
affords us in his well-known argument concerning the Existence
of a Supreme Being. At the outset he rightly mistrusts the
capacity of the concept to hold and uphold such an affirmation,
and yet he feels that there is a pressing need " to form some
presupposition (vorauszusetzen) that shall serve the under-
standing as a proper basis for the complete determination
of its conceptions " ; but he makes his task impossible
from the beginning by assuming that such consciousness of
Supreme Being can be a " complete determination " in any one
(K. d. r. V., Philosophische Bibliothek, Band 37, p. 506 f.). He
seems to realise this, too, for he says that in reasoning towards
Supreme Being we " do not begin from conceptions, but from
common experience," and we require "a basis in actual
existence." Moreover, this basis must " rest upon the immovable
rock of the absolutely necessary" (des Absolutnothwendigen).
But still he declares that even "this foundation is itself un-
worthy of trust, if it leave under and above it empty space
(leerer Raum) ; if it do not fill all ; ... if it be not, in one
word, infinite in its reality" (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 359 f.,
Bonn's Edition, for convenience).
Now, how did Kant come to have the knowledge of what
an Absolute Necessity should be, and whence his consciousness
that to be itself it must first fill all "empty space"? Why
does the space - consciousness obtrude into so much of his
work ? Is it not plain that his consciousness of space is the
fullest affirmation of Being which he possesses ? The " absol-
284 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
utely necessary " must be equal to filling this " empty space " !
If it does, then he thinks it might be a basis for a " complete
determination" of conceptual Being Supreme. Observe, he
must have ' God ' one thing and space another. Space is also
empty : it is not Being. Kant, however, as the world knows,
was never satisfied that Supreme Being was to be completely
determined in that way. And therefore his conviction remained,
viz., that, as man never can find this 'absolutely necessary*
rock, " human reason begins by persuading itself of the existence
of some necessary being ! " (" Zuerst iiberzeugt sie sich vom
Dasein irgend eines nothwendigen Wesens.")
Theology, or God - Knowledge, is based for him on an
indefinite " persuasion " ! The whole long course of the
endeavour of the human mind to "find out the Almighty"
proves the very opposite. For it is the primary and ineradi-
cable consciousness of Supreme Being in man which has
forced the thought of the human race into the innumerable
conceptions of c God ' which all past history discloses. No
conception of ' God ' has satisfied the human mind, just because
our inmost consciousness of Supreme Being has never been
exhausted in any such ' complete determinations.' We always
find " empty space " ' under and above ' all such ' God '-con-
ceptions, for such conceptions merely determine Unit-Being,
and we have no consciousness of Supreme Being as One any
more than we have of space as One.
Kant's true consciousness of the " absolutely necessary "
was, in short, his consciousness of " empty space," which he
put aside as of no use. This comes out clearly enough in
the eloquent passage which all but concludes his weary dis-
sertation " Of the impossibility of a cosmological proof of the
existence of God." He says (Bonn's Ed., p. 306) :
" Unconditioned necessity \ which, as the ultimate support and
stay of all existing things, is an indispensable requirement
of the mind, is an abyss on the verge of which human reason
trembles in dismay (italics ours). Even the idea of eternity,
terrible and sublime as it is, as depicted by Haller, does not
produce upon the mental vision such a feeling of awe and
terror ; for, although it measures the duration of things, it
does not support them. We cannot bear, nor can we rid
ourselves of the thought, that a being, which we regard as
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 285
the greatest of all possible existences, should say to himself:
I am from eternity to eternity ; beside me there is nothing,
except that which exists by my will ; but whence then am I ?
(Kant's italics). Here all sinks away from under us, and
the greatest, as the smallest, perfection, hovers without stay or
footing in presence of the speculative reason, which finds it as
easy to part with the one as with the other " (italics ours).
The * Abyss ' ; Abgrund ; Space ; opens upon his vision,
vast, awful, and unspeakable ; overshadowing even his con-
ception of eternity ; and, though he hesitates, he sees no way
but to bring his Supreme Being, " Unconditioned necessity,"
"ultimate support and stay of all things," into it, and make
Him utter solemn ignorance regarding His own Being, just
as poor mortals do, Creator of All though He is ! Kant must
have his dual-being ; and he does not see with all he sees,
that the real, true, and invulnerable the unconditioned, the
absolutely necessary, self-subsistent Being is not this philo-
sophising number One; this limited, despairing, wondering
Thing; but the "Abyss," the "Abgrund" itself. And it is
never merely One, nor Supreme, but Whole-Being, having no
possible Other ; and it is not to be put into a conception at
all, save as such conception is absolutely and wide -openly
identical with our consciousness of Space.
Faint glimmerings of this fact seem to break upon him,
for, at last, he is forced to admit that any such " ideal of
the Supreme Being" is always necessarily conceived "similar
with our notion of space" (italics ours). "These remarks," he
goes on to say (p. 380), "will have made it evident to the
reader that the ideal of the Supreme Being, far from being
an enouncement of the existence of a being, in itself necessary,
is nothing more than a regulative principle of reason, requiring
us to regard all connection existing between phaenomena
as if it had its origin from an all-sufficient cause, and basing
upon this the rule of a systematic and necessary unity in the
explanation of phaenomena. We cannot, at the same time,
avoid regarding, by a transcendental subreptio, this formal
principle as constitutive, and hypostatising this unity.
" Precisely similar is the case with our notion of space. Space
is the primal condition of all forms, which are properly just
so many different limitations of it; and thus, although it is
286 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
merely a principle of sensibility, we cannot help regarding it as
an absolutely necessary and s elf-sub sistent thing as an object
given a priori in itself (italics ours). In the same way, it is
quite natural that, as the systematic unity of nature cannot
be established as a principle for the empirical employment
of reason, unless it is based upon the idea of an ens realissimum,
as the supreme cause, we should regard this idea as a real
object, and this object, in its character of supreme condition,
as absolutely necessary, and that in this way a regulative
should be transformed into a constitutive principle. This inter-
change becomes evident when I regard this supreme being,
which, relatively to the world, was absolutely (unconditionally)
necessary, as a thing per se. In this case, I find it impossible
to represent this necessity in or by any conception, and
it exists merely, in my own mind, as the formal condition of
thought, but not as a material and hypostatic condition of
existence" (Kant's italics).
His argument closes in confusion. He cannot put space
into a * conception/ yet it is consciously in his mind, but he
is sure that it can only be there as a ' form ' ; yet again he
cannot help ' hypostatising this unity,' and regarding the
' thing/ ' this idea, as a real object/ and as ' an absolutely
necessary and self-subsistent thing/ even when he is com-
pelled to commit philosophical theft (subreptio) to do so.
Poor Reason is so subjected to such straits. But, finally, we
are left with the two facts, i. The * Ideal of the Supreme
Being/ and 2. Space. The former must be, he insists, "un-
conditioned necessity," " the absolutely necessary," and a full-
upness equal to space ! But when we accept these facts
and go to the root of the matter ; when we take our stand
on a "basis of common experience," and of "actual exist-
ence/' which of these two, we ask ourselves, obtains the
better affirmation of being from our bottom consciousness?
For it is to consciousness that we must come for our decision.
Where do we obtain a common experience of an 'actual
existence/ an 'idea as real object/ which answers to his
"Supreme Being" or to any conception of such? Do we find
it in Nature, in History, in Man, in human Consciousness?
Is it not absolutely affirmed that no such unified being which
is necessarily unconditioned and self-subsistent is ever found
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 287
in these regions ? We may fearlessly assert that the universe
does not yield anything like it, if we exclude our consciousness
of space from that conception.
But it is wholly different with our consciousness of space.
That remains when every vestige of a concept of ' God ' and of
'supreme beings' innumerable, rise* awful and effulgent upon
the horizon of Time, fill? the noonday of all human interests,
and passc,evanescent from sight as the centuries roll onwards.
Der Abgrund ; the Abyss ; Space, persists in our consciousness
beyond even the idea of Eternity, as Kant confesses. Does
not he himself affirm that " space is the primal condition of all
forms, and that ' all forms/ " i.e. all Phenomena, " are properly
just so many different limitations of it?" Yet space is not
being to Kant ! It is a consciousness of no account or value
to him in that problem ! He gratuitously calls it ' thing/
1 object/ ' idea/ ' principle of sensibility ' ; but no mortal ever
has such a consciousness of space. The ' Abgrund ' abides as
the primary, ultimate and absolute consciousness of Being,
simply because such a consciousness is the primary, ultimate
and absolute consciousness we all have of what-we-are.
And it is this last-named fact which, as ' common experience/
enables us to find in the * Abyss/ so terrible and awful,
that * actual existence ' and that guarantee of Fulness of Being
which leaves neither ' under ' nor * above ' of empty space
surrounding it. This is the desiderated " something, the
non-existence of which is impossible " (p. 364), for which he
so anxiously seeks.
But why is it so terrible and awful to Kant ? It is because
he believed space not to be personal, nor of the stuff of his own
being. He himself was being ! He had no doubt of that. But
Space was not being ! And his ' God ' must be of the same stuff
as himself. Therefore Space, ' God/ and himself, were not in the
same plane of ' existence ' ! Yet, as we see, this ' empty space '
is ever his uttermost consciousness of what Is, ' under and above '
his ' thing-in-itself/ his * Supreme Being/ and * all forms ' of
the great universe absolutely.
Schlegel has told us in his History of Literature that
" Kant's greatest merit consists in having established the
point that Reason of itself is void and empty, valid only in its
application to Experience, and what is within her province ;
288 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
and that hence it is not fitted to conduct to a knowledge
of God or of divine things." This is just our contention.
There is never any doubt about the capacity of Reason to
lead to ' God,' or to ' divine things/ if the way of Reason
is not first unwarrantably blocked by fallacious 'pre- supposi-
tions' which have not the slightest basis in consciousness.
Our consciousness of Space is absolutely necessary; it is
impossible to conceive as non-existent; it is unconditionally
necessary, and cannot be conceived to be conditioned by any-
thing. If Reason wants any other material for the creation of
' God,' then doubtless she will find her hands empty enough.
But if she takes the true consciousness of our experience as
her material, then she will not have far to seek for either
' God ' or a boundless gratification of her thirst for things
'divine.' The fault lies with the imperfect judgment which
persists in 'completely determining' and enclosing 'God' and
' divine things ' in limited conceptions which never exhaust
the capacity of reason. Reason and Consciousness steadily
point one way, and conceptual judgment decides for another.
And only when judgment decides * God ' as she decides her
own ' I Am,' will existence and actuality find Reason happy
in that sole consciousness of Reality which is also conscious-
ness of Space. Then also will be realised that conscious-
ness of Being which Kant diagnosed as leaving " no room
for a Why" (keinen Platz zum Warum). For in our con-
sciousness of space-being no room is possible for such an
interrogation, seeing that our consciousness of what- we -
are leaves no division between space-being and what-we-are,
whereby we can objectify space by questioning its Reality. We
who question and the questioned are consciously Whole-Being.
199. Our great thinkers have really no alternative. They
must go back upon this space-consciousness as the only one
which is absolutely affirmative, and therefore the sole idiom by
which to express the Being of either God or man.
" God," says Hegel, " as pure Reality in all Reality, or as
sum of all Realities, is the same formlessness and matterlessness
as the empty absolute in which all is one" (Secret of Hegel^
i. 364) (italics ours). Newman makes Gerontius, in his high-
strung consciousness of death, depict himself as dropping " from
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 289
out this universal frame, Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank
abyss, That utter nothingness, of which I came" . . .
" Down, down forever I was falling through
The solid framework of created things,
And needs must sink and sink
Into the vast abyss."
" Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of
Heaven's Artillery," exclaims Carlyle, "does this mysterious
Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding
grandeur, through the unknown Deep" (Sartor, 184).
" And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in Yes
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be Nothing Thou shalt not be less."
(Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam. Stanza 47.)
The ultimate consciousness is this space-consciousness, and
while it is the last to be known historically, it is the precon-
dition of all knowing. We begin all our knowledge under the
governance of this consciousness just as without it we should
neither see, hear, nor have any use of the senses.
But the point we wish to emphasise in this tedious recapitu-
lation is the fact that our genuine knowledge of * God ' as well
as of ourselves is fundamentally, once and for aye, knowledge
of ' Impersonality/ as that term is usually understood, and that
its true idiom is that of the consciousness of Space. The
true " vanity of the creature " lies in the ever-defeated endeavour
to give to ' God ' a body of * Personality ' in its own likeness and
in its own image. Hence the ceaseless travail to transform an
existential consciousness of Space into an objectified Thing, a
Person, quite apart and isolated from the ' Self.' Hence the
ceaseless oscillatory processes between the God-High and the
God-Low, the Sky-God and the Deep-God, the personal and
impersonal, the Immanent and Transcendent, the Man-God
and Spirit-God. For although one term may be employed,
such as God, Being, Spirit, Absolute, Unknown, the actual
content of it, to consciousness, is indeterminately ' personal ' or
' impersonal.' These names, in strict reality, are mere rendable
veils stretched over a background which when penetrated yields
only the realisation of space. Fundamentally, as every one
T
290 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
discerns, they do not connote personality, as that term is under-
stood ; but there is never any doubt about the agonising efforts
on the part of worshipping man to make them so.
200. As a matter of history, the realms of religious literature,
covering all nations, all ages, and tabulated in all forms of
human articulation and expression, are seen to be strewn like
the stars of heaven with 'Gods' who have all at one period
been ' personal ' Gods, but have once more passed into
' impersonalities.' Both ' forms ' lay in the human consciousness,
and the Space-Being, beyond both, and the basis of both, sought
through them to give That to human knowledge which cannot
yet be all included within any concept of thought. This
oscillation of the human soul between the personal- and the im-
personal-God still survives in every religion. We shall try
to show in our concluding chapters, that in its deepest deep, the
'Impersonal' God is the true God of the consciousness of the
Man of Galilee, although, of course, the ' Personal ' Father- Form
of God occupies the foreground of His Doctrine. In the brief
illustrative examples which we select from the religions of the
world, given below, both ' forms ' of the God-consciousness are
self-evident facts.
Mohammedanism.
201. For example, in the consciousness which lies bare
before us in the Mohammedan religion, and made audible in
the Koran, the God 'Allah' is an undoubted object for the
Human worshipper. But no fair-minded judge would say that
this object was more personal than impersonal. As a matter of
fact, the personality of Allah is far dimmer by comparison than
such an one as the Hebrew ' Yahwe,' for we never hear his own
voice, but only the voice of his prophet Mohammed. Neither
is he ever seen by man. He does not " come down," among his
people, nor " appear " unto them in any shape. He is completely
impersonal to the senses, and only personal to Faith. " God is
great," is the consciousness that stands out most vividly in the
religious consciousness of Mohammed, and it is evident that the
actual content of the term ' God ' connotes no more than is given
in the term ' Power.' This stern attribute, however, is modified
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 291
by the other attributes ' Merciful ' and ' Compassionate/ which
are constantly assigned to him, and suggest the personal, but
nothing whatever of the humanly personal. All the attributes
of the Mohammedan ' God ' do not surpass in any way the
connotations of the poets when they attribute power, mercy, and
compassion to Nature. It is simply a personification of the
Universe. To Mohammed, Allah is a divine thing, but far
removed from Man by nature. Allah and man have no
common nature by the fact that Allah cannot be a father. No
man is therefore His son, or child. And it is this great fact
of God-Fatherhood in the Christian Religion which all good
Mohammedans loathe ; and it is the principal barrier, perhaps,
in the way of the conversion of Islam to Christianity. It is a
" monstrous thing." The Koran is clear and explicit with
regard to the abominable doctrine of God's Incarnation. " It
becomes not the Merciful to take to himself a son. There is
none in the heavens or the earth but comes to the Merciful as a
servant." " They say : The Merciful has taken to himself a
son ! ye have brought forth a monstrous thing." (Koran,
Chaps. 17, 19, 21, in each of which the same thing is affirmed.)
As a consequence, we cannot associate anything human with
this ' God.' His attributes only give a consciousness of a Being
made in the similitude of the' angels,' whose principal attributes
are intelligence and power (Ps. ciii. 20). But Allah is con-
sciously personal to the faith of his devotees, for they pray to
him, and prayer is a true test of a consciousness of personality,
although a personality always " afar off."
202. Nevertheless, alongside of this consciously personal
' God ' there still abides a deeper and far older consciousness of
an Impersonal Power which the Mohammedan expresses by the
name ' Quismeh ' or * Quismet.' It is a Fate-Consciousness which
no religion in any age has ever eradicated from the human soul.
For it is the profoundest consciousness of <z//, in all men, with
reference to a ' God' It really lies at the foundation of all
human ideas of a God, and is the subtlest force beneath such an
idea. No effort on the part of thinking men can wholly sublate
this consciousness under the concept of ' personality.' We
should be much surprised if they succeeded. For it is apparent
that in the very concept of personality we have a consciousness
292 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of Limitedness. It is necessarily so, for no matter how we may
stretch the concept of personality out to all lengths of attenua-
tion, as it stands it connotes the finite, the objective, the
determined, the space-surrounded thing. And so long as it
does so, and is subsumed under the space-consciousness, it
will always fail to satisfy the deepest demand of the human soul
for a God infinite, unlimited, undetermined, and not surrounded
by Space. It must be Something as conclusive and as inclusive
as Space itself, as a consciousness, before it will be admitted to
the highest place in the human spirit as its real God. And
the Mohammedan 'Quismet' ('taqdir,' ' meting out/ 'apportion-
ing'), (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 6, Introd.) is clearly one
of the many terms by which men in all ages and in every
religion have sought to interpret their deepest consciousness of
the Something which is All-Mighty. And only when we
substitute the term ' God ' for that of Space in our consciousness,
do we find the totalised consciousness of this * God ' realised to
sense as well as to the understanding. For then this ' God ' and
Space have an identical content.
Greece.
203. The same phenomenon of the Divine as personal and
impersonal is everywhere displayed in the consciousness of
the Greeks. Their literature teems with it, the great dramatists
especially being markedly emphatic. Zeus, as the highest repre-
sentative divinity among numerous others, stands, no doubt,
clearly defined as an authentic personality ; but behind the
heavenly array of such Gods, in the Grecian hierarchy of deities,
there is also an invincible Presence, not a person, before whom
even Zeus himself must bow. No God but confessed his limits
before irresistible Fate. The spheres of Gods and men,
Olympus, the Earth, and the Deeps, firmly established as the
mountains though they seemed, heaved and trembled upon the
broad power of this Impersonal Presence, as ships upon an
ocean. Dread, resistless, heedless, remorseless, this Fate, to the
Greek consciousness, was, at the bed-rock of things, the only
true ' God,' and when the matter is examined apart from all
biassing prejudices, it is perfectly apparent that Grecian
philosophy and Grecian religion, as these were crowned in
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 293
Platonism and Stoicism respectively, finally rest upon this Fate-
Consciousness. It is the supreme undertone in the sublime
harmonies of that wonderful symphony of history, the Grecian
Mind. The grand unity of the consciousness of Greece at her best,
centres upon this impersonal Power we call Fate, and under its
sceptre Gods and Men play their parts under the sun ; flourish-
ing, fading, and thence vanishing away. Fate was more than
Greece. Fate still remains : Greece is gone, as the world has
known her in her splendour. Nay, an ordinary scrutiny and
comparison of religions shows that, while all the ' personal ' Gods
of mankind change and vary in nature and character, in the
human consciousness and apprehension of them, this Fate-
Something takes on but little variance in the vast lapses of
time. The reason is that it lies deeper in man than does the
sphere of change in him, and has actual existential being with
that which is truly the basis of every change he has known. It
may not now be apprehended in all the terrible implacable
forms which were so vivid to Aeschylus, but it is still as potent
in the human consciousness. In some shape or other it emerges
from even the Christian consciousness as much as in that of
Mohammedan or of heathen. It belongs to the unthinkable in
man, and is a consciousness in him over and through which all
his ' principles ' and * doctrines ' coruscate like twinkling lamps
over a dark pit. But for this consciousness, indeed, no ' personal '
God could be visible to us, either in reason or imagination, for
it is always against the vastitude of it that anything we call
' personal ' is defined. And we must now say that the ' im-
personal ' as a consciousness, and in its common meaning, is
infinitely deeper in us than all we call ' personal/ the philo-
sophical ' Self included. Is it not that which the deepest
minds of our day have confessed as " The Unknown" ? Quismet^
or Fate, or Unknown ; the consciousness at bottom, is the same :
the consciousness which has the fullest harmony with our
consciousness of what-we-are.
The grand mistake with us has lain in counting the ' person-
ality ' of our Creeds as one, absolute in its nature. The same
falsity has attached itself to the * personality ' which we have
ascribed to God. We have forgotten that it is impossible to
put either God or Man within the categories of our so-called
1 personalities.' The walls of our buildings do not compass the
294 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
absoluteness of these natures. The instincts of the race have
always felt this fact, and in the process of the centuries have
gradually wandered far from the ' personal ' Gods to stand
before this Impersonal Majesty, feared rather than loved since
the foundation of the world. And in the ultimate tarn of our
consciousness, this consciousness of the Impersonal is identical
with the space-consciousness, and, consequently, with our true
space-being.
Pantheism.
204. Men are cautious, we are aware, to think outright
on this basis, under dread of being lost and swallowed up
in a person-less Pantheism. But no form of Pantheism has
included Space in its categories of Being, and hence the final
dissatisfaction with all other so-called ' Absolutes,' ( Infinites,'
and * Universals,' which never included more than an all-
consciousness of 'Mind' or of 'Matter.' The true Pan-Thing
was never identified with What-we-are. It was never identical
with our Space-consciousness. Consequently it was not the
absolute Pan-Being, equal to Whole-Being, and was falsely denoted
Pan-theism. True absolute pantheism gives a consciousness
which sublates both the 'personal' and the 'impersonal' in
an identical consciousness of Space-Being : an Is-consciousness
which is the fount of both Faith and Knowledge. For, as we
must always repeat, our primal consciousness, and the last
which rises to cognition, is not one of a ' God' or a ' Self] but
of Space-Re\r\g. And in this consciousness we first know both
God and What-we-are. Not known indeed as c objects,' but as
simply Is ; Being : the fundamental affirmation underlying both
' personal ' and ' impersonal,' the Known and the Unknown.
And just as we are not advocating here the ordinary false
and limited Pantheism, so we are not suggesting an adoption
of Mysticism. " The great error of mysticism was just this,"
says Prof. E. Caird, "that it thought to reach the deepest
reality, the absolute truth of things, by the via negativa, the
way of abstraction and negation ; in other words, that it tried
to approach the infinite by turning its back upon the finite,
and not by seeking more thoroughly to understand the finite "
(Evol. of Relig., i. 148). And this process is just the reverse of
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 295
that which we are pursuing. For we only understand the
finite ' more thoroughly ' when we understand it through our
consciousness of space-being a consciousness which yields
for All that Is the strongest affirmation of Reality, and negates
every conception of negation in itself. It also not only gives
a relative, but an absolute, truth of things, and sublates both
in itself, when these are relatives, seeing that no relative is
admissible within it. We cannot, e.g., judge whether Space is
true or false, for it is the pre-supposition of every judgment, in
that it first gives to all that is judged its Is-ness of existence.
The Space-consciousness does not judge, but only yields a
consciousness of Is-ness which is the basis of every judgment,
and rises above it. Its affirmation of Truth is an absolute
affirmation, as a consequence, un-negatable and undoubtable.
205. There is no objection to Pantheism when it is the
genuine Pan-Being, and not the false pan-thing which is merely
the All- or the Every- thing, and not the true Whole- Being.
True Pantheism, when it means Whole-Being, we hold to be
the highest form of religion, and to be the form of religion
which is deepest and strongest in every religion known to us.
When we get behind doctrines, rituals, priesthoods, altars, and
the thousand-and-one objectified * Gods ' personal and finite
every one of them it is this Impersonality which becomes for
us the true Being of our Adoration and reverence. It is then
seen that men do not worship first the Thought-God, the
Spiritual-God, nor the Nature-God, that is, the Defined,
Objectified God ; but dumbly, and without thought at all, this
Inexpressible, Pan- or Whole-Being, which in later ages philo-
sophies and religions have endeavoured to reduce to thought
and reason.
The Religions of the East.
206. To rightly understand the sublime greatness of the soul
of the East, as it is revealed to our eyes in the " Sacred Books,"
it is essential, as we think, to approach it from the vantage
ground indicated above. Our Western systems of religion,
devoted as they are chiefly to the Ethical and Practical, and
the higher values set upon these, somewhat hinder us from
296 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
appreciating it, and interpreting it to the height of its worth
and beauty. For even the " Sacred Books " are but the fruit of
a tree whose trunk and roots are veiled by the thick centuries,
and sunk beyond our sight beneath the later religions, which
are more assertive and aggressive to our intellect. The personal
Gods of to-day, the Krishnas and Sevas, and others who are
faithfully served by lip and thought and languid worship,
really sit in the sedilia of ' Gods ' who have been long super-
seded and dethroned. But behind all is ever the mysterious
Pan-Being, long acknowledged as the * Brahma '-Being, ." born
with its face turned everywhere," which not even the more
human, intelligible, and loving Buddha can put down from his
' everlasting seat' We learn from the deeper religious instincts
of the East that Religion, at base, if we may so speak, is not a
mere matter of tracing our way to the Dwelling-place of the
Polytheoi, nor to the high seat of the Mono-Theos ; that it
is neither the Object-God, One or Many, which satisfies the
God-hunger in a man, but that which is identical with Himself,
in the deepest consciousness of himself. It is that which found
symbolic significance in the Sphinx of the Egyptian and the
Assyrian, and which led the latter nation to take the Winged
Circle as the loftiest form of holy Authority (Encyc. Bib. " Assyria,"
9). The wing of time and the circle of space, combined as
they are to us yet, represented to these ancient peoples a far
more divine thing than any God, or Gods, who are easily sublated
in the consciousness of it. And there is not the least doubt that
this space-consciousness dominates every religion in the past
with a force which no after forms of them have been able to
negate. Prof. Caird, with his usual fine penetration, notices
that " The Sphynxes of Egypt and Assyria were efforts to find
expression for a secret which seemed everywhere to be hinted
at, but nowhere fully manifested." <k The last word of the
Egyptian religion was the inscription on the veil of the goddess
Isis, ' I am that which is, that which hath been, and that which
will be ; no man hath lifted my veil ' " (Evol, of Relig., i. 272).
Nature holds in it nothing of either the 'personal' or the
' impersonal ' form of Deity which can fit this symbolism, save
the Space-Consciousness which identifies Man with itself.
The same consciousness comes always prominently before
us in the great doctrine of the Brahmans, viz. " That art Thou,"
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 297
and in the well-known " Nirvana." The one sublates all
objectified ' persons} man or deity, and the other, all objectified
places^ in the heavens or the earth. They are but dual * forms '
of the Space- or Abyss-Being, whence the Easterns have ever
beheld all things emerge, and into which all things return.
The true Brahman loathes to say " I am." It is ' Impersonality '
that he longs for, as the highest expression of What-he-is.
Substance, Desire, Personality, are the restraints of his Being,
and the space-consciousness is constantly reminding him that
he is far more than these, and consequently he would willingly
burst their bands to be truly free in the infinite Space-Freedom.
It is this consciousness which is conceptualised into what is
named " Nirvana."
And it is instructive to note how this consciousness has
submerged and sublated all the religious forms and definitions
which threatened, under the reforms of Buddha, to thrust it into
the background. The worship of the Buddha, which seemed to
attract all eyes to the Person^ has slowly passed from that form
of negation to the Ideal Buddha in the devotions of the
Easterns. Buddha is no longer now to them the Man who
wandered from place to place, eating his begged rice with his
beloved Amanda, and teaching the Eight-Fold Path, but an
Impersonal Being which is seen never to have had a beginning,
nor is ever to have an end. Having sacrificed all Desire, and
the pride of the conscious " I am," he has now become " That,"
in " Nirvana." In our philosophical terms, he has become
'pure' Being; impersonal and formless; and this consciousness
gives most satisfaction to the Easterns. Towards this Goal all
the meditative East sets at this hour, as a vast tide that 'turns
again home.' And if we could see it, as the Far Eastern, the
Mohammedan, the Egyptian, and the Grecian have never yet
seen it in its fulness and beauty, this is the consciousness of the
Great Home towards which the boundless Universe is ever
wending. Sex, nationality, race, humanity, mortality all are
subsumed in this Space-Pan-Being, this Un-nameable, the
consciousness of which is also the consciousness of ourselves.
And perhaps we may be allowed to note in passing, for our
national humility, that, in the case of Brahmans and Buddhists,
but for this arresting consciousness which is laid upon every
fierce passion and desire, and the enslaving power which their
298 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
deeper worship has imposed over all the national energies, the
waves of Western Civilisation would probably have swept far
less freely over the lands they have known as their birthright.
But a consciousness which binds all hearts so rigidly to the
Highest and Deepest, must necessarily take up patriotism,
domination of Kingdoms, and the 'far-flung battle-line' as "a
very little thing " It has been truly said by M. Arnold
The East bow'd low before the blast
In patient deep disdain,
She let the legions thunder past
And plunged in thought again.
Hebrew Religion.
207. The Impersonal Deity, which was familiar enough to
the Greeks, and is to this day familiar to Mussulmans and
Easterns generally, seems, on a first glance, quite unknown to
the Hebrew consciousness. The O.T. Bible gives personality
to its ' God ' almost with ferocity. He walks with his people,
and talks with them ; eats with them, fights with them, blesses
them, curses them ; lives in garden, tent, and temple with them ;
and apportions land for them, and is, indeed, so imposingly
personal in their consciousness as to exclude, to all appearance,
every vestige of the Impersonal Power from it.
We must remind ourselves, however, that the most potent
influences ruling men are also the least apparent, and have to
be carefully sought for to be intelligible. Electric currents,
ether, gravitation, delicate climatic conditions, temperature, soil,
and many other influences are at work upon our natures, quite
inappreciable and subtle, and are only brought before our
intelligence by a direct effort of will. Hereditary streams of
influence also, parental, national, and racial, are all at work
unobserved upon our minds and moral natures. There is even
something given us in the face of every person we meet, which
deepens our own being and adds to our responsibilities. But
we characterise these influences as only subordinately, and
derivatively ' personal.'
In a similar sense, the deistical Power which directed the
moral progress of the Hebrew People, cannot be confined to the
personal God they named ' Yahweh.' The impersonal and
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 299
irresistible influence which is variously designated Fate, Kismet,
That, Destiny, Lot, Necessity, Weird, and such like, cannot be
banished from any religion ; seeing it is more profoundly seated
in human nature than even that conception of personality
usually attributed to both ' God ' and man. We shall always
have it obtruding into Christianity. And the extensive systems
of gambling, lotteries, and innumerable allusions in ordinary
conversation to the ' irony,' the ' hardness,' the ' luck ' attending
fate, attest still to its active power over the human mind. It is
but the creed-dressed form of the same principle which
confronts us in the doctrines of Unconditional Election, Fore-
ordination, " fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute"; and
no doubt some form of bad Pantheism or Materialism will
always remind us of the infinite Expanse through which our
little systems of thought and faith float onwards forever.
That which is within us is too permanently identified with it
to encourage any hope of its ever being annihilated in any
sphere of reason or devotion. And there does not seem to be
the slightest necessity for its annihilation. The consciousness
of it in man has ever been behind every other consciousness he
has known. It is Whole-Force, or Will, face to face with so-
called personal Force or Will. For when we bring it forward
into the foreground of our intelligence we become convinced
that it is neither more nor less than the * Order of Nature,' the
shadow of the Universe, which persistently presses into all our
articulations of it, ' natural ' or ' spiritual.' And just as in the
realms of Science, it is only the * particulars ' which are held up
as the principals, the Absolute Space, in which these all find
origin and meaning, being steadfastly ignored, so also in the
broad domains of Religion and Philosophy, it is the persons^
the doctrines, the categories which concern us most ; and the
existential basis of the space-consciousness, which is homo-ensive
with that absolute Space which is essential to Nature's Order,
is assumed as non-existent, or negligible.
Now, although the Hebrews of old had no conception of
what we understand as ' Nature ' and its ' Order,' the Thing
itself was just as present to them, and just as determinate in
its power over them as it is to us to-day. We think it might
be easily far more so, for we carefully refuse to see the divine
in Nature anywhere, our apparently irretrievable scepticism in
300 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
this respect being truly appajing. But we should never forget
that the ancient peoples were perfectly contented and happy in
seeking their 'Gods' in the temple of Nature, and had no
conception that their * Gods' might be found in any other place.
The awful relationship which seemed to exist between them-
selves and this stupendous Existence around them, was quite
sufficient to exhaust their devotions, and satisfy their inner
lives.
This appears clearly in many ways as regards the Hebrews ;
and their Sacred Records have important statements of it still
preserved to us. It is not prominent, of course, for later
accumulations of a far less instructive kind have almost hidden
it from our sight. The ' particular,' the personal God, pre-
dominates in them, as we should expect, seeing that all
religions take this God-defining method sooner or later, just
as Thought and Reason claim the lion's share in the directions
of mortal existence. The ear delights itself with a voice, and
the fond heart with a visible form, and the Silent and the
Impersonal recede evanescently before the glare and pomp of
priesthoods and ecclesiastic grandeur. For the Impersonal,
like the Space Influence, does not write itself. It can only live
itself in the characters and actions of men. But even in the
strongly personalised devotions of the Hebrews, they can find
room for this silent Fate-Being, for they confess the fact that
" Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward." The
Preacher could also say, " I returned and saw under the sun,
that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ;
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of
understanding ; nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and
chance happeneth to them all'' Such straws in the wind as " It
was a chance that happened to us," " It fell on a day," " Jacob
sent not (Benjamin) with his brethren, for he said, Lest
peradventure mischief befall him," and many others, indicate
the same undercurrent consciousness, then as now, of the
Impersonal beneath all personality, human or divine.
Bearing in mind, then, this fact, that the Hebrews beyond
all other nations have strenuously personalised their God,
drawing Him strictly within the scope of the eye, the ear, the
dwelling, the land, as no other God has been, we yet venture
to present the statement and some proofs of it, viz., That the
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 301
consciousness of what we call Space is the foundation consciousness
in the religion of the Hebrews, and that all else that we find there
rests upon that consciousness. We devote the chapter following
to a fuller proof of this statement, but the consciousness
revealed in the passage we now quote has suggestions which
seem only interpretable from the basis of Space-Being.
We have already pointed to the strange statement in
Exodus, xxiv. 10. We are boldly told there that the leaders of
Israel, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and Seventy of the
Elders of Israel went up, presumably to some height, where it
is said " they saw the God of Israel." This must be regarded
as a uniquely representative consciousness in this ancient
people. It is, in a sense, a daring, yet a perfectly natural and
true consciousness, and quite consistent with the fathomless
consciousness of a ' God ' in all men, in every age. But seeing
that the consciousness " no man shall see God and live " also
runs through the Old Testament, we must be prepared to adopt
the view that two forms of this God-consciousness underlie
each other in these writings, and represent the two methods of
apprehending Deity which have never been absent from any
people, viz., by the senses, and by intuition, or what is sometimes
styled the ' natural ' and the ' spiritual.' The Natural prevails
in all religions, with a varied symbolism drawn from every
appearance in heaven and earth ; and the Spiritual discards
the outward symbols of Deity for the inner symbolism of the
Idea. Such as Socrates and Plato, e.g., prefer to find ' God '
under the symbolic form of Idea, while the unintrospective see
'God' in clouds or hear Him in the wind. What we have to
emphasise is that the * God ' Being has always committed
Himself first to the services of the senses.
And this consciousness of these Israelitish men on the top
of the mountain can be rendered intelligible to us when we
take into account how, and through what material form or
forms of symbolism, this God-consciousness became sensibly
evident to them. The God they * saw ' is decidedly personal
to their minds. What does this mean ? An appearance like a
man ? an angel ? a mere cloud-shape ?
The context gives us the right line of interpretation.
" They saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as
it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very
302 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
heaven for clearness" (R.V.). These men, then, are gazing
upon the vastitude of Space, which the hill-top and wide plain
always intensifies to the mind, and it is this space-consciousness
which crystallizes into a God-vision before them. The deepest
thing without will always find a response from the deepest
thing within. " The work of bright sapphire " (marginal
reading) is simply a metaphorical expression for the blue air,
and "the body of heaven " or " the very heaven in its clearness,"
is nothing else than the brilliant transparency of the Sky-
Expanse. At such a sight, awe and majesty enthral them as
its natural effect, when beheld with open heart and soul, and far
more so when the further conception is reached that beyond the
vast canopy, bent like an arch, there is a Power that puts all
that under his feet. " And there was under his feet," expresses
the consciousness that God stood upon it and above it, Himself
enthroned upon it. It is the sublime consciousness which
we have insisted upon throughout these pages, that Space
always gives to us a consciousness of sustaining the All, and as
that upon which all things ', even the Gods of the great religions ',
rest their power and foundations. Said the Buddha, " The great
earth, Amanda, is established on water, the water on wind, and
the wind rests upon space " (Sac. Bks. of East, 1 1 , xlv.).
What Moses and his confreres perceive is the ' Personal '
subsumed by the 'Impersonal,' and the 'God' as enthroned
by necessity on the clear open immensity of Space. Space
is the true God because it is first the true soul, which itself
is the highest form of God. And the personal God is begotten
out of the Impersonal in the same way that our own personality
is built out of the material of impersonality underlying it in
what-we-are.
The stress which is everywhere in the Bible laid upon
the crystalline brightness and clearness, though not necessarily
transparency, of the God-Visions, and His Dwelling-places,
is remarkable. The * terrible crystal ' of Ezekiel (i. 22), and
the references in Revelation (chiefly xxi. n, 18, 21, and
xxii. i), are perhaps the most patent. Every symbolic word
is used that will connote the space-consciousness as realising
the presence of Deity. ( Ice,' ' jasper,' ' crystal,' ' sapphire,' are
used in turn to convey the baffling conception that space
alone gives of partial transparency ; transparency; clear trans-
SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS FUNDAMENTAL IN RELIGION 303
parency, and final blue intransparency, beyond which nothing
is ever seen, and all is 'covered' in mystery. In the last
form of consciousness the sky becomes a solid thing to the
ancients. God is assumed to dwell above and beyond this
blue sapphire-stone-like-structure. To this consciousness is
due those pathetic endeavours which are made to reach God
through this formidable barrier. Jacob reveals it in his dream-
vision of the ladder. The ladder, or 'flight of stone steps'
(Driver), rose against the sky -arch we now know as object-
less space, and the same Expanse struck his awakening eyes
with the consciousness that God was in that place. And if
He were, then this ladder was the "very gate of heaven."
The ' Ladder * was a necessary expedient in the imagination
of the Patriarch in order that communication between earth
and the God's dwelling might be effected. It is a conscious-
ness that pathetically points back to long and sad meditation
on the fact of God's separation from man, and the terrible
impossibility of ever ascending above awful dividing space,
slowly chilled into solidity; all the more awful the further it
measured out the distance between them. The grand desire
of mankind, latent through all time, is expressed in this longing
not to be " cut off" from God. The Hebrew hunger for God,
so characteristic of that people, is apparent in the Dream.
This sky-barrier, as dividing from the Highest, played, as
we shall try to show in the following chapter, a dark part
in the Eastern Drama of the soul of man for many ages.
Pindar voices the same " terrible " consciousness when he speaks
of the " bronzed-paved dwelling of the Gods."
Persian Religion.
208. The Persian theology has accepted the dual conception
of the Universe as the true one. Light and Dark, Good and
Evil, Mind and Matter, culminate in the Personalities of Ahura
Mazda and Ahriman. These Two have no possible synthesis
of Being. They have always been Two; they shall always
remain Two forever.
But the statement of Herodotus, already quoted (p. i),
proves that a conception of the Wholeness of Deistical Being
304 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
was ever present in the Persian consciousness as well as that
of Duality, and found its expression in the Space-conscious-
ness. Neither was it a spasmodic or accidental belief. It
was a customary belief. " They are accustomed," he says,
" to ascend the highest parts of the mountains, and offer
sacrifice to God, and they call the whole circle of the heavens
by the name of God " (ot <5e vo/u.tov(Ti Ati /ULCV, ein. TO. v\jsr]\bTaTa
TWV ovpecov avafiaivovTeS) Ovtria? epSeiv, TOV KVK\OV TravTa TOV
ovpavov Am /caXeoi/re?) (i. 131). And once more we find in
Persia, as in the whole of the East, the same principle of the
Space-Consciousness underlying every other principle as an inter-
pretative consciousness of Deity.
In other words, the World-Consciousness upon which all
devotion unites the East and the West, the South and the
North, is a fundamental consciousness for which there is no
name save that of Space. For Scandinavia had also her
' Ginnunga-Gap/ " the yawning gulf, without beginning, with-
out end." And it is towards this fundamental consciousness
that Science, Philosophy, and all the great Religions are
trending to-day. And necessarily so, for it is the sole con-
sciousness of the Reality which is satisfactory as a basis of
Being for either * God ' or ' Man,' Man or the ' Universe.'
CHAPTER X
THE CHERUBIM
209. We have glanced in the previous chapter at the Hebrew
Consciousness as reflecting the space-consciousness, reserving a
somewhat fuller, though necessarily far from complete, considera-
tion of it for the present one. And our aim here is to show that
the Hebrew consciousness of ' God ' as originally identified with
the consciousness of Space, and as drawing its fullest content of
Deity from that source, is to be found in the symbolism of the
Cherubim. We have to remind ourselves, however, that in
doing so, we have profoundly rooted prejudices to overcome
before this conviction can be substantiated. Both to Jewish
and to Christian exegesis, this symbolism has presented many
features of perplexity, and even of aversion. Having, and
professing, no likeness to anything, as an individuation, it has
never consorted well with the associations given to, and claimed
by it, as an inseparable Ally of the strongly defined Personality
of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and Christian Com-
mentators and Writers who have revelled in discovering, in
every part of the Old Testament, some analogy or type of
every Christian Doctrine, seem to have found this symbolism
almost barren.
There are briefest glances given to it by Tertullian, Justin
Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and a remark on ' the
many-eyed cherubim ' in the " Early Liturgies." Tertullian sees
in it a symbolism of the Four Evangelists, the Old Testament
Books, and " the heralding of the old world, witnessing things
which were after done," a view which we need not take
seriously. Clement believes that the cherubim, " golden figures,
each with six wings," signify either two bears ... or, rather, the
two hemispheres, and he tells us that the name Cherubim
305
306 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
means ' much knowledge.' From which it may be surmised
that he has been inspired on this subject by the teaching of
Philo and Josephus. "The two Cherubim," says Philo, "are
meant as symbols of each of the (heavenly) hemispheres," while
Josephus affirms that the "two images which the Hebrews
call Cherubim are flying creatures, but their form is not like to
that of any of the creatures which men have seen, though
Moses said he had seen such beings near the throne of God."
Josephus is certain that the whole temple in its fabric, divisions,
vessels, priestly garments, and various colours, " were every one
made in way of imitation and representation of the universe.
When Moses distinguished the tabernacle into three parts, and
allowed two of them to the priests, as a place accessible and
common, he denoted the land and the sea, they being of general
access to all ; but he set apart the third division for God, because
heaven is inaccessible to men." He then proceeds to find
something in Nature which is typified by the twelve loaves, the
candle-sticks, the lamps, the vials, the linen, the vestments of
the priests ; but he assigns nothing to the most wonderful and
most hallowed of them all, the Cherubim. Yet his own firm
consciousness of the great fact that heaven is ' inaccessible to
men,' and only inaccessible by the fact of space, might have
suggested their type in Nature, all the more that they alone,
with the solitary exception of the Ark, occupied that sacred
adytum, the Holy of Holies, the third part of the tabernacle
which was set apart for God, and also that they were known to
him as alone the Guardians of the Throne of God, and His
bearers above the Firmament.
210. We assume it to be granted to us by the reader that
we cannot hope to obtain a clearer consciousness of Deity
among a people, nor a better expression of that consciousness
than that which is given in their sacred books, temples, altars,
churches, liturgies, worship, and religious symbolism generally.
As the Grand Drama best reflects the ideals and general life
of a nation, so its religious symbols, taking these in their
widest meaning, best interpret what conceptions of Deity and
human relationship to Him lie in its inmost consciousness.
It will also, we think, be granted that the validity of such a
religious consciousness is not affected by the fact that it may
THE CHERUBIM 307
not have become an integral historical part of the social and
national life of a people, but have remained more or less an
ideal in the conceptions of its highest thinkers. The Cherubim
of the earliest documents, as well as the Garden of Eden, may
not, for example, have been actual to sense and understanding.
They may only have been purely unrealised ideals of visionary
meditations, called into existence for the purpose of interpreting
the mysteries of Time which, without them, were deemed to be
beyond human grasp. They may have been simply hypotheti-
cal instruments of the mind ; yet these documents substantiate
the actual fact of such instruments, and we are therefore bound
to accept them as integral parts of that commanding conscious-
ness which is summed up in the Psalms, the Law, and the
Prophets, as comprising the " Hebrew Religion." The ' Dwell-
ing ' of Leviticus, as well as the * Temple ' of Ezekiel, may truly
enough be regarded as only idealistic, and to have had no real
existence except in the brain of the Writers ; but the conscious-
ness which they reveal is not on that account to be held as less
influential than if they had been concreted in wood and stone,
precious metals and linen. Their consciousness of the ' God
of Israel ' and the Cherubim as His Bearers and Guardians, is
just as genuine in the one case as in the other. The ' tent of
meeting ' without the camp (Exod. xxxiii. 7-11), and the temple of
Solomon (i Kings, vi. 1-38), may be accepted as historical ; just as
the Tabernacle of P. (Exod. chaps, xxv.-xxvii., xxx., xxxi.),and the
Temple of Ezekiel (chaps, xl.-xliii.), may be held as unhistorical,
and yet the consciousness of the Cherubim, mentioned in holiest
connections with all but the first, be a valid enough conscious-
ness, true to the deepest things in the Hebrew People and in
the Worship they professed. That is to say, we may find the
truth of the symbolism of these Figures as truly in the ideal
portraits of Ezekiel, the Priestly Code, and the J document, as
in the description of them as they stood actually in the inner
Adytum of the House that Solomon built.
211. Now of all symbols present in the Worship of the
Hebrews, the Cherubim are set in the highest place. They, and
not the Ark, as is sometimes asserted, stand superlatively first in
the Holy of Holies. F. Delitzch says of them : " According
to the Hebrews' primitive conception, they were the bearers of
308 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
God when He appeared in glory upon earth (Ps. xviii. 10;
Ezek. xi. 22) ; the witnesses of God's presence ; wherever they
are, He is. Very appropriately, therefore, were representations
of them placed in the Holy of Holies, both in the tabernacle, when
the golden figures stood upon the mercy-seat (Exod. xxxvii.
7, 8), and in the temple, when they were of colossal size (fifteen
feet high), and stood on the floor, overshadowing the ark, which
was between them (i Kings, vi. 27). They were pictured upon
the curtains (Exod. xxvi. 1,31; xxxvi. 8, 35), and upon all parts
of the temple" (i Kings, vi. 29, 32, 35 ; vii. 29, 36) (italics ours).
212. They dominated and subordinated every other form of
symbolism in the Holiest Place of the Temple just as that
highest place dominated and subordinated all other places
associated with it in the worship of the people. Moreover, they
are the sole symbols which have no necessary reference to Man,
and draw their meaning wholly from a consciousness of the
Presence of Deity. Altars, Arks, Sacrifices, Mercy-seats, priests
and offerings of every name ; all forms of praise and prayer,
involve the thought and fact of Man as related to the Deity in
some way or other, good or bad, but the Cherubim are never so
related to Man, but to God only. They cut themselves off
from Man, and stand on one side with God in the Hebrew
consciousness. That they are conceived to be in the Garden of
Eden (Ezek. xxviii. 13-14) (Gen. iii. 24), in the " Dwelling," or
in the Temple, is due not to any interest in Man but solely to
the grand conception that God is there also. They are conceived
with God alone, and they have nothing to say of Man. This is
the first great principle embodied in the Cherubim.
213. Necessarily, therefore, they were assumed to be
Formless. They symbolised That which did not appear : which
had motion but no visibility. The Hebrew worshipper assumed
them to be unimaginable, yet as being. The knowledge of the
Cherubim, as being in the Holy of Holies, never conflicted in
the smallest with his horror of the " graven Image." It cannot
be asserted that they represented any likeness of anything that
was in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters
under the earth. The Cherubim were not typical of any Object,
or of anything that had form. They were emblems of the Divine
THE CHERUBIM 309
Presence. Him they enthroned on themselves, bore up, and
guarded. Now, many emblems of Deity had been found in
man, beast, bird, fish, fowl, sun, moon, star, tree, fire, and many
others, all of which admitted that the God had form of some
kind. But the Cherub was not symbolical of anything on earth
or in heaven save of Deity when conceived as moving Formless,
and incapable of being objectified.
214. The Cherubim is a symbol empty of Figure, and re-
presents nothing which the human mind could vizualise. It
represents, that is, the space-consciousness in the Hebrew Mind.
Ezekiel, indeed, employs every conceivable object of a
representative character to describe it (chaps, i. and x.). It
requires undoubtedly every thing objective to exhaust its
representation, and also requires all objectivity to be sublated
and transcended in itself. For it is the All-Thing, which Ezekiel
feels to exhaust all that is, or, as he defines it, 'the Glory
of the Lord/ i. 28. (See chap. vii. 186.) The Cherubim
therefore have Cosmic significance. Ezekiel ransacks all the
wide bounds of Nature in his attempt to describe them. His
vision includes cloud, wind, fire, man, lion, ox, and eagle, with
bodies, faces, feet, and wings. Every form is involved and
every motion is implied, from the movements of the beings
mentioned to the complex speed of inter-revolving * wheels '
and the flash of the lightning. Yet this vast composite Being
has but one voice, "like the voice of the Almighty," which
indicates evidently the harmony and unity of all that we call
The Universe. That the vision is vast as Nature is seen in
the absence of any mention of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon,
and stars, and only the term ' firmament ' as including these.
The vision embraces all above the earth. Whatever is objective
to the eye and ear, ' lifted up from the earth/ as far as to the
'likeness of a firmament' (^?7, raqia ; same word as in Gen.
i. 6 ff), is unified in one Cherubic being, Guardian of God,
Bearer of His throne, and the sleepless protector of the Life-
Tree from the hand of man. " The stones of fire " (Ezek. xxviii.
14 and 16) will consequently be the larger luminaries; and the
" Wheels " and " Rings," " full of eyes round about," seem to
point to the appearance of the stars by night.
But however we may interpret the separate details in the
310 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
panoramic vision, one thing is certain, that we cannot lay our
finger on any item in Nature which is not implied within its
scope. The conception of the cherubim also co-ordinates with
the conception of God. He sits on the Cherubim (Ps. Ixxx. i)
and rides and flies on a cherub (Ps. xviii. 10). They sustain
His throne, and the firmament itself on which it is conceived
to rest. Their high function is strongly unsympathetic to man.
"The most primitive Hebrew myth described the cherubim as
beings of superhuman power and devoid of human sympathies,
whose office was to drive away intruders from the abode of
God, or of the gods " (Cheyne, Encyc. Bib., p. 744). In reality,
their symbolism is the incorporation of that consciousness
which views Nature as Terror and Judgment, a Presence fatal
to Man except when he stands afar off, cut asunder by his sin.
For although by appearance and name the cherubim are more
than one, they also are one in being and office, while multiplex
in form and motion. Always amidst the complexity and
involution of forms and motions there is " the spirit " which
controls all. " The spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels," " whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went." The
invisible spirit is thus recognised with the visible object in this
comprehensive contemplation of the Order of Nature. It is
also remarkable that the Seer should behold upon the throne
borne by the cherubim " a likeness as the appearance of a man
upon it above" (Ezek. i. 26). It is the same consciousness
which persists ineradicable in every creature probably, and
certainly in every man, that the Great Being is fashioned after
his own form and likeness. It is also a striking touch that this
man is only seen as to his " loins." All other outline or
semblance is hid in an u appearance of fire," and " the bright-
ness round about." The consciousness underlying such sem-
blance is that of boundless margin of Unknown and Unseen
which transcends the Known and Visible. Neither ' God ' nor
Man reveal positive edges or verges of being. There are no
limitations in true personality. Being is whole, and though
revealed in the narrowness of our eye and thought, it has yet
no extremity for either. All that the Prophet can assert is
that "this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of
the Lord."
There seems to be no doubt that this vision of the cherubim
THE CHERUBIM 311
given us by Ezekiel is the same consciousness of that cherubim
which is mentioned in Gen. iii. 24, but given with ampler detail,
and set in a more ornate and cultured imagination. It all lies
easily within the gigantic outlined silhouette of J, " And he drove
out the man ; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the
Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way to
keep the way of the tree of life." The same wide sweep of all
nature is given. All east of the garden is covered by them,
and " every way " in heaven and earth is furnished with a power
of fire, a power which can only be vizualised as lightning which
has " every way " for its own.
215. The ancient conception that the Cherubim symbolised
Universal Being seems well sustained. " They may represent
primarily * the four winds of heaven,' " says Principal Skinner
(Genesis, p. 90), " but the complex symbolism of the Mer-
kabah shows that they have some deeper cosmic significance"
Ezekiel brings forward every thing in Nature to show that such
thing is not all itself in either its forms or motions. Wings
cover hands, wheels move within wheels, but there is a * spirit '
in the wheels. Nature stands forth vast and great and
" terrible," objectively, but her forms and motions are sublated
by the everywhere Is of Space, both above and below the
firmament.
This method indeed which Ezekiel follows, in describing the
Indescribable, is the same as that adopted by the Vedanta-
Sutras in describing Brahman ; and the consciousness under-
lying both is one common to the people of the East. It is
difficult to conceive that it could be otherwise for the Thought
of Man. " Accordingly Sruti and Smriti say of Brahman,
" Thou art woman, thou art man, thou art maiden, thou as an
old man totterest along on thy staff, thou art born with thy face
turned everywhere.'" As Ezekiel sublates Nature in Super-
Nature, so here we have Personality sublated in Super-person-
ality. Brahman has " its hands and feet everywhere ; its eyes
and head are everywhere ; its ears are everywhere ; it stands
encompassing all in the world " (Sacred Books of the East, vol.
34, iii.). Everywhere is the flame of a sword, guarding the tree
of life ; everywhere is the Cherubim bearing up the firmament
and the throne of Yahweh ; everywhere is Brahman. We
312 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
never can conceive ourselves beyond the presence of its eyes
and ears, hands and feet. It Is. " It stands encompassing all
in the world." Can any but our consciousness of space render
this intelligible ?
216. But the symbolism of the Cherub cannot be adequately
interpreted through the conception of Deity alone, as distinct
from the conception of Creation. The Creation, in all it
means, must be regarded as furnishing the primal material to
man for a God-conception of any kind, seeing that every God-
conception, in every religion known to man, takes Creation as
the measure, in some degree or other, of itself. If we put
Creation apart from our conceptions of God, we find that it is
not possible to form any conception of God. From the earliest
dawn of the religious consciousness in man, his God or Gods are
inevitably conditioned to him in and by the " things that are
made." This means, universally, Creation as bounded by the
expanse of the Sky. And it is here that we must define our
meaning clearly. For Creation has many sections for man, and
he sometimes finds one section more prolific of Deistic material
than others.
217. Two wide sections, for example, the Anthropomorphic
and the Natural, or Human Nature, and all Nature credited as
lying beyond Man, have contributed principally to the Being of
God, as that conception rests in the mind of the human being
and is symbolised in all his worship. It is almost certain, then,
that man's view of God and his conception of Creation will be
closely allied to each other. They will indeed be impossible as
conceptions, apart from each other, as we have said. But while
this is true, there is also a consciousness in Man which, being
neither strictly anthropomorphic nor natural, as these terms are
usually employed, yet yields to him a far profounder conscious-
ness of God than is drawn from the material they afford. We
have to destroy Creation before we can realise this consciousness.
We must obliterate the Sky. "Heaven and Earth must pass
away," and then we have before us the grandest God-conscious-
ness. It is that Space in which Creation swims, like a bird in
the air or a fish in the sea. It is here that man has always
found, and cannot help finding at any time, his ultimate God-
THE CHERUBIM 313
conception, and it is this consciousness that we must constantly
keep before us in fathoming the deepest deeps of the Eastern
Theogonies and Theophanies. Moreover, it is the solid-like
Sky-circumference, or the Heavens and the Earth, which
divides the one set of God-ccnceptions from the other. This
Sky-circumference is what the Hebrew symbolises in his
Cherubim. They cover God from man as they overshadow
the Ark and Mercy-seat, and only at the part where their
wings meet can He break their barrier, and speak with man
" from above the Mercy-Seat," " from between the Cherubim "
(Numbers, vii. 89). When He does so, He is said " to come down"
218. But in order to place this matter more fully in view, it
will be necessary to take up the principal accounts of Creation
which the Bible contains, beginning with what is reputed by
modern scholarship to be the earliest, as set forth in Gen. ii.
and iii. (the J E accounts), thence passing to the account of
Gen. i. (the P narrative), and finally to the Prologue of the
Saint John Gospel.
We do not, of course, pretend to give an exhaustive examina-
tion of the Welt-Bewusstsein which is set forth in colossal
outlines in these literary productions, and in the chronological
order we have indicated, as directed by modern scholarship.
But we hope to show that these narratives of Origins reveal an
ever-deepening penetration and interpretation of Existence
which cannot yet be surpassed by either our theologies or
philosophies. Modern Science and History have indeed some
details to contribute, but the foundations are beyond their
scope and power, and as these are laid in a consciousness
which is in perfect harmony with that upon which all
Science and History proceed, it does not seem so much
to be a question of " dead " Nature and the Past, as one
of Human Nature and the Present, and the better identifi-
cation of that Consciousness in man to-day with that which
was " In the beginning with God." The most superficial
study of the Three Accounts makes it patent to every one
that the Creation -narrative of the second chapter of Genesis
is of a far more primitive type, more transparent and simple,
than that which moves under the thought of the Priestly
statement in chap, i., and that this Priestly statement is, in
3U SPACE AND PERSONALITY
turn, less profound and vital than that which is given in the
John Gospel (i. 1-5).
I. THE YAHWISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS.
219. Taking the Oxford " Hexateuch," vol. ii., as our guide,
we read from Gen. ii. 4b : "In the day that Yahweh God made
earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the
earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up " : and so on
to the close of chap. iii.
The whole narrative conveys the impression of a childlike,
yet well-knit consciousness. The facts are accepted without
hesitation, and the imagination at work behind them is deep
and clear and vast in comprehension. The field of its
operations and through which it moves, includes more than a
section of human life and struggle, or even a national or
racial portion of mortal history. The whole area of human
existence, together with the heavens, are involved, although
the garden incidents serve as focal centre to the panoramic
vision. // really includes within itself, and in its surround-
ings, the scope of the world and man, as far as was then known
to man. We see this in the writer's flight of thought from the
Edenic centre to the course of the great rivers which flow out
of it, and the broad sweep of view which is indicated in the
geographical boundaries of the " whole land of Havilah," " the
whole land of Cush," " in front of Assyria," and the land which
seems to be too well known to need further description than
is given in the mention of the river Euphrates. Eden, again,
is a far wider territory than the Garden. " A river went out of
Eden to water the garden " (ii. 10). From thence it was parted
into four heads. God planted the Garden eastward in Eden
(ii. 8). In short, Eden and its connoted region embraces the
Earth as then known to man, and Yahweh is found native to it.
There is no hint that he had ever been anywhere else. He is
not conceived as having come down to earth at any time
previous. He is conceived as making earth first, and then
heaven (ii. 4b). " Jehovah," says Wellhausen, " does not descend
to it from heaven, but goes out walking in the garden in the
evening as if he were at home." ' Heaven/ indeed, is shadowy
and unimportant at the beginning, and, as we shall see, Yahweh
THE CHERUBIM 315
for the first time takes refuge there in order to separate himself
from sinful man and the cursed earth. But it was not thus " in
the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven." It is
important to remember this point, as it is necessary for a right
understanding of the symbolism of the Cherubim.
220. God, then, in this J account, is on an existential level
with the things he makes. He abides upon the earth, and
knows no other dwelling-place. It is really and truly his
home and place of work, and the writer of the narrative has
no conception that God has any other possible Dwelling. " To
dress it and to keep it," was the purpose of existence assigned
to the man. For Yahweh is a limited, objectified God, and
is hardly aware of the capabilities and needs of this man-being.
True, he is not seen, and the sound of his voice is alone heard
as he walks in the garden, and he is also conceived as not
being able to discover his creatures when they hide from him.
Although he has made man, woman, and all lesser things,
he is not beyond feeling the same comforts and discomforts
that they experience. The Divine and earthly breathe the
same air, and touch the same soil, and there is no incongruity
in Yahweh staying in-doors during the heat of the day and
only coming abroad in the evening when it is cool. The
God and the man home together, and this must be accepted
as the writer's highest notion of a " heaven," or a " paradise."
It is the simple child-consciousness of the world which is at
work in this portrayal of the beginning of all things. For
the child's joy is only completed in being in the same place
where its parents are, and knowing only happiness in that
which they share. In a far keener apprehension of the divine
upon the earth, we note the same child - consciousness at
work in Jesus, who sees but the ways of homely love as
the Unseen Hand lingers among the numbered hairs of the
head, balancing the worth of man and sparrow in holy past-
time, clothing the grass, and attentive to the ravens. It is
no derogation in a child's mind that this God knows how
to plant trees, and plans his own garden. The true child-
man recognises a fellow labourer in God, and acknowledges
Him as the prototype of all the toilers, at the same time
feeling a strange equality with Him.
316 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Deep, deep in the heart of man lies the imperishable ideal
of always abiding with God as the sum of all Glory. It is
the excellence of the Hebrew Intellect that this great con-
sciousness of absolute happiness was so early embodied in
religious symbolism and an attempt made to define it in
imagery of rural bliss. The cravings of the human heart
were thereby interpreted to a profounder depth than were
possible to such conceptions of exalted beatitude as Nirvana,
the Koran Paradise, Valhalla, and such like, where man is
portrayed as perfectly satisfied in indulging himself with delights
which are drawn from lower creatures than himself, and where
the impersonal largely predominates, and the presence of the
personal God is absent. Man does not in such a state draw
his bliss from highest Being, nor from environments which
are equal with his own being. For the same reason, it is
a feebler interpretation of the human consciousness than that
given by Jesus, when a Garden or a City, is deemed essential
to the consummation of absolute human happiness. " That
where I am there ye may be also," transcended by far, all
such external adjuncts to absolute pleasure. And when we
have such statements as that Jesus is in the bosom of the
Father, and that He is the Father and that with those who
love Jesus the Father and Himself will abide (John, xiv. 23),
we cannot find it possible to conceive a deeper interpretation
of the desires of the human breast which should harmonise
better with the superlative joy of the human babe laid upon
the human bosom. Still, the Garden of Eden is much nearer
to this conception of heaven than the City of Zion, " the city
of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High,"
where in darkness and isolation He could not be seen or heard
by mortal man save by a high priest once a year. Surely
it is also a different and more gaudy fancy that vizualises
God and Man as inclosed in a city, bespangled with gold and
pearls, with harpers of another nature as associates, crowded
with saddest memories as tears are wiped away from all eyes.
Now, from the nature of things, it was impossible that
a consciousness could be formed by the J writer of any other
place than the earth as the dwelling of man, and consequently
it was necessary for man's companionship that God should
be found upon the earth with man, if the ideal existence
THE CHERUBIM 317
were to be stated at all. Hence the writer has no need to
notice sun, moon, and stars, light or night. God is with man
on the earth, and all else is negligible by comparison. That the
" heaven " does exist is all that is needed to satisfy the con-
sciousness of the writer, but it has no immediate value in
his narrative, and only attains special and awful interest after
the ' fall ' of man.
221. We are convinced that the principal aim of the writer is
to show how it all came about that Yahweh God no longer
had his Dwelling Place on the earth, and why man had
become entangled in the conditions of misery and death.
The after-history of mankind, and especially of the race of
Abraham, and all relationship between man and God, can
only be rendered intelligible when these fundamental facts are
grasped and understood. From the point that precedes the
first word of the Creation-account, we must assume the writer's
conviction that God was nowhere dwelling among men in this
world. But as this seemed so unnatural, and outrageous against
every ideal of wisdom, the reason why should be forthcoming.
And as the fault could not be visited upon the Yahweh God,
the man himself must be found guilty. The disastrous circum-
stances of human existence could not be other than the
result of error somewhere. Hence the serpent story, the
woman's weakness, the disobedience, and the curses. Human
history then stood explained. " This actual, cheerless lot of
man upon the earth is the real problem of the story," says
Wellhausen. " It is felt to be the very opposite of our true
destiny : at first things must have been otherwise." " At
first man lived in paradise, he had a happy existence, and
one worthy of his nature, and held familiar intercourse with
Jehovah : it was his forbidden striving after the knowledge
of good and evil that drove him out of paradise and brought
all his miseries upon him."
In the J account Yahweh has no desire that man should be
like him. On the contrary, it is a matter of the deepest
regret to Yahweh that "the man has become as one of
us, to know good and evil." It is only in the account of
the Priestly Code that we learn the contrary, viz., that " God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness " (i. 26).
318 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
This is a later and more ontological explanation of man.
There is no such exalted purpose in the Yahwist record.
Hence when Yahweh discovers that man has reached the level
of divinity in knowing good and evil, he takes prompt steps
to hinder him from reaching higher in the command of ever-
lasting life. " Now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also
of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." ..." He drove
out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of
Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
222. This reveals the consciousness in these ancient people
that man had it in his power, once, to command for himself ever-
lasting life as well as the knowledge of good and evil, and it is
a consciousness that unconsciously takes cognisance of the
division between Being and Knowing, and the reason why
these two conceptions are irreconcilable, in the thought of man.
But for the Cherubim standing as a barrier ; the tree of Life, or
Being, would have been as easy of access as the tree of knowledge.
It is the curse of Yahweh that man can no longer command
such being, and that he must close his existence not with
Yahweh in immortality, but in the dust There is no after-being
beyond earth in this account.
223. But this consciousness also connotes the want of fore-
sight in Yahweh. His wrath is boundless when he has to tear
up his plans of dwelling on the earth, and forsake it on account
of man's disobedience. There seems little reason why he
should have cursed the innocent ground. But this is the
principal curse. True, the dust had furnished the primary
material for man's being, for the breath of Yahweh seems to
have acted upon the formed dust as heat acts upon the dust
that yields the herb. Man by tainting his own dust is regarded
as defiling all dust. His cursing the ground was certainly a
confession on Yahweh's part of his being thwarted in his
creational designs by man, by the serpent, and by the woman ;
that is by the chief creatures of his hand. And as he can no
longer remain upon ground which he has cursed, he takes his
departure forever from the earth, and this conception of his
having gone up from the earth in wrath, never left the mind of
THE CHERUBIM 319
these early people, and lies at the foundation of all their conceptions
of after-relationship to him, either in courting his blessing or
appeasing his anger.
224. Separation between Deity and Man ! Separation
between Deity and the Earth ! This was the supreme disaster
for the world. It is the same consciousness which underlies
every conception of woe in the New Testament, embodied in
terms such as Hades, Gehenna, Perish, Lost, Dead, Hell,
Wrath, Bottomless Pit, etc. "Why didst thou forsake me?"
is the true cry of the broken child-heart, and the deepest
expression of woe ; and as misery and death were world-wide,
the cause and area of the separation are also given universal
significance. Deity is conceived as ascending up above the
firmament, and putting the vastitude of the sky-space between
him and the Earth in order that universal man may not reach
him to become like him in living forever. All east of the
garden is then seen to be covered by the Cherubim. And if we
bear in mind the consciousness of the wide space which fills
the thought of the writer when he pens these words, we shall
have little difficulty in seeing this vision of the Cherubim to
symbolise the whole eastern heaven of space, and " the flame of a
sword " as the sublime appearance of the lightning which turns
every way.
Space-of-sky is not conceived as having existence before
this ascension of Yahweh above the earth. The overpowering
thought in the J consciousness is Yahweh God is no longer
upon the Earth. Where could he go? The sky-space then
comes forward into the conception of the Yahwist as having
been utilised for the very purpose of separating God from Man.
For we have to remove from our minds every conception of
God as being in heaven before he made the earth, and of his
coming to earth after the earth is made. The earth is his
first residence, and heaven is his refuge-place from man, after
man has brought about the cursing of the earth and the
impossibility of Yahweh staying in it. " Yahweh God made
earth and heaven " (ii. 4b).
225. The effect of this separation from the earth by the
height of the sky-space is not apparent till, in chap. iv. 26, we
320 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
are told by J, "then began men to call upon the name of
Yahweh." It is the word " began " that tells the whole story.
For God was no longer near men, dwelling with them, and
walking beside them. They were compelled to call upon him
to the height of his high dwelling-place above the Cherubim,
and to make voice and sacrifice ascend to him. All relationship
between Yahweh and Man was now altered, and the fact of gifts
being brought to him more than hints at efforts to please him,
and if possible to obtain his withdrawn favour. The colossal
Cherubim in the temple of Solomon ; Yahweh's relation to them
in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, according to P ; His
moving with the ' living creatures ' in the exilic days of Ezekiel ;
and the terror and majesty they always inspire are but phases
of the consciousness which is forever throbbing through the
Hebrew soul, and which, as a consciousness, gives a deepening
force to the terrible sundering of Man and Heaven by
unconquerable and merciless Space. The cry is always, then, to
reach to heaven, to come near to His seat, by Tower, by Ladder,
or by smoking sacrifice sent up as prayer to Him. " O that
thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come
down ! " So do even Christian hearts yet cry.
This abandonment of the human race by Yahweh God, and
his ascension above the sky-barrier, seems to have oppressed
the whole Eastern world from the earliest time. Such a
conception does not appear to have originated in Palestine but
in the Mesopotamian Valley, although we can understand,
from this point of view, how keenly and proudly the hearts of
Hebrew men must have thrilled when it dawned upon them
that Yahweh had chosen the Abrahamic tribe out of all the
peoples of the earth, upon whom to bestow his presence, mercy,
and Law. All men had striven to reach up to him in heaven
in vain, but, to Abraham and his children, Yahweh had "come
down."
The influence of Babylon upon Hebrew religious con-
ceptions is admitted by all competent authorities. And "the
most conspicuous feature of a Babylonian sanctuary was its
zikkurat" says Principal J. Skinner (Genesis, p. 226), "... a huge
pyramidal tower rising, often in 7 terraces, from the centre of
the temple area, and crov/ned with a shrine at the top. These
structures," he goes on to say, " appear to have embodied a half-
THE CHERUBIM 321
cosmical, half-religious symbolism; the 7 stories represented the
7 planetary deities as mediators between heaven and earth." . . .
" That the tower of Genesis xi. is a Babylonian<37'/#ra/is obvious
on every ground, and we may readily suppose that a faint echo
of the religious ideas just spoken of is preserved in the legend "
(italics ours).
The ascended God, in anger, was never far from the
thoughts of the devout Hebrew in any period of his national
existence. God sundered from man by the Sky-Spaces, the
Cherubim, which He created for this purpose. It lies at the
base of all the Theophanies, and " Laws," and constitutes
in itself the primal explanation of the intense interest and
passion which God's " coming down " to earth always evokes
in that people. There is much altered in the other narra-
tives, the Deuteronomic, and the Priestly, but this conscious-
ness remains undisturbed throughout. It is always remarked
that God "comes down" when He desires to have intercourse
with men. He "comes down" to debar the purpose of the
Tower of Babel which is built expressly to overcome the
Cherubim guardianship of the tree of Life. Men are so
eager to reach the abode of their God. So He " comes
down " to enquire concerning the cities of the plain, to deliver
Israel from Egypt, and to give the Law on Sinai. If not
Himself, then He sends His messengers down the ladder which
Jacob, in the deep pathos of his dream, sees set up at last
between heaven and earth, reaching to God. In every case we
can easily interpret the consciousness that underlies all these
statements of descent of deity to earth as one of appalling
sorrow and misery, because that God was no longer abiding on
the earth. Above and around, as they afterward symbolised it
in their Temples, this awful Sky-Space cuts-off man from his
Creator. They have to lift up their eyes to the hills, and
above the hills, to the clouds of darkness which pavilion his
throne, when they would worship Yahweh. And for this reason
the Cherubim are always placed in the Holy of Holies, as the
separating thing, the symbol of Gods isolation from man, and
between which He is alone to be found if communication is to
be made with Him. He will only speak with man from between
the Cherubim, that is, from the sky-expanse, or firmament.
There is never a hope in the Hebrew consciousness that man
x
322 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
may ascend above this expanse, and have dwelling with his
God enthroned on these Cherubim. No vision of this nature
ever enters the Old Testament. It came first with the grander
consciousness of the Galilean.
226. In the consciousness of the Yahwist, therefore, we have
the Cherubim as the mark of the God's isolation from earth and
Man, and the boundaries of that separating Space can only be
crossed symbolically by man by laying a sacrificial gift upon
the place of mercy which the Cherubim overshadows. And
Life is the gift which Yahweh demands in the presentation of
Blood. The Cherubim mark the death-zone between man and
God, and a path of blood which has in it " the life" is only
possible as a condition of worship^ or of coming near to Him.
And Life : Being ; was yet on the earth. // was also Yahweh' s
own Breath. He had breathed into man the Breath of Life, and
thereby man was a living soul. Life, moreover, was in the
blood, and therefore the blood had a voice which Yahweh could
hear. He could not have respect to the " fruits of the ground "
which he had cursed. But he had respect to the firstlings of
the flock. In them was his breath of life. This seems to have
distinguished Abel's from Cain's offering to him. Therefore,
also, the alive blood of Abel cries from the ground. It is
Yahweh's Breath. It cries for deliverance from the cursed
ground which had opened its mouth to receive it. In a deep
sense the earth is thus represented as the first mercy-seat,
blood-stained, which is covered by the wings of the Sky-
Space Cherubim. Man came to believe that Yahweh heard
Blood.
Moreover, the all-inclusive amplitude of space, which is
symbolised in the Cherubim, seems to be clearly indicated in
the fact that in Solomon's Temple, their wings stretch from
wall to wall of the Holy of Holies, meeting in the centre of the
" house " over the Ark, embracing all the space of the domain
of Yahweh, and over-covering all else that was in that sanctuary.
And that all nature is meant to be associated with them
appears to be taught in the fact of the figures of them being
put on walls and doors along with " palm trees and open
flowers" and again with "lions and oxen" (i Kings, vii. 29-
36). If these symbolise the vast realms of the inanimate and
THE CHERUBIM 323
animate kingdoms, then surely the " wings " of the cherubim, as
the only feature given them, can only betoken the all-air space,
as it was then understood. Therefore in sky-space as embodied
in the symbolism of the Cherubim, we may venture to see the
grand central Credo of a religion which lies almost buried
beneath the later accretions of Babylonian and Palestinian
systems of worship, and we seem also to be fully justified in
defining its principal power over men's minds to have been,
I. Solely identified with God -being. II. As separating God
from earth and man absolutely. III. As having been
deliberately placed by God in anger between Himself and the
earth and man. The Sky-space is believed by the Yahwist to
be vacant of God's presence, and under the dominion of Death,
God is not, to him, everywhere. He is confined to the Dwelling
above the Sky-Space. His throne is above the Cherubim, and
rests upon the Cherubim.
227. Another feature arises from this consciousness, viz.,
the motion of wing in the Cherub symbol. The heavens were
seen not to remain still. They moved. The Cherubim fly.
Hence Yahweh rides upon the heavens, and it seems to be from
this conception that we have the other one of Yahweh as having
his goings forth from everlasting to everlasting. The whole
body of heaven is viewed as moving onwards through infinite
vastness of space, with Yahweh God borne on his Cherubim
forever. In speaking of the heavenly bodies, Rev. C. F. Burney
says, " It was their movements that excited the keenest
attention, and opened up the widest field for the imagination "
(Encyc. Bib., " Stars "). But there is a difference drawn between
' infinite ' space and the space which is symbolised by the
Cherubim. Yahweh God is made objective, and limited, and so
also are the Cherub- Spaces. The vastitude of the infinite
Space sublates both Yahweh and Cherubim in its wider Being.
This consciousness must persist in all thought of things,
ancient or modern, and notwithstanding the gigantic generalisa-
tion given us in the conception of the Cherubim, the Cherubim
themselves are seen to be finite by comparison. The true
space-consciousness which we all have, limits the symbol, and
reveals its finitude. The spirit of man in short testifies in this
early Hebrew consciousness that there is Being greater than
324 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Yahweh God y or the Cherubim which bear his throne, and that
these are dependent for their condition of existence upon this
illim i table, whole- Space- Being.
22%. For while we speak of Yahweh and the Cherubim in
duality of thought and expression, we must not lose sight of the
fact that Yahweh himself is really a product of the writer's
consciousness which is working on, and based in, the material
which creation affords him for the construction of a God-Idea.
Yahweh is never seen. He is an invisible one. But he is a
conscious Power to the writer. He creates earth and heaven,
and afterwards sets up the expanse, the Firmament, and the
Cherubim-Spaces above and below it. He is the Spirit of
Creation as interpreted through the consciousness of the
Yahwist. And he has a voice that can be heard, but strictly he
is not divisible from the Space- Things which are symbolised as
bearing him through whole- Space- Being. He is vizualised as
throned on spaces, the sky-spaces, and riding upon space, but this
is exactly how God is spoken of yet by all worshipping people.
He is constantly conceived under creational limits, and objectified
to thought and idea ; and this only means that, as long as we
cannot see Whole-Space as God, we must always depend upon
a hypostatised God-Idea, with the " dead " material of creation
for its basis of embodiment and incarnation. The God so
visualized becomes limited when we contemplate him under the
categories of what we think we are, and infinite when the
boundlessness of creation is attributed to his being. The
anthropomorphic and the creational are in this way hypostatised
in a God-Form. And it is clear that such a God, not sublating
Whole -Space, and conceived as separated from Whole-Space,
can only give the conditions for a duality of Being which
cannot afterwards be annihilated by any power of mind at the
disposal of humanity.
II. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PRIESTLY CODE.
Genesis, I. i.-II. 4a.
229. " These are the generations of the heaven and the
earth when they were created. In the beginning God created
THE CHERUBIM 325
the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let
there be light, and there was light" (continue to II. 4a).
The consciousness thus laid bare by the Priestly Chronicler
in Genesis i. is of a more intense description, and plumbs the
human mind with a deeper line. More of the intellectual and
historical imagination is called into play. Folk-lore and myth
are laid aside ; and the Eastern knowledge of astronomy, and
a more scientific method are put under requisition. A pre-
eminently important consciousness is introduced in the concep-
tions of the Abyss, and Darkness as covering it. This element
is clearly central, and is the ultimate consciousness in the
narrative. The Yahwist, on the contrary, as we have seen,
beholds all in open daylight from the beginning to the end.
He never feels the necessity for the fiat, * Let there be light.'
His is a child-consciousness which takes all that for granted.
The Priest Chronicler is reputed to be very late in time, and
therefore we see in his statements of creation the formal expres-
sion of a consciousness which had accumulated as history
advanced, and had deepened with the ages.
Scholars see the influence of Babylonian and Assyrian
Thought under it. Historically, this might be easily possible,
but what we have here to notice only is the psychological fact
that his consciousness of Space, and Darkness as covering it,
together with the spirit of God as moving over the waters
under the Darkness, Darkness covering God and all, is one
above historical influences, and is in perfect harmony with the
universal consciousness which finds in the soul of man a corre-
sponding darkness of impenetrable mystery, with a Something
ever moving there unnameable and unseen. " Without form
and void " (A.V.) is a genuine consciousness of Chaos, the
GAP, " wasteness and wideness " (Prof. Cheyne, Encyc. Bib.
p. 942), for which no summational term is conceivable save
that of Space. Under the thousand-and-one forms in which
mythology has embodied and embellished it, in every age and
among every people, this consciousness is uppermost and under-
most. The consciousness of the Priestly Writer, however
his materials might be modified by all that history had
handed down to him, is simply the developed consciousness of
326 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
every man, as he is able to see himself, flung back upon the
past, interpreting the Origins of all things by a light which self
alone affords him. But for the consciousness of an Abyss and
Darkness in himself, man would never have found it in Crea-
tional Origins ; and but for a consciousness of ceaseless
motion in his own inner being he would never have discovered
a Spirit that moved over the chaotic waters.
230. The consciousness, then, is of Space-Darkness. There
is no light. Neither is God in light any more than the All.
Light is assumed as brought forth out of primeval darkness as a
creature of God. The two things which are not accounted for
are (i) God, and (2) this Space-Darkness. Even God is not
assumed as saying, " Let there be Space." The reason is that
no human consciousness ever yields an origin for Space. Is, is its
sole category. Hence God and Space alone conform to the
same possibilities in the human consciousness. This is an
important fact and constitutes an identity of being. But
'Space-Darkness' needs explanation. It is not conceived as
standing in the same consciousness with God and Space,
for Darkness is only with us relative to Light. It is therefore
conditioned by Light, and Light in fact abolishes it, even as
the chick abolishes the egg from which it draws its being.
Space, on the other hand, is a consciousness which sublates
both our Light and Darkness, and identifies them in itself.
It is for this reason that our great thinkers sometimes describe
it as ' empty ' ; as ' transparent ' ; as ' ethereal ' ; or as " utterly
blank." The truth is that no category can be used regarding
it save Is, as we must always tediously reiterate. But as
light connotes seeing and knowing, and both are impossible
terms in an account of Creational Origins, darkness is the
only term under which the beginnings of knowing and seeing
are affirmable to the mind. The Space-consciousness returns
no light to the mind. It does not appear, as both our Light
and Darkness do. Consequently such Space-Darkness is the
only possible predicate of the beginnings of thought. This is
what we mean by Space-Darkness.
Even God then emerges into Light. And with visibility the
All-Space becomes cleft, and firmamental divisions take shape,
and sun, moon, and stars, and all the rest of the ' particulars '
THE CHERUBIM 327
swim into ken. But we should note that the consciousness of
1 God ' is never identical with the vaster consciousness of Space,
in which he is conceived as moving ; and consequently, this
Space-Darkness remains throughout the entire range of the
Hebrew consciousness, from Genesis to Malachi, as only God's
Dwelling Place. Indeed this consciousness of Darkness as the
Dwelling of God is universally accepted. It gives the prophets
and psalmists the deep bass of all their praises. " He bowed
the heavens also and came down, and thick darkness was
under his feet, and he rode upon a cherub, and did fly ... he
made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion round about him,
darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies ' (Ps. xviii. 9). It
is at the foundation of all the theophanies, as we have said.
Every time the presence of Yahweh is declared, darkness is his
robe (Gen. xv. 12-13). The seclusion and darkness of the
Holy of Holies was the fitting representation of this con-
sciousness, just as the cherubim stretching their wings through
the darkness, over the ark, and covering the entire space of
the Adytum, symbolised the Space-Sphere which he claimed as
his own.
And it is this fact of facts which obtains the supreme place
in the Temple of Solomon. The Cherubim were not placed
over the most Holy Ark by an accident. They were not
emblazoned all round the Tent curtains for empty show. The
Wings are outstretched over the Mercy-Seat as symbolic of the
awful Space, upon which his throne reposes. The blue sapphire
colour of the Sky-Expanse is everywhere prominent when the
Cherubim are seen. They ever mark, as of old, the Separating
boundaries between the Outer and Inner, the seen and the Un-
seen, the Earthly and the Heavenly, the Personal and the
Impersonal. They are the Guardians and the Bearers of the
Personal God ; they themselves representing a far deeper
consciousness of the Eternal, in the Hebrew, as in the mind of
every People on earth.
The cherubim, and not the Ark, as already said, were the
chief symbols of Yahweh's presence. They marked his greatness
over all other gods. He did not take up his abode, like them, in
the sun, the moon, or any special object in creation. Space was
his habitation. The ark was simply his appointed meeting place
with man, for the good of man, and although it is called the
328 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Ark of Yahweh, it is also, we should remember, the Ark of the
Covenant, and has more reference to man than it has to God.
The cherubim, on the contrary, were exclusively symbolical of
divinity; the marks of godhood, and universal power. They
upheld even God. The Ark but connoted Yahweh's attributes
of power and mercy. But he was enthroned upon the
cherubim, and from this royal height he dispensed pardon and
mercy to man at the mercy-seat. In I Chron. xxviii. 2, the
Ark is given the inferior place of Yahweh's ( footstool,' and
the phrase, "heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool,"
represents perhaps the true relative symbolism of the cherubim
and the Ark, if we remember that the symbolism of the cherub
is invariably attached to the heaven, the firmament, or Sky-
boundaries, and that of the Ark as intimately with earth and
Man.
231. As a consequence, the Ark itself being subsidiary to
the Cherubim in the religious consciousness of the Hebrews,
the Cherubim necessarily long antecede the Ark in that con-
sciousness. This becomes self-evident when we recall the
special function of their individual symbolism. The Ark
symbolises God's Grace, Power, and Place of Meeting and of
His speaking with Man. Therefore it is fitly associated with
the D2blr> the Holy of Holies. In the consciousness of the
Hebrews, it is also meant that God was not to be met by
man at any other place in all creation. It was symbolic as
that place in the great universe where "spirit with spirit can
meet." But this would be a sadly irrelevant symbolism with-
out that other which embodies the Separation of God from
both Man and Earth. The fact that the meeting of God and
Man at the Mercy-seat above the Ark is always one of con-
descending grace and mercy on the part of God, an act of
condescension and compassion, presupposes the conscious
necessity and justice of man's severance and isolation from the
Holy Presence. And it is this consciousness which is alone
embodied in the Cherubim. It is the only symbol which
incorporates the stupendous consciousness that God is inaccessible
to man. And every symbolism in the Hebrew Worship must
be held as secondary to this one. Without this consciousness,
indeed, the rest would have no meaning.
THE CHERUBTM 329
Hence the Cherubim are rightly set forth in the principal
place in the Holy of Holies. They cover the Ark, and Deity
never for a moment places Himself with the Ark. The Ark is
for Man, and God surrounds Himself within the Cherubim,
and plants His throne upon it. He speaks, not from the Ark,
but from "between the Cherubim." The Ark is undoubtedly
a great concession, but the Cherubim see to it that the Person
of God and the Life-Source implied in His Presence, must not
be invaded at the mercy-seat by even the most holy of men.
Heaven was, as Josephus says, " inaccessible to men'' The Ark is
a presential symbol of the Place of meeting, and the Cherubim
of the Being who meets at that Place. They also symbolise
His absence from man at that Place by separation of space
between them.
232. "And He drove out the Man."
" Va-yegaresh eth-ha-adam.") We do not know more funda-
mentally important words in the whole body of the Hebrew
Religion. It is the consciousness within them that gives the
key to that Power which through Hebraism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism, has swayed and oppressed and darkened
the world. The great structures built up from Arks, Altars,
Temples, Priesthoods, Laws, Prophecy, and the very Nature
of the Eternal Being have been founded in and built upon
it. It is a consciousness that puts space between Deity and
Man. It is a consciousness that puts space between Deity and
the Earth. It is a consciousness that runs directly counter to
the Teaching of Jesus. For the true God, Highest Being, is
to Jesus inconceivably apart from Man or the Earth, and never
required to be brought nigh to His world as if He had forsaken
it. It is more and more evident that man cannot even conceive
this Being to have ever been divided from anything. But the
cultured world, the Christian World included, has calmly
accepted this conception of the Hebrews as to an angry, self-
sundering God, who puts sky-space between Himself and man
in His loathing of both man and earth, and Who must needs
" come down " before He can meet or speak with man, and be
mollified with sacrifices on His descent. The consciousness
which created the cherubim has been accepted as true. It has
also been accepted that the God and not the man initiated the
330 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
sunderance. " And he placed (or, caused to abide) at the East
of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of
life " (iii. 24). It is out of the imaginary darkness of this con-
sciousness that God Himself has been formed, and sin and all
that that word means for civilised man has taken power and
place in his convictions. God was held to be One, and Man
an othered One, sundered in angry violence for ever.
Therefore, across this Space-Being so fixed they had to
meet; and apart from the presence of space they were
conceived as sundered eternally. Hence the Hebrew concep-
tion that Space is the grand Death-Barrier-Being, and is
inseparable from the Presence of God. And as the Hebrew
consciousness never could find space itself to be the fundamental
fact of both God- and Man- Being, the Meeting at the Ark, and
the words spoken from between the Cherubim, never abolished
but only seemed to lessen the sky -space between Man and
God. It required a far deeper reading of the human spirit
than they knew to accomplish this, and we shall try to show
more fully below that it is given to the full in the Doctrine and
consciousness of Our Lord.
233. Since the dawn of time, Three Symbols of human
faith seem to us to tower above all others in this world,
confessing the Presence in them of Most High God-Being.
First is The Cherub ; second is The Burning Bush ; and third
is the Child whom Jesus asked His disciples to receive as
receiving both Himself, and Him who sent Himself. But, how
deep the chasm between the interpretations of this Presence !
How different the Conceptions. The Cherubim never touch
bare ground, for they assert the earth as accursed. They have
neither word nor recognition for man. They represent THAT
from whom man is absolutely * cut off.' They stand for Being
as above the earth and " inaccessible to man," as Josephus said.
The Bush confesses a nearer God, albeit terrible and fierce
in Flame and Law. God is on the earth so far, and is affirmed
to have "come down," but He has come down in the Desert.
The tree, the flame, the desert ; Nature as distinct from man ;
God still afar from man ; this is the Theophany of the Bush.
It was the glory of The Master that He revealed the Eternal
THE CHERUBIM 331
Being as Himself; Child ; Man. God was born ; He was on
the earth, in the Home ; nearest to all ; nearest to every heart ;
He was a child set in the midst ; the Great God-Father seen
by men as a Man. " Look on our divinest Symbol," says
Carlyle, " on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography,
and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought
not yet reached : this is Christianity and Christendom ; a
Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character ; whose significance
will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made
manifest."
" I and the Father are one." The Father is a human child.
His place is not above the earth, and the sky-expanse. He is
not merely incorporate-Nature, but incarnate Nature-Man. " I
in them and Thou in me, that they may be perfected into one."
No man knoweth this Being save the Child. The Cherubim
vanish before this Presence ; and the Burning Bush burns dim and
dimmer in the darkening desert ; Arks, Temples, Priesthoods,
and every Symbol that assumes division between Supreme
Being and Man, fade away forever. It is possible that the
time may come when Christendom will see the Most Holy
Presence, not so much in Bush, or Cross, or elevated Host,
on spires or altars, but in the common Child of our homes and
streets.
Therefore, we mourn once more that Philosophy should still
maintain the consciousness of the Cherubim in affirming the
essential difference of subject-being and object-being, finite-being
and infinite-being, and vainly make-believe that Unit-Being
of the Bush type, though fused in the flame of Thought, can
find any genuine response in our deepest consciousness of
Supreme, or Whole-Being. Nothing is gained in this way,
and man only abides lost to himself.
234. We now venture to say that, in our humble opinion,
Prof. Immanuel Benzinger has missed the whole meaning of
the Cherubim when he writes " The sacred object par excellence
in this royal seat of worship " (the temple) " was the ark of
Yahwe." ..." It is remarkable to find in the temple of
Solomon this special significance of the ark weakened by the
addition to it of two cherubim " (Encyc. Bib., p. 4936). He also
says concerning the Holy of Holies " It was the dwelling-place
332 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
proper of the deity, whose presence here was represented by
the Sacred Ark" (p. 4931). We think, from the reasons given
above, that the cherubim must be given precedence of the ark, or
of anything else in the temple-symbolism, as alone representative
of deity ; and that without the symbolism of the cherubim the
ark would be a pure enigma of no religious consequence. The
ark really derives whatever meaning it may carry from the fact
of the presence of the cherubim overshadowing it. Whatever
strength its symbolism contains is entirely due to its being
relative and subordinate to that of the cherubim.
235. Space; without anything added ; The Deep : this is
the primal consciousness of the Priestly Chronicler. In this
consciousness all creation and its God Yahweh take rise. The
Hebrew ' God ' is never so great as this Deep. ' God ' and
' Creation ' are seen as limited objects moving about within its
limitless area. Man's primal consciousness, indeed, must be
always of this Deep, this Gap, this mother of our ' Nothing '-
consciousness and of all the ' zeros ' and ' nulls ' of our conceptual
Thought. All consciousness of the great in us, of the awful and
the sublime and the highest, leads up to this final consciousness.
No conception of God or Creation, either in the human mind or
in Holy Books of East or West, transcends this consciousness ;
for when we exhaust the categories which combine to form
these conceptions, we find them all weak and dependent upon
this Space-Thing, this conscious Is. And the P narrative
rightly sees the Spirit as moving or brooding through this
Deep, and conditioned in all its movements by it. He also
rightly sees that it holds within itself every possible 'object'
which afterwards may be created and made. But his vision
fails to identify this Deep, and this Spirit, and the Creation
that comes forth from both, as Whole-Being. He fails to
identify the particular " Yahweh " and the particular " Man "
along with the All, in a simple consciousness of Indivisible-
Being. This conscious identity of God, Man, and Creation is
never found in the Old Testament, nor is it ever found in any
Sacred Book anywhere. This is the special gift of Jesus to the
thinking world. His is the Absolute Synthesis of all Being.
And the fullest, though not the only statement of it, perhaps, is
given in the Gospel named of John.
THE CHERUBIM 333
III. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE JOHN GOSPEL.
Chapter i. 1-5.
236. i. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
ii. The same was in the beginning with God.
iii. All things were made by (or through) Him, and without
Him was not anything made.
iv. That which hath been made was life in Him, and the life
was the light of men (R.V., margin).
v. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness
apprehended it not.
237. First, as to our position with regard to this ' Gospel
according to John.' The attempt which we make to interpret
the fundamental truth in both Old and New Testaments being
one based on our Consciousness alone > it follows that the Histori-
city or Unhistoricity of the John- Writing does not concern us.
All history is itself tested and authenticated by human con-
sciousness, and it cannot be shown that any history, sacred or
profane, ever authenticates ultimate truth. What exists in
language, of deed or word, of person or fact, can have no due
weight or value if it be not endorsed finally by our Conscious-
ness of Being or Reality. Therefore, finding in the John
Gospel, as in Genesis, a creational consciousness set forth
in words, by whose lips or pen, when or where delivered,
matters not, we endeavour to test this consciousness by the
consciousness which we and all men have of what-we-are. We
have tried to prove that by this test a true consciousness of
Being is always given us beyond the God-Personality and Man-
Personality, and their space-severed Beings which the Hebrew
Consciousness has embodied in the J and P instruments. We
find our consciousness testify to Being beyond the limitations of
the Yahweh-Person so set forth, and beyond the " Creation "
of which He is the assumed Maker ; and our consciousness of
space is still unsublated with these Beings in a common
consciousness of Whole-Being a consciousness in which we
cannot have any consciousness of what-we-are save as of space-
334 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
being. In short, in the Hebrew Consciousness of J and P
Yahwek-God, Man, and Creation are severed individuals , Space-
severed, and the Cherubim are set forth as symbolising this
space-severance. If we have read this consciousness with
mistakes, then every man, in his own consciousness, has the
means of rectifying the error. If we have read this con-
sciousness aright, then this judgment must rest on ground far
removed from Historicity, and we thereby clear our fate from
travelling round the Big Wheel of the "Johannine Contro-
versy," that unhappy pastime of Protestant Exegesis. We
trust we have made it clear by this time that all we count as
personal is under change, is subordinate to our consciousness of
what-we-are, and has little to do with absolute truth. Conse-
quently, all that concerns any John-personality, who may or
may not have possessed a ' local habitation and a name ' upon
this earth at some time of the world's career, lies outside of the
scope of this sketch. We have the same to say regarding any
other personality, sacred or otherwise, whose ' words ' we may
quote. We are interested principally in Truth, which professes
to appeal for authentication to our consciousness of absolute
Reality, and which is thereby " infallible Truth." For the final
authentication of Truth does not rest with either the historical
or the personal, but, as we repeat, with the Consciousness of
What-we-are.
238. The prologue of the John Gospel leads us into a con-
sciousness from which no light returns. Consequently it is harder
to study than the cosmogonies of Genesis. The conception of
Dark-Being as Primal Being, throws all else in it into silhouette
form. But Dark-Being is not referred to until the fifth verse.
It is the one consciousness in the prologue which is not shown
to have any individual connection, source, or existential identity
with anything else mentioned.
Time and Individuation are paramount in the first verse.
"In the beginning" governs both the presentation of "the
Word," and of " God." There is individuation and association
in the beginning. There is quality. There is duality. " The
Word was with God." But the Word is also identified as God.
" The Word was God." Dual Being is sublated in Unit Being,
and " God " is society in Himself. This transcendence of dual
THE CHERUBIM 335
Being is characteristic of the John-Writing from its first verse.
Still, it is Unit-, not All-Being. " God " is One, not whole.
So far, the ' Word ' and ' God ' are objectified beings. We
discern them, either as two or as one, as not-us, the spectators.
We have a consciousness regarding them that they are
individuated and space-surrounded. Space sublates them in its
being. But there is Primal Motion assumed in the Word
becoming God. There is a conscious process in the John-mind
as he passes from conception to conception in his vision. But
as yet there is no light, but only motion, and the Word-God
moves as Dark-Being.
239. But the "Word" is not lost in the God-Identity, for
" the same was in the beginning with God." Still, we have no
nexus, or basis, given for the process by which the Word is with
God, is God, and again is with God. We have only contactual
and not existential identity given us in the first and second
verses. We are not able to conceive them as existentially One in
our conscious thought of them. John, that is to say, gives us no
more than a consciousness of Being in Time, and Beings in
Time, and, with such data, existential identity of two objects is
impossible. We require the Space-consciousness ; and it is
this that he gives in the fifth verse, although it is merely
assumed in the verses preceding it. For there is motion in the
previous verses, as we have shown, and motion implies space as a
consciousness. The reason probably is that, as the entire gospel
is chiefly occupied with the 'personalities' of Son and Father,
it was not necessary to give the Spirit, or the Space-Being,
the same prominence. That is to say, the * Word ' and ' God '
do not exhaust All-Being, Space and All, in our consciousness
of them, yet this Being John assumes as existing also.
240. " All things were made by (or through) Him." Here
creation is One in origin, for " without Him was not anything
made." Creation does not connote the Impersonal. John's
consciousness gives the conception that Creation is begotten as
well as made. It was essential that it should be shown that
Creation was identical -Being with the 'Word,' even as the
* Word ' was identical - Being with ' God.' Creation is also
Whole in all its ' things,' and the Life-Being of the Word-God
336 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
is the nexus by which we can think it so. It is alive, for " That
which hath been made in Him was Life" (R.V. marginal
reading, which the American Revisers also prefer.) And with
reference to this marginal reading, there seems to be little
doubt of its superiority. Bishop Westcott says, " It would be
difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities
in favour of any reading, than that which supports the second
punctuation : c Without Him was not anything made. That which
hath been made in Him was Life'" (Gospel of John, p. 4).
241. In the consciousness of John, as it is set before us,
there is no lifeless thing in Creation. Death has no Being-place
in this Cosmogony. Our conception of Death is therefore not
to be regarded as the correlative of this Life. It is not the
"life" of Science. It cannot die. It is All-Life, Eternal Life,
and it is the Word-God who guarantees this existential Life
to " all things," or " that which hath been made." For in Him
was Life, and there is no life that has not proceeded from
Him. What we call the * impersonal' individuals, the "all
things," have this life. And this fact is being more and more
verified by Science. It is a statement of the indestructible-
ness of living being. Though it die, yet shall it live.
"Shall never die." Death, as a conception, is thus brought
under limitation, whereas Life in Him is not so limited.
Creational Life is a motion of Being in which no death is
possible or conceivable.
242. " And the Life was the light of Men." Light originates
in, and comes forth begotten from Life. The Life is the Light.
Nothing in the John - consciousness is permitted to possess
independent being. Identical being in the Word-God is predi-
cated of "all things." And with the term "Men" we enter
upon what we connote strictly as the Personal. We can now
also attribute personality to the Word, to God, and to Creation.
What Creation is, is now the Kenosis of the Word-God. * God '
is given up in it, and for the first time we have Darkness as
Reality. * God ' is ' Empty.' The term can yield no more to
us. This is the true Space-consciousness. " Light," i.e., Creation
in glory, or the fulness of " God," " shineth in the Darkness "
out of which it has come.
THE CHERUBIM 337
243. This ' Darkness ' is the Space-Being of which no men-
tion is made as to its Origin. Neither is it said to have had
a beginning, or to be "in the beginning," or to have been
associated with " the beginning." This Space-Being has no
beginning, and is without predicates of Being. The conscious-
ness expressed regarding it amounts simply and only to IS.
It has no individuality, no origin, no beginning, no history. It
is not identified with anything. It sublates all individuals in
the prologue, the Word, God, the Beginning, Time, Life, Light,
Men "all things," and in this consciousness we have, as
might have been expected, a true reading of the consciousness
of What-we-are. All within us, as without us, is sublated yet in
this same Space-Darkness, as an ultimate consciousness.
244. " And the Darkness apprehended it not." John
evidently does not regard this Darkness as the mere correlative
of our 'Light.' Light ("it") is here not merely prismatic light,
but all that Creation shows in itself. It is what we generalise
under the term Appearance ; all that appears, or Phenomena.
And he sees the grandeur of Individuals, Persons, and All
things, the ' Word ' and ' God,' as we can think them, moving
through this Dark-Being which envelops them. But this Dark-
Being is more than our conceptions of all that the Total of
the Others can contain. It is a conception which we only
partly succeed in realising to ourselves when we hold before
our minds all that is seen in Creation of Sun, Moon, Stars,
Nebulae, worlds upon worlds inexhaustible, and again all that
we can imagine of Beings innumerable, higher and Highest,
this sublime Word-God included, and then discern moreover
that beyond all these there is the vast impenetrable, endless,
boundless Darkness of Space. Yet this Being is not merely
the light-less thing. John does not correlate it with our pris-
matic light. It is simply That which does not Appear as both
our Light and Darkness do, yet within whose Being all else
that the human mind can conceive appears. All else "shines"
(<f>atvei) in this Being, but itself is not made manifest.
It is not objective in any sense. We think we see space, but
it is only some objectivity we see. Withdraw all objects of light
and dark and all would be, to eye and mind darkness. Yet not
as an objective, but only as what does not appear. He thus
Y
338 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
gives us in this category of ' Darkness ' what we have not yet
got from any of the other terms he employs, viz., an identical
consciousness of What-we-are as Reality that does not appear
or become objective, and also Limitless, Boundless-Being, and a
category which easily sublates in itself every other category
of Being mentioned in the four foregoing verses. And it is
in this Space-Being that we now find our nexus for the absolute
identity of the ' Word ' with ' God ' ; and of the Creation, or
"All Things," Man included, with the Word -God; and find
also a consciousness of Whole Being subsuming All.
But this Darkness does not hold the Light under (xaWXa/Sei/).
Which it might do, if there were not something else besides
Power connoted in the gift of Life. " Let there be light " and
" The Life was the light of men," are creative expressions of a
world-old consciousness that the Boundless Dark-Space hides
not merely Power but Love in its bosom. All creation yet
speaks that " Word," and nowhere more definitely than in the
consciousness of What-we-are. What shines forth in us, and
appears, does so out of the Unshining, the Unappearing, or
Darkness which puts no limitations on all that " shines."
245. The Space-Darkness might have remained the Space-
All, but it did not retain itself to itself, but gave itself to all
things and to man. It laid down its ' Self in all things created
and made. Hence our consciousness of ' empty ' Space. We
shall also see below that this is the Whole-Process of which the
Cosmic Process is a fragment in our conception of it. This is
the consciousness underlying the words, " And the darkness
apprehended it not." (The marginal reading of the R.V. is
* overcame/ and seems better than * apprehend,' though we
much prefer the old word 'comprehend.' It is not under-
standing which is connoted, but Being.} The meaning is that
Darkness did not keep within itself Light, or Appearance.
Space-Deep gave it forth in Life and Love from itself. For
all light, material or mental, cosmic or vital, is originally shut
up in darkness, even as is Life itself. And it is a better reading
of our consciousness to say " The life was the Light," than to
say " Let there be light," as if Light preceeded Life in creation
and man. The light of eye and mind and ' soul ' rests upon
the deeper category of Life, even as Life rests in Space. All
THE CHERUBIM 339
that appears to sense or conception under the categories of
Time, Light, and Darkness, which we conceive as Word, God,
Life, Things, All things, including Men, is given forth by that
which we are conscious does not so appear.
246. And the All and Every that fill the Space-Darkness to-
day is here, there, near and far, terrestrial and celestial, because
of this begetting-forth from the same Space-Being, a begetting-
forth which is the primal motion of all our consciousness of
Being, fragmentary in our thought-forms of Life, Love, Liberty,
Good, and God. These Thought-fragments are visible now to
us because the Space-Darkness has given forth the Life-light by
which they are seen, or made intelligible, or appear, even as a
man sees in the child he begets the origins of himself. In every
man's space-being to-day there is a light shining, given
forth from its darkness, by which he sees and understands the
creational motions of Whole-Being " in the beginning." And
in the ' Self/ as in Space-Boundless, the light comes forth from
the life, and the life from the dark space-being. The Personal
is seen to dawn forth from the Impersonal, or from that Being
for which we have no categories by which we may design it as
Personal. But this Impersonal does not retain the Personal.
It does not apprehend, overcome, comprehend, or hold it in
itself. Personality appears forth from this Impersonal, and in
his Thought-forms, man is conscious for himself of Life and
Light, of Being and Thought. But in the Impersonal whole of
his space-being they are undivided. For men interpret the
universe by themselves. John's order of Creation must neces-
sarily be conceived in the order of the soul. And man when he
reads his consciousness aright does not begin with personality.
His primal, though not his historical, consciousness is one of
space-darkness and motion in darkness. The spirit of man and
the Spirit of his ' God ' have the same space-dwelling.
247. The Order of Being now before us in these five verses
of the Prologue is : I. Impersonal Being, though for itself rational
and identical. II. Personal Being, identical with Impersonal
Being through Life, which is identical as One Life. III. "All
things," or Creation, both as Impersonal and Personal, identified
as existentially one in the Word-God. IV. Absolute Being, or
340 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
rather, as we prefer it, Whole-Being, subsuming all conceivable
Being in the consciousness of Space-Being, and which John
denotes by the term " Darkness." These, afterwards, through-
out his Gospel he connotes under the terms, SON, Father,
Men, Spirit. The SON, FATHER, and MEN are all sublated
as under TIME, and John conceives them as associated in a
" beginning," and having sequence of Appearing ; the Son
revealing the Father, then both as revealing All Things made,
and all as Identic Being on the basis of One Life. Beyond this
conception of Time and Life, however, John's consciousness is
all but exhausted. The sole content left is the Space-con-
tent ; and, with the consciousness of Space, the ' Spirit/ as
' Darkness ' is named. For, clearly, Spirit has a far deeper
connotation than Life in Space, even as Space has a far deeper
connotation than Time. And, as already noted, we therefore feel
compelled to give the realisation of { Spirit '/ as arising out of the
consciousness of Space-Darkness, the highest place in our conscious-
ness of " God" We shall see that John really does give this
chief place of Deity to the Spirit in his Gospel, under the
compulsions of the teaching of the Master. But it is never so
sensibly prominent as either the Son or Father terms, because
these are more necessary for the interpretation of all humanly
conceived relationship to Deity, and it is only when Jesus
Himself comes within the deeper influences of His relations to
all that lies beyond the sphere of Time and Life, that is,
beyond the connotations of * Son ' and * Father/ that the
consciousness of the Spirit-God overwhelms in Him all other
conceptions of Deity. He then places every function of
Father and Son under the name of ' Spirit/ and commits indeed
the whole sphere of Time and Life, and the World of Man, into
the power of the Spirit. He " goes to the Father" in order that
the Spirit may come and abide with man " forever." The
' things ' of Father and Son are then simply the things that the
Spirit employs, or " takes," in creating and controlling a new
heaven and a new earth. It is under His Being that these
shine in the Darkness that does not appear, as Beings that in
the eyes and souls of men do Appear. Men lay hold upon
" Father " and " Son " as objective God, but all objectivity
vanishes in the consciousness towards which these lead human
conception and devotion beyond themselves. In the highest
THE CHERUBIM 341
consciousness of Jesus " God is Spirit," and when the sphere of
death and time is passed, He has not only a consciousness of
ascending to His Father and their Father, but also to His God
and their God (John, xx. 17). He thus transcends the ' Father'
term in His consciousness, as He enters the Boundless Space,
which, because it is that which does not Appear, is to John and to
us only nameable as " Darkness" It is " Darkness," that is to
say, because // is Being which Man cannot bring within any
conceivable concept or conception of the understanding. It is
qualityless and quantityless as Space-Being ; a fuller conscious-
ness than is given in the terms, Word, God, Life, Light, etc. .
248. It will be evident now that John, having stated the
Space-Being as absolute, has nothing more to state regarding
Being, and at once passes to the conceptual levels of common
history, as it unfolds itself through human existence and the
special lives of John Baptist and the ' Word ' made flesh.
He comes down to the level of the Synoptist mind, and treats
of Appearances. But we need not overlook the fact that though
his references are brief with regard to the Space-Being, they
are of the highest importance to the human mind as interpreta-
tive of the profoundest consciousness of what-we-are ; and that
the world would have been vastly poorer without them, seeing
that nowhere else are they found so set forth before the
thoughts of Man. Apart from them, the whole that the Person
and Teaching of Jesus means to mankind would have remained
unexplained perhaps in its highest truths. And while, against
the deliverances of the Creeds of Christendom, and the caution
of Origen that there is neither ' first ' nor ' last ' in Godhead,
we yet place unhesitatingly the Holy Spirit both first and last in
our consciousness of Godhood, we must not forget, for our
unspeakable comfort, that every attribute, every good, and every
hope that have been associated with the Sacred Names of
"Father" and "Son," are all fulfilled, and far transcended in
the Jesus -Consciousness of the Paraclete. But because He
does not appear, men turn from such " darkness " to the Life
and Light shining forth from Him in the objective Father and
Son " personalities." It is perhaps essential to us that we
should first see our God, either as a form of wood or of stone ;
or of thought-form and ' flesh.' If so, there is surely the deepest
342 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
love behind the provision which has been made for us in these
things by absolute Space-Being.
249. I. In summary outline, then, these three forms of
consciousness regarding Creation, viz., the Yahwist, the Priestly,
and that of John, may now be taken as representative of the
World-consciousness as to the absolute origin of all things. In
all three we have found an Origin that lies beyond the
" Beginning " and all it contains, and have seen that man
unconsciously builds out of this Origin the God-Form he adores.
The Eden narrative accepts the world as we now see it, earthy,
green, and pleasant. Man and his God are contented in each
other's company. But when they fall out, the God, man-like, is
wrathful and refuses to stay upon the same ground with man.
He curses it, moreover, and leaves man to his fate, putting all
the sky-space between Him and them ; the Cherubim being the
symbol-word and thing for this sad fact. And the God, the
Man, and the creation, are never conceived as identical Being ;
the God not forming them out of Himself.
This is a universal if imperfect consciousness, for all men
find this consciousness of God-above-the-sky as real to-day as
it ever was to the early Hebrews. All our praise-material,
psalms, hymns, paraphrases, and devotional literature generally,
assume it and are founded upon it. God, in them, is not upon
the earth as His Dwelling Place, nor in man, but above the sky,
in some supposed Heaven. This ' God ' likewise having left the
earth, cursing it, and having barred man from reaching Him by
either Tower or Ladder, His 'angels' only being allowed such
permission, man is left with a consciousness of this wrathful
* God ' still, and in his despair and grief, he hesitates at no
sacrifice of the dearest and the nearest in order to gain His
grace and favour a sin-consciousness so profound (in its
Creed Forms) as to abandon all hope of providing such a
sacrifice, except the ' God ' Himself should give up His own
Son for the purpose. The severance of God from Man is calmly
assumed as absolutely true.
250. II. The Priestly consciousness goes further and deeper.
Earth, Sky, Man, and all vanish. The vision of Origins stands
alone upon the dark Space- Deep. There is, however, Motion :
THE CHERUBIM 343
a Spirit moves. Science to-day says, " Motion : a Law'' The
common consciousness of both is of Vibration which becomes
something individuated to eye and thought, as the wave of the
sea, or the ideas of the reason. And as regards the individua-
tion, Science affirms " Light," " Heat," " Gravitation," " Ether."
The Priestly Writer says, " God." " And God said." He hears
the " Darkness," the DEEP, speak. In their inmost conscious-
ness, so do all men yet.
But, again, the Writer never connects this ' God ' identically
with the Things, or Creation, which He calls into existence.
They are always apart. God creates man in his own image and
after His likeness, but He does not create the Man out of his
own Life and Being. Throughout there are always Two :
Spirit and Deep, God and Creation. And practically this
consciousness yet rules the Religions and Philosophies of the
world. There is still a Cherubim-barrier placed between the
Subject and the Object, the One and Many, Thought and
Being, Soul and Body, Time and Eternity, Man and God.
Men yet accept division as a necessary predicate of Being to be
somehow concussed by Thought into Unity !
251. A most important point in the Priestly account is
its ethical position. He does not see either Evil or Man's Sin
as the cause of this duality. He has no mention of Evil of
any kind until he reaches the days of Noah. Death prevails
over men from Adam downwards, but death is not a cause
with him of punishment, or an instrument of justice, or a
manifestation of God's wrath. He has no hesitation about the
duality. In his conception of Creation, God is in no wise
an integral part of what He creates ; He is distinctly different
in essence from His creatures of heaven and earth, but He
" blesses " them nevertheless, and^fodfr no evil anywhere. " And
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very
good" (Gen. i. 31). Sin, Evil, is therefore to him a contingency
of Time, and has no reference to the Infinite or Everlasting.
The Origins of all that has been made are sinless, both as to
God and the Creature. Hence there is never a curse in the
ground of the Priestly account of Creation. Man, in the days of
Noah, corrupts his way upon the earth, and God says He will
" destroy them with the earth," but man alone has the stain of
344 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
guilt upon him. The realm of Nature is the same as when God
blessed all things.
252. III. It is in the consciousness of Jesus alone, as it is
interpreted by John, and less directly by the Synoptists, that we
find the sublime Wholeness of the ALL. ' God ' is the Man-
child. Creation is human. Here there are no Cherubim. When
Ptolem^^entered the Jewish Temple, and dared to go into the
most holy place, he saw nothing there. It was a true sight, and
was symbolic of much to the whole world. The true ' God ' was
then with men, and abiding upon the earth, though, like Jacob
of old, they " knew it not." He never had been angry, He never
had cursed ground or anything else. Death and Labour were
not curses but blessings. The death and labour that men knew,
this ' God ' could experience. No sin or evil stood between Him
and His creatures. Space-Being had been interpreted falsely
through terror and unclean mystery. God was everywhere to
be worshipped and glorified by the 'least of these' His
Brethren. He yet walked in His Garden-World, and men
could still hear His gracious voice, morning, noon, and night.
As a woman for a lost piece of money, as a shepherd for a lost
sheep, so God sought for men, and clasped the lost one to His
bosom as a father a son. The Cherubim had vanished. They
indeed went up out of history by the banks of the river Chebar,
where Ezekiel beheld them ; and, if men would but discern it,
the Yahweh-God enthroned upon them vanished also with them
there from the dim eyes of men forever.
For He never became Flesh and dwelt among them. The
Cherubim and the flame of a sword were His preference
rather, and although gracious and merciful enough to give
law and governance to a few> it was only to a chosen few ;
and His delight was not in the child's cot and the home-
dwellings, but on the terrible burning mountain, and in
the darkness of the blood -bedrenched temple. The Grand-
Isolation, the Non-Father, He remained to the last ; and there
never was, and never could be, a Communion existentially
established between Him and His creatures. It is the con-
sciousness of Jesus alone that has enriched the world by
amply supplying this its deepest want. All Creation is Life;
The Living One. He Fathers the Sun, the Rain, the Grass,
THE CHERUBIM 345
the Stone. He is Man. " He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father." " I and my Father are one." " In that day ye shall
know that I am in my Father, and ye in Me, and I in You."
TJie Personal " God" as isolated existentially from man^ vanishes ',
and the Space-Being is seen as whole with His Space-beings ;
Life and Light and Love going forth from Darkness ; Itself,
as ' Spirit,' not being manifest in the things that do appear.
CHAPTER XI
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS
253. Personality, as a predicate of either God or Man, and
as we commonly understand the term, will now be increasingly
evident as carrying too slight a content in our conception of
it to satisfy all that we demand in a consciousness of true
personality. As we think the term, it is merely conceptual
and objective and a product of our lesser judgments. Such
personality is, on the face of it, too hopelessly entangled in the
consciousness of sex, number, form, and limitation generally,
to be of much service to us in translating to our understanding
all that our consciousness of ' God ' or * Man ' yields to us.
In a similar way, the term Individuation is too much given
over to connotations of the Neuter to help us in realising God
or Man through our highest ideals of each. No doubt we place
Personality above Individuation when we speak of God or
Man, for an animal is an individual, and so may a stone be, or
indeed any object ; but when we exhaust the full contents of
both Individuation and Personality in predicating the beings of
God and Man, there is still something left in our consciousness
of each being which is not subsumed by these definitions a
something which we are conscious is more than the content of
either.
For Man in past ages has found it as easy and as reverend
to worship his God as * She} as we find it to worship our God as
'He! Likewise, of course, God has been adored as 'It.' Now,
what the consciousness of Man demands is that his * God ' shall
be more than all three, He, She, and It, combined. And the
very least that our consciousness can be satisfied with is a term
whose connotation will place the * God,' even though no more
than as a conscious Objective, on a plane of Being existentially
346
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 347
identical with that which is absolutely He, She, and It. It may
indeed be convenient and even necessary to the limitations of
human nature, to pray to a God who is, to consciousness, purely
He, She, or It; but the full content of the term God should
always connote something which sublates both Personality,
Impersonality, and Individuation, and such a connotation should
also be wholly based not only in human, but in Universal
Nature. In short, the term ' God,' to be adequate, should
connote the All that Nature Universal absolutely is He,
She, and It ; and the term which alone can undertake this great
task, either for purposes of Science, Philosophy, or Religion, is
simply and solely, the term which denotes absolute Reality, viz.,
Space. No other term yields a consciousness of God of greater
content, absolutely, than this one, for all others are necessarily
conditioned by this consciousness ; all objectivity being sub-
sumed in it.
254. The deep consciousness which lies behind the strenuous
urgements of these three great realms of human enquiry amply
sustains this fact. It is not personality, for example, that
Science is in especial haste to discover. Science yet waits for
her eyes by which she may discern personality. Such eye-
sight has not yet been evolved for her. Neither is Philosophy
bent exclusively on uncovering such an entity. Her gaze for
centuries has been hand-shaded in an eager quest for absolute
Unity. Religion, indeed, is anxious to preserve an Object
which will hear prayer, and strenuously maintains the Personal
Form to satisfy this inherent craving in man. But at bottom
the aggregate consciousness of the world, i.e., its Weltbewusstsein,
is ever progressing forward, expectant of a God whom, or Which,
neither priest nor cherubim, neither the Personal nor the
Impersonal Form, as we think these, can perfectly represent.
There is fundamentally in every man a demand to be free
from the restrictions of all personality and from the tram-
mels of Objectivity, absolutely. Nothing that has come forth
from man is actually commensurate with all he himself is; and
it is the likeness of himself, the perfect response of himself,
the Real, the What-he-is conscious he is, that he seeks in
heaven above and in the earth beneath. He himself is it, but
he himself can alone reveal himself to himself; and through his
348 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
consciousness of what he himself is can he ever find the
resultant Desire which he may realise to himself as his " God."
All therefore that we can expect any form, or interpretation of
consciousness to afford us is a still further realisation of this
consciousness in man. For what lies in the consciousness of
man has not yet been wholly plumbed. It is indeed what lies
there, yet unborn and unrealised to knowledge, that gives
initiative intensity to all research of every name. And its
space-nature forbids that we shall regard any system of
thought, any day-to-day, or century-to-century system of
knowledge whatsoever, or any formulation of religion, however
revered, as fixed and final. Man is immeasurably more than
these. They have their day. In his consciousness of what-he-
ts, he is not conscious of being for any day. Time indeed
never comes into his consciousness of what-he-is. His con-
sciousness of what-he-is sublates every conception of time.
Fundamentally he is not durational as compared with indura-
tional Being othered from himself. He is not one but whole ;
whole without a consciousness of parts or limits. And his
' God ' must not be less than this Being of his consciousness.
255. The largest contribution to the revelation and realisa-
tion of this human consciousness has undoubtedly been conferred
upon the race of man by Jesus of Nazareth. His contribution
has been indeed so vast that its content has been by universal
consent set aside as not human at all but * divine.' Men have
refused to believe that human nature, as it stood up in itself,
was capable of that insight into Reality which He has revealed.
So far has man despised and derided the divine in man, that he
has been compelled to separate Jesus into 'two natures' in
order to believe Him. He has cleft Truth into parts, and ever
since has wandered far, searching for the mysterious Unity
which should satisfy him that Truth, Man-truth, could be truth
of both God and Man. He has wearied himself through long
centuries doubting if Truth or Reality might after all be more
than either of these concepts, as he thought them. Hence the
full consciousness of Jesus has never been permitted to sway
the whole field of human thought. But this is the claim which
Jesus makes. He assumes to reveal all that the 6W-concept
can contain, and all that is possible in the concept, Man. He
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 349
claims to draw all men without exception unto Himself. But
His conscious position is that Man shall only realise his God-
concept through and in the consciousness of what-he-is, as Man,
and that every conception of God shall have every conception of
Man sublated within it, and vice versa.
256. And the astounding feature of the Jesus-consciousness
is that it stands secure in itself, without any collateral supports
from anything that the human mind, in its sciences and
philosophies, can supply. It is a consciousness which while
most based in the world, as we think it, passes easily beyond
the world, and which while stamped with every vulgar linea-
ment of the human being, reflects at the same time, such Deity
as man never has transcended in thought or consciousness
either before or since. The Church yet dimly gropes after
realising this Deity in her Creed and Worship. Moreover, the
witnesses of the Jesus-consciousness are not dependent upon
the authentications of History or the proofs of logical reasoning
and wisdom. It is true indeed, the All speaks for him. The
ages have paid unconscious testimony to the fact that His
consciousness is not like others, national or racial, continental
or world-embracing, solar or orbital, but Cosmical, and Spatial.
But the consciousness He realises through feeling, thought, and
conation, or through all that man's experience encloses, is, as to
content, and as compared with all other realisations of the
bottom consciousness in Man, a truly Space-Consciousness.
257. But in what we have here ventured to say of this
space-consciousness of Jesus, we must ask the reader to
remember that His teaching often thrills great chords in us
which lie silent and irresponsive to weaker hands than His.
Like Tartini's third note, which no finger ever touches, and
which leaps forth unbidden and free from among the other
harmonies of the instrument, so from amid the music of His
words and our own answering thoughts, there sometimes leap
voices that, independent of all words, reveal far more than
word or thought can convey. In this sense, He indeed spake
as never man spake ; evoking from apparently dead symbols,
empty as shells of ocean, world-commanding principalities and
powers. His Life and Teaching are an Eolian Lyre over
350 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
which the breath of Humanity has swept with its greatest
forces of passion and intellect through many successive
centuries; yet always freely giving response and direction to
what was greatest in each ; the rudest and most sceptical minds
oftentimes calling out its mightiest and sweetest tones.
258. Neither ancient nor modern philosophy supplies a
criterion for such a consciousness as His. Philosophy has
passed on her eager way independent of His method. She
found Him at the well, and offered Him a gift which gives but
temporary satisfaction, oblivious that He possessed for her the
gift which creates both a living Reason and highest ' God ' in
the human spirit. She has affirmed the absolute duality of
Jerusalem and Gerizim, Jew and Samaritan, places and persons,
self and not-self, and has devoutly hoped for the coming of the
Messiah who should reveal the Unity beyond these Differences,
unaware that in His presence even the deep difference supposed
to yawn between Human and Divine had vanished forever.
" I and my Father are one" (John, x. 30). " He that receiveth
me receiveth not me but him that sent me " (Mark, ix. 37). " Ye
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect "
(Matt. v. 48). Both in Being and perfection of Being, no
difference is predicated as necessary and ultimate between Man
and The Father.
259. Before this Presence the conception of ' personality '
professed by philosophy becomes impossible. She affirms
* Self-consciousness ' to be the ultimate criterion of highest
Reality, but in the presence of the consciousness of Jesus her
consciousness of 'Self can only be true when this 'Self is
shown to connote a far deeper content to thought than a ' Self
which is qualifiable as separate, independent, unsubstantial, and
limited to itself in its being. In the consciousness of Jesus,
Self is not limited in any sense. There is no acknowledgment
in it that the Self-we-are has edges, boundaries, divisional
partitions between itself and all else that Is. It is the admission
of such a 'Self as necessarily limited in its essence which has
spread wide confusion through all philosophical thought. That
both Religion and Philosophy should have calmly accepted
such a meagre resultant of our being, and have accepted it so
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 351
persistently and for so long, is not flattering to the inward
vision, and, in the profoundest sense, implies a gross desertion
of the Master. For all that Philosophy has sought lies open and
full in the consciousness of Jesus.
260. We fully admit, of course, that for purposes of teaching,
and as an accommodation to human weakness, He has often
employed the * Self which philosophy has accepted as ultimate,
especially where His doctrine touches upon the conceptual
relationship of man to man, and of man to God. Of necessity,
He was bound to take up every conception of personality,
' human ' or ' divine/ in order to exhaust its value and surpass
and sublate it. And as each conception of personality
determines a new conception of relationship, His teaching is
constantly subject to such variations of standpoint, or judgment-
value. This was necessary. He speaks, for example, of " the
throne of God and Him that sitteth thereon" (Matt, xxiii. 22),
following the ordinary conceptions of men, and much as we yet
speak of God being " up in the sky." He also in the same way
defines Himself as coming from God and going to God, as if
distance divided them in their beings. The great bulk of His
Teaching is indeed based no deeper than upon these time-
honoured categories and conceptions of personality. The point
of last importance is, however, not that He uses these con-
ceptions at all, but that, unlike our highest philosophies,
He transcends them finally. Always, without exception, when
it is necessary to soar to the highest plane of His conscious-
ness, all ' particularity ' and limitation of the personal * Self '
vanishes, and then we stand with Him on the level of
universal Space, in all that that consciousness gives to us of
Absolute or Whole-Being. It is difficult for us to see how
He could have taught mankind in any other way, His circum-
stances, His surroundings, and the conditions of human
intelligence being what they were in His time. But the
all-important facts stand out clearly (i) that the absolutely
limited context of personality is never present in His mind
as it is always in ours, and was in theirs that heard Him ;
and (2) that such a conception of personality is constantly
assumed in His thought as not permanent \ but contingent, tem-
porary, and mediatory.
352 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
261. It is the grandeur of the conscious realisation of what-
we-are, by Jesus, that He gives our consciousness of it as fixed
a permanence or unchangeableness of its truth as we have for
our consciousness of the permanence of Space. And in this
respect our consciousness of the ' Self or personality of both
ancient and modern psychologico-philosophy yields quite the
opposite conviction. We have tried to show that every realisa-
tion of the psychological * Self/ or personality, is as uncertain
and variable in its content as words can well describe it. And
no better proof could be given us that such a self, or personality,
must rest on false foundations. What is not finally permanent,
i.e. Unchangeable, is finally not true. We cannot conceive any-
thing to be finally true, or Real, until it is possible for us to
conceive it as finally permanent. But the Self of Kant, the Self
of Hume, the Self of Hegel, and the Selves of many lesser and
more modern thinkers, give us anything but a certainty of their
permanence, as we think them and are conscious of them. Not
one of them meets the full consciousness of the permanence of
What-we-are, and of which we are all conscious as being. Not
one of them, that is, realises in us that consciousness of eternal
permanence for what-we-are which we realise in our conscious-
ness for what space Is. But this is the point at issue. For we
have an actual consciousness of permanence for what-we-are as
full, as deep, and as exhaustive, as we can possibly have for
Space. And until philosophy realises a Self, or Personality,
equal in conscious permanence to the Is-permanence of Space,
all her building of thought-systems will rest on sand. Such
realisations of what-we-are, as she has given us in her state-
ments of the ' Self of her Consciousness, no sane man can
accept as equal to the consciousness which he has of himself.
Whatever we may accept, we cannot accept that. And what we
here attempt to affirm in all that follows, is that Jesus has
realised for human conception and conviction that consciousness
of What-we-are which does possess the absolute fulness of
content which alone can be derived from our consciousness of
Space-Being. His consciousness of What-we-are, we repeat,
yields the same permanence of Being which is given us in our
consciousness of Space. Or, in other words, we can not think
differently of What-we-are, as Jesus realises it in His teaching,
and of Space-Being.
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 353
262. We have already tried to show that no other conscious-
ness save our consciousness of Space gives us a consciousness of
Permanence as Whole; that is, Permanence as having no
possible relativity of Impermanence. We have also attempted
to prove that Science and Philosophy invariably gravitate
towards this space-consciousness when respectively they touch
upon the ultimate categories of Being and Thought. Similarly,
we have seen that the space-consciousness is the ultimate one in
the Deistical consciousness which is embodied in all the great
religions of mankind. We shall now try to unfold this space-
consciousness, as far as our poor abilities will carry us, as being
the consciousness which is the ultimate one in all the Teaching
of The Master. And for this purpose, our thoughts must con-
centrate upon such questions as, What does He mean by
'Personality' as set forth by Him in the revelation-terms of
' Father/ ' Son,' and ' Holy Spirit ' ? What does He mean by
Creation, or * Heaven and Earth ' ? What attitude does He
maintain to the great and almost universal consciousness of the
Past that All Flows, and towards the universal consciousness
that likewise something 'abideth forever'? What in Himself
does He regard as ' passing away,' and what as ' fixed in its
everlasting seat'? Does He answer both Heraclitus and
Parmenides from a consciousness which subsumes both the
Motional and the Static ? Or, again, has He a consciousness
that the Flow and the Permanent are, have been, and shall be,
existentially separated ? Are personalities and Creation, or
human nature and Universal Nature, existentially divided in
being, now and forever? Similarly, in His teaching, Are Good
and Evil, Righteousness and Sin, necessarily and existentially
apart now and forever ? Or, has He a consciousness in which
they are wholly sublated, and their divisions, as we cogitate
them, annulled ? We have to consider, in brief, the conscious-
ness of Jesus regarding, (i.) Personality ', (ii.) Creational or Cosmic
Process, (iii.) Ethical Process , together with the basis of conscious
Permanence which underlies their Flow.
These are, we presume to think, the principal considerations
which present themselves to us in the Doctrine of Jesus. They
are usually held to be questions beyond all exhaustive treatment,
and this must be our attitude towards them. This book is but
a sketch, and we do not profess to do more than indicate out-
z
354 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
lines. We shall be amply content if we can but induce others
to go further and deepen the soil in which we have endeavoured
to plant a few feeble stakes. And knowing how sacred this
ground is to ' all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth/
we crave indulgence from our readers if, here and there, we
must assert conceptions regarding Most Holy Being which may
be contrary to those long held by them and long consecrated by
time and tradition. We can only profess never to remove what
cannot be replaced by better, and never to pull down without
building what we are convinced is superior, more enduring, and
more in harmony with the inmost mind of the great Revealer.
The present position of the World-Thought of Man is moving
forward. In such a process we believe the only true Guide to
be not the Light of Greece, nor of Europe, nor of East or West,
but " The Light of the World." And if we are all convinced
that the whole of this Light has not been yet exhausted, then
a further search cannot seem to be totally unreasonable. We
may at least cherish the open mind.
263. From the position taken up in the preceding chapters,
and remembering that we stand upon the veracity not of History
but of Consciousness, we can now freely say that, as philosophi-
cally cognized, all limitations and particularity of the * Personal
Self are completely swept away in such expressions as, " I and
the Father are one," " I am in the Father and the Father in me."
Jesus speaks in dual language but He affirms a Unit-Fact with
reference to His own and the personality of His Father. He
names them ' I ' and * Father/ but the two are ' one ' being, and
both are described as ' in ' each other. He also breaks down
personality to substantiate mere individuality, for the word for
' one/ ev, is neuter. We cannot have a conception of such Being
save as Unit-Being. That is, we cannot affirm isolated being, or
personality, for either Jesus or the Father. Neither are the
two brought together merely ; they are one being. They are
one, independent of our thought-conceptions of Father and
Son (John, x. 30).
When Jesus embraces men within this inclusive language,
He makes the same affirmation of Unit-Being for Himself, the
Father, and His disciples. " Abide in me and I in you."
" Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 355
may be in us." " In that day ye shall know that I am in my
Father, and ye in me, and I in you." These passages are all
from the John Gospel, but the facts of personality, as He views
it, are as clearly stated in the words of St Mark, " Whosoever
receiveth me, receiveth not me, but Him that sent me." " Who-
soever shall receive one of such little children in my name,
receiveth me " (ix. 37), and in Matt x. 40, " He that receiveth
you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth Him that
sent me." John only emphasises these statements, xii. 44, 45 ;
xiii. 20, " He that beholdeth me beholdeth Him that sent me."
Being is not divided. But the narrowness of our conceptions
of personalities prevents us from grasping such Unity.
The great fact is stated that Personality is under process of
sublation. Relationship of persons is stated only to be denied
by a higher affirmation of the Unity of Being. Each is in all,
and all is in each. There are no verges or edges between each
personality. Being is Unit-Being although terms of duality are
employed to define its various phases. But we should note
that this mode of cogitation is not quite original in Jesus. It is
necessarily a common method of consciousness in man. We
ourselves use it in affirming Unit-Being under the divisive terms
of body, mind, and spirit. We say, These three are one-person.
Jesus but extends the process of cogitation of unit-personality
to embrace all personalties, either ' Divine ' or ' Human.' We
find in our consciousness the unity which lies beyond the
difference of body, mind, and spirit ; and, for each unit-person-
ality so found, He finds a further Unit-Being lying beyond
these unit-personalities, in which Father, Son, and Disciples
are * in ' each other, and ' one.' Particular personality is
sublated in a higher Unit-Personality lying beyond each.
Neither Father, Son, nor Disciples can be conceived as wholly
and completely isolated individual persons. ' Jesus regards them
as 'One.' "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
Again, Jesus holds that Father and Son dwell in a man.
" The spirit of your Father," He says, " speaketh in you "
(Matt x. 20). " We will come unto him, and make our abode
with him " (John, xiv. 23).
264. We repeat, then, that what we have to emphasise in
this stage of our reasoning, is the fact of Process of Personality \
356 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
or the Impermanence of Personality so far as the consciousness
of Jesus reveals it in and under such terms as Father, Son, and
individual Men. Being, so far, is shown to be not fixed but
under Flow. All being does not rest in the Father, as
Permanent or Unchanging Personality, for the Father Himself
is conceived as in Jesus the Son, and as one with Him, and
again as in Men and one with them. Even in receiving the
child, Jesus or any child, we receive the Father. And if we
remember that our consciousness of Whole-Being, or what we
dare to call ' God/ cannot be put within the narrow definitions
of sex-terms, Father or Child, we shall have no difficulty in
realising that Jesus does not seek to affirm Ultimate Personality
in even the holy name of Father. This Father-term limits our
consciousness of Being, Is, just as much as do the individual
names of men in general. Our consciousness of ' God ' must
be carried beyond all connotations of Sex and Number and
Objectivity.
265. The God-Name of* Father ' is a luminous and graciously
pre-eminent one in the Doctrine of Jesus. It is admitted by all
that He puts aside every name for God which was used in the
ancient times, with the exception of * Father ' and * Spirit.' God
is not, to Jesus, ' Yahweh,' or 'Jupiter,' or 'Zeus,' 'Lord of
Hosts," I am,' 'Judge of all the earth,' 'El,' 'El Shaddai,' or
any other than ' Father ' or ' Spirit.' These ' God '-conceptions
were possibly exhausted even for His hearers. We shall try to
show that in verity no other names for ' God ' than Father and
Spirit can have a sufficient basis in reality corresponding to the
Reality of what Is.
266. We are not undervaluing therefore the vast importance
of the Father-term for God, as Jesus uses it, when we say that
even this term comes short in Jesus' consciousness for all that
He desires to express in His teaching of ' God.' His expression,
"God is Spirit" has quite other connotations than His phrase,
" My Father " ; and we see Him emphasise the difference in His
announcement, " I am ascending unto my Father and your
Father, and my God and your God " (John, xx. 17), and still more
so perhaps in His words to the woman of Samaria (John, iv. 23,
24), " But the hour cometh, arid now is, when the true worshippers
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 357
shall worship the Father in spirit and truth : for such doth the
Father seek to be his worshippers. God is Spirit, and they that
worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Deity is given
to our consciousness (i) in conceptual form as Father -, and (2) as
inconceptual Spirit, transcending all thought. And clearly, in
these passages, the personal Father, as a conception of His
conscious thought, is sublated in a wider consciousness of the
' God ' who is Spirit and absolutely Whole-Being. The ' Father '-
term passes from a consciousness of personality, such as we
conceive for ourselves, into a consciousness of c God '-Being, or
Spirit, where a consciousness of such personality is impossible
to the human mind. But while we have a consciousness of the
inadequacy of the ' Father '-term in such connection, and have
to yield it up into the higher * Spirit '-term, we are never con-
scious that Father and Spirit are absolutely two beings. No
more has Jesus a consciousness that they are Othered from
Himself. He is one with the Father. And as we have seen,
He regards His disciples as existentially 'in' Himself, as well
as 'one' with Himself in the Father. We shall also see that
He affirms Himself to be one with the Spirit.
267. It is this language which has led many thinkers to
believe that Jesus could not be Human. There is, however, no
confusion in the mind of Jesus, as there is in ours, with reference
to the content of the term * Human.' We have different con-
texts of* Human' and ' Divine' in our consciousness and regard
them as correlatives in Being as in conception. It is held
that the two terms connote two kinds of Being, two different
characters, and quite different qualities of character. To Jesus,
the Human is never divisible from the Divine. Is, commands,
in His consciousness, Whole-Being ; and it is this limitless
consciousness in Him which covers our greatest ideations of
human personality as well as the loftiest conceptions which we
have of * God.'
This consciousness of Whole-Being haunting every divided
conception of it, named either as Son, Father, or Spirit, is
distinctly enough brought out in the almost hopeless attempt
of Jesus to interpret to His disciples What-He-was (John,
xiv.-xvii.). He has there previously shown Himself to be
Child, Son of Man, Man-Being. He then widens this concep-
358 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
tion till He can say " I am in the Father and the Father in
me." " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," and
similar passages. But this consciousness does not exhaust
His consciousness of Whole-Being. He has a consciousness
of Spirit-Being as well as of Father-Son Being. This Being
" the world cannot receive : for it beholdeth Him not, neither
knoweth Him." Spirit-Being, that is, is not conceptual to the
human mind. Father-Being, as Life-Being, gives something
of motion and form to the senses, and He is seen as Jesus, but
the Spirit-Being is not conceived in this way. But, all the
same, He is known by a knowledge which is wide-open with
the consciousness of Being, or what-we-are ; and consequently
Jesus can say, " But ye know Him, for He abideth with (or,
by) you, and shall be (or, is) in you." The disciples know the
Spirit- Being in the intimacy of knowing what-they-are. " If I
by the Spirit of God cast out devils," is also, as spoken by
Jesus, an assumption that such Spirit is same-being with His
own, as is also the fact that the Spirit-Being proceedeth forth
from both Father-and-Son-Being. He also testified that men
must be "born of the Spirit," and thus to draw their being from
His.
What we actually see in such teaching is a consciousness
of Being in Jesus which takes up, one by one, every conception
of Being held by men, and breaks down the limitations of each
in an ever-ascending and extending conception of Being till
every form of personality and individuality vanishes in a
wide-open conception of Whole-Being which is identical with
our consciousness of what-we-are ; and which cannot be
affirmed otherwise than as Space-Being, having neither ideation
nor quality.
What we must keep steadily in view, however, is the all-
important fact that the Master in interpreting Being-which-
doth-not-Appear never traces Being to an Ego, an Idea, a
Notion, a ' presupposition,' a Principle of Unity, or a Unity of
any description, which has never known personality, but to
Being which is All-we-are, and in which both personality and
impersonality are sublated, exalted, and glorified. The con-
ception of Being which He takes from us, and rends as a veil,
continually reveals beyond itself all-we-are on a vaster and
fuller elevation. As He becomes 'one' with Higher-Being
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 359
it is Father-Being. And as both become one with still higher
Being, such negation of Father - and - Son to Nothingness,
reveals Spirit-Being as asserting a far deeper affirmation of
Being than either, in proceeding from them, and so, through
their negation, into our knowledge and consciousness as
Being far ampler, limitless ; yet neither as Personal nor Im-
personal, but as both subsumed and * glorified.' " He shall
glorify ME," was the Master's consciousness with reference to
His ' personality.'
We observe, too, that His process of transcension of all our
conceptions of being is always based in Nature-Being. Child,
Son, Father, are all terms based ultimately on the category of
Life and Life-Giving. And Life is Nature's highest category
of Being. The Spirit-Being seems to be not so conditioned,
and appears to have nothing to do with Nature. We then
speak of it as super-natural. But in Jesus' consciousness Spirit-
Being is our supreme conception of the Giver of Life. " It is
the Spirit that quickeneth" Spirit-Being is Nature-in-Excelsis.
Further, when He also breaks down the conception of Spirit-
Being, as being apparently personal, and speaks of Himself as
Spirit, and man as Spirit-being who must worship in spirit and
truth, we discern that He has rent all conceptual veils of being
absolutely, and stands alone with His own consciousness of
What-He-Is. He is then no longer Son, Father, or Spirit;
He is no longer conceivably personal, or qualifiable by terms
of sex, number, cause, effect, form, or substance ; He is solely
possible of interpretation to Himself in the terms " I Am."
And it is this consciousness which, while it sublates and negates
all qualities which men attribute to being by any conceptions
of it, personal or otherwise, at the same instance transcends
them absolutely, for He said, "Before Abraham was, I Am"
He thus revealed a consciousness which exalts Being above
both World and Time, and is not possible of apprehension by
the human mind except idiomatically as Space-Being. And
all men yet have this ultimate consciousness of what-they-are.
268. It will now be perhaps more apparent that the modern
philosophical methods of interpreting the God-Consciousness
in man, and the method of Jesus, are not identical in basis. We
have already given instances of the space-consciousness as being
360 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the refuge of thinkers who seek to find the ' unity beyond the
difference' of all particular being, and also of their distrust of
this consciousness as a basis of Truth, or Reality. They have,
indeed, deliberately ignored this space - consciousness, and
stigmatised it as the consciousness of the Untrue and Unreal !
Now, as we are once more considering Personality in the
light of the loftiest conceptions of that category, that is, the God-
Conception, as it lies in the consciousness of the Great Revealer,
we think it helpful here for purposes of contrast and emphasis,
to give a fresh statement of our Ultimate Consciousness as it
has been interpreted for a personal conception of Man and God
by one whom all modern thinkers have justly honoured.
We turn then to Prof. Edward Caird's Evolution and
Religion^ vol. i. p. 67. He is there treating of the * definition
of religion/ and is specially analysing the terms Subject and
Object, in relation to that definition. He has just said, " We
know the object only as we bring it back to the unity of the self;
we know the subject only as we realise it in the object " (p. 66).
He then reasons, " The two, subject and object, are the extreme
terms in the difference which is essential to our rational life.
Each of them presupposes the other, and therefore neither can
be regarded as producing the other. Hence, we are compelled
to think of them both as rooted in a still higher principle, which
is at once the source of their relatively independent existence
and the all-embracing unity that limits their independence.
This principle, therefore, may be imaged as a crystal sphere
that holds them together, and which, through its very
transparency, is apt to escape our notice, yet which must
always be there as the condition and limit of their operation.
To put it more directly, the idea of an absolute unity which
transcends all the oppositions of finitude, and especially the
last opposition which includes all others the opposition of
subject and object is the ultimate presupposition of our conscious-
ness" (his italics) (see also p. 195, vol. i.).
Again, on p. 69, he says, " The germ of the idea of God as
the ultimate unity of being and knowing, subject and object,
must in some way be present in every rational consciousness.
For such a consciousness necessarily involves the idea of the
self and the not-self, the ego and the world, as distinct yet in
relation, /.*., as opposed within a unity. The clear reflective
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 361
consciousness of the object without, of the subject within, and
of God as the absolute reality which is beyond and beneath
both as one complete rational consciousness in which each of
these terms is clearly distinguished and definitely related to the
others is, in the nature of the case, a late acquisition of man's
spirit, one that can come to him only as the result of a long
process of development. But the three elements are there in
the mind of the simplest human being who opens his eyes upon
the world, who distinguishes himself from it yet relates himself
to it."
It is evident that unconsciously the space consciousness is a
forceful one and basal in the consciousness of Prof. Caird. It
could scarcely be better stated either for eye or mind, than as
a ' crystal sphere,' nor more clearly characterised than as " very
transparent." In so expressing himself he states our daily
consciousness of space through the experience of the senses,
and what we always obtain in any consciousness of what-we-are.
It will also be noted that Prof. Caird acknowledges that he
is "compelled to think of" subject and object, self and not-self,
not as sublated in this 'crystal' consciousness, but as "rooted
in " and held together in it. Self, Not-self, and this * ultimate
presupposition of our consciousness ' are not identical in being
but have only a certain contactual unity in it. Moreover, the
* presupposition ' is not assured such concreteness in our
consciousness as are ' Self,' and ' Not-self.' His reasoning
regarding it is not satisfied until he first assumes that it must
be " the idea of God " meaning by that, in the first instance,
only the idea of an absolute principle of unity which binds in
one " all thinking things, all objects of all thought," which is at
once the source of being to all things that are, and " of knowing
to all beings that know," p. 68 (italics ours). " We are
compelled," he affirms, " to think of them both as rooted in a
still higher principle."
269. This is for the Master of Balliol, ' the root and basis of
religion in the nature of our intelligence,' p. 64. " When we
consider," he says, " the general nature of our conscious life our
life as rational beings endowed with the powers of thinking and
willing we find that it is defined and, so to speak, circum-
scribed by three ideas, which are closely, and even indissolubly
362 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
connected with each other." These he names the Not-self, or
Object; the Self, or Subject; and 'God' as the " idea of 'the
unity which is pre-supposed in the difference of the Self and
Not-self^ and within which they act and react on each other"
p. 64 (latter italics ours).
These three ideas are indeed supposed to sum the content of
our intelligence regarding religion. The real fact, however, is
that they but float on the surface of our consciousness, and
What thinks and rationalises with them lies far below all three.
That these * three ideas' are ideas, is a sufficient admission that
they are not What-we-are. We think them. We are conscious
of being apart from them in our thinking them. No doubt,
Prof. Caird would retort that " What-we-are " is the " Self," and
* them ' the Not-self. And he would thus assume that there
are three concrete beings corresponding to these ''three
ideas' But this is the kernel of the whole matter; for
philosophy of this stamp never gives us the/#^ which connects
the ideas of our conscious thought with all that we call Not-self.
* God' is indeed said to be the "all-embracing unity" of these
two other ideas, Self and Not-self; but 'God' is itself but one
of the three ideas, and never gives us any more consciousness of
possessing concrete being than do the other ideas. We simply
whirl our thoughts around a circle in reasoning in this fashion.
And to assume that this " principle of Unity " is the source of
all being and knowing, is to beg the whole question of Being
and Knowing.
The explanation of the dilemma lies in his statement that
these three ideas " are closely, and even indissolubly, connected
with each other." For he here admits existential separation for
Self) Not-self^ and God. These are three Unit-beings which are
connected : connected, yet separate. Therefore there is not the
remotest hope that we can ever wipe out this existential
sunderance unless we find in ourselves a consciousness which
proves them to be strongly Undivided, that is, Whole. But
this consciousness, in this philosophy, is never forthcoming, for
all that even the " all-embracing unity " of ' God ' gives us is
"connection? We are glad, however, to get even this con-
cession, for it is a confession of a consciousness which yields a
content of drawing-together ^ and of even 'indissoluble connec-
tion ' of all three ideas. But Prof. Caird nowhere states the
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 363
concrete fact, which is sustained in our consciousness as being
fact) in which that ' indissoluble connection ' is based. The
three ideas are left to unite themselves in some mysterious
manner.
But again it may be said that ' God ' supplies this concrete
fact of our consciousness. If so, then it is greater than these
1 three ideas ' themselves, each of which is shown as just ' con-
nected' with each other, without any concrete fact beyond
either. For this ' God/ this " principle of Unity," is no more
than a product of our consciousness even as the Self subject
and the Not-self object are. Our questions are never answered,
that is, Why such a consciousness of "all-embracing unity"
should arise in us at all ; and when it does arise, how we invest
this mere ' Principle of Unity ' with the concrete being of a
Person ; and how once more, we exalt this Person to be * God/
and how this ' God' is enabled to sublate in Himself as Whole-
Being, the personal self we are, and the impersonal Not-self
we are not? It is clear that this mode of reasoning, and this
meagre basis of being, never frees us from the shackles of
numbered, separated, individual beings, and their imaginary
Unity, a Unity, moreover, which is never equal to that Whole-
Being which should be adequate to the inclusion of Space-
Being in our consciousness, along with these three ideas, and
which should thus give us an existential wholeness for Self,
Not-self, and * God/ in which no consciousness of parts, or
connections, could be even hinted at. But all we reach by this
path is a space-surrounded Total of ' Three Ideas,' with the great
consciousness of space-being entirely ignored.
270. The question must be asked, however, if we are to take
our stand on a scientific basis, Of what are we all conscious as
beyond any ' subject ' or any * object ' ? Is it a ' principle/ an
' idea/ a unity, or ' God ' ? We answer without fear of contra-
diction, it is none of these. Prof. Caird says it is a conscious-
ness of clear "crystal sphere," "which through its very
transparency is apt to escape our notice." We may call it
anything we please; Space is the one word which answers the
consciousness we all have of it. And as such it is Being which
transcends all ' presupposition.' It is the most concrete of all
facts. And it is more than a unity ; for Unity never answers
364 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to our consciousness of Whole-Being. Even if we did obtain
the true unity of all three * ideas,' Subject, Object, and God, such
a unity would never be more in our consciousness than a tied-up
Total, and still very far from Whole-Being. The Total so
united would be no more in our consciousness than an ' Object '
itself, seeing that it would be space-surrounded, and relative to
that space which was not included in its own being existentially.
271. This ' God ' so assumed for the ' ultimate presupposition
of our consciousness ' is scarcely much other than the ' Brahma '
of the Easterns, or the ' Unknown ' of the Agnostics, the latter of
whom define it more properly by that term. For it no more
comes within the scope of knowledge than the Agnostic
' Unknown.' The epistemological sphere, Prof. Caird discerns
to be circumscribed by the two extremes of 'subject and
object.' He says that their difference, again, is " essential to
our rational life." It is essential, i.e., to our knowledge of
anything that we should postulate 'subject' as knowing and
' object ' as known. He makes that an absolute statement. He
seems to imply that we cannot have possible knowledge unless
division of subject and object precede the act of knowing. But
this is an assumption which cannot be maintained. Whole-
Being in such a case, must have divided itself before knowing
that such Being was divided! It runs the epistemological
problem into the hole where * subject ' and ' object ' worry each
other into a unity called * subject-object ' in order to satisfy the
question, How do I know myself when I am not divided into
two things, ' subject ' and ' object ' ? The unsatisfactory nature
of this solution is by implication admitted by Prof. Caird when
he affirms that neither * subject ' nor ' object ' can be conceived
as having caused or ' produced ' the other. Neither of them
gives us a consciousness of self-existence and self-determination.
" Hence," he reasons, u we are compelled to think of the source
of their relatively independent existence and the all-embracing
unity that limit their independence." We are compelled, in
short, to presuppose, or invent ' God ' to satisfy reason.
But why "compelled"? Because, indeed, our consciousness
forces us, knowing more than either * subject ' or * object ' gives to
it. And again, why " all-embracing unity " ? Because evidently
the space-consciousness in Prof. Caird refuses to be satisfied with
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 365
anything less than an " all-embracing " resultant consciousness
in which * subject ' and * object ' are sublated as Whole-Being.
But no ' Unity ' could do this. ' Such a ' God ' would be a mere
* Object' Himself, quite apart from us subjects who should know
Him. And, once more, we are never given a consciousness of
any thing concrete in which this " all-embracing Unity " is
based. In its reality it is unknown. It is a ' presupposition ' !
272. The entire epistemological sphere in this way resolves
itself into a quagmire, out of which it is not possible to extricate
ourselves with any self-respect. The fallacy of this theory of
knowledge lies in this same assumption of difference of 'subject'
and * object ' as " essential to our rational life." Knowledge is
assumed to end with the disappearance of all the ' qualities ' and
' quantities,' and other categories which mediate what-is to our
consciousness of its being. Hegel, as we saw, declared that,
when all qualities were taken away from a thing, that thing
ceased to be. Knowledge of it, that is, became impossible.
But here is Prof. Caird admitting that beyond both 'subject'
and ' object ' we have a knowledge of some " all-embracing
Unity " or " principle " which we are compelled to accept as the
first condition for knowing either the one or the other. Now
what quality or qualities, or what category does this "all-
embracing unity" possess by which it is brought into the sphere
of epistemological possibility ? Absolutely none. Prof. Caird
is correct in characterising it as simply " crystal sphere," and
" by its very transparency apt to escape our notice." Ordinary
men cannot affirm it to be other than space-being. And it is ' our
ultimate consciousness,' though it is not a ' presupposition,' but
the greatest Fact in that consciousness. It is perfectly true
that, according to the limits which Epistemology usually sets
herself, all knowledge ends with cessation of those ' qualities ' and
' quantities ' and other categories by which we are said to
apprehend ' subjects ' and ' objects.' But we dispute these limits
as final for knowledge. Our ' rational life ' transcends such
limitations of subject and object, as philosophy has defined these.
Our ' ultimate consciousness ' of space-being never gives us less
than a complete affirmation of self-existence and self-determina-
tion as space-being. We have no consciousness of ever having
been caused, or " produced." No consciousness of space-being
366 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ever yields a consciousness of having been caused, and it
is the ' ultimate consciousness ' of what-z^-are. Neither can
' difference ' be found in this ' transparent ' consciousness. Nor
can limits be set to it. It is not even conceivable as two
things ' united ' in a Totality. It yields only a consciousness of
Whole-Being, in which 'difference' is the inconceivable (pp. 15,
33, 257).
273. But this consciousness ', we repeat, is also Knowledge of
what-we-are. It is often loosely asserted that this is the sphere
of Faith, and that it is not the realm of Knowledge at all. For
all ordinary purposes of general speech and understanding, this
distinction may be accepted, but in strict thinking it is where
knowledge and faith are whole. Strip the * I ' of its body, its
mind, its earthly qualities, and reduce it till you can only say it
is * clear sphere/ ' very transparent/ and when you have done
this you will not be reduced to a despairing ' faith ' or belief that
you are. You will know that you are, for you will have the
sure consciousness of being what - you - are, and that very
certainty will be also faith. And if this consciousness be not
a part of 'our rational life/ then truly Faith and Reason are
cleft with an immeasurable ' difference.' But if our ' ultimate
consciousness' of what-we-are is to be the standard of all
knowledge as well as of all certainty, trust, or ' faith ' in what-is,
then knowledge must be conceived as transcending the media-
tion of difference of ' subject ' and ' object/ the limitations of the
individual and the particular, and as being common in that
consciousness of space-being in which all relativity absolutely
resolves itself into Whole-Being. And no conception or
consciousness of ' God ' can give us more.
274. Knowledge, indeed, cannot be confined to the limits of
conceptuality. There is that which we know, in our conscious-
ness of space-being, which no concept ever reaches, encloses, or
exhausts within itself. And we cannot rationalise this fact save
by realising that there is also wide-open, limitless conceptuality,
co-ordinating and whole with consciousness itself, as well as a
closed and constricted conceptuality ; and that it is such
horizonless conceptuality which is the basis of that knowledge
which is whole in our consciousness of space-being, or what-we-
are. It is, indeed, this Whole-Knowledge of what-we-are that
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 367
ever transcends every other knowledge which has form and
limitation in our ordinary concepts. It is Is-Knowledge, which
Omniscience itself never transcends ( 172).
275. It is in the sphere of this unbroken, and unbreakable
consciousness that Jesus boldly speaks of knowing the Truth,
and knowing Himself as Truth, and again of knowing the only
true God. Truth in such a statement is not fragmentary but
Whole Truth. It is Fact. There is no other Truth. It is
Reality in its Wholeness. It includes Jesus, the Father, and
the Disciples. They are all ' one.' As we shall see, it is far
more than * one.'
Hence, also, His conception of the identity of 'action , or whole-
ness of process and purpose pervading the ' personalities ' of
Father, Son, and Disciples. His consciousness that Being is
whole, rationalises the consciousness that purpose and action
must be whole also. Hence His words, He declares, are not His
own but His that sent Him. The Father in Him doeth His
works. But again, " He that believeth on me, the works that I
do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do,
because I go to the Father" (John, xiv. 12).
His disciples, e.g., believed that He had * cursed 1 a fig-tree
(Mark, xi. 14, 20-23). Peter at least interpreted His action
as that of cursing the tree (Mark, xi. 21). But if we in-
clude the account of Matt. xxi. 18-22, and place, alongside of
it, Luke's parable of the fig-tree planted in the vineyard (xiii.
6-9), we realise that Jesus aims to teach His disciples that
He Himself was as much identified with the change we call
Death as with that of Life. There was no 'curse.' Jesus
called upon them to do these things which He did. The Power
was as much in them as in Him. " If ye have faith, and doubt
not,j shall not only do what is done to the fig-tree -, but even if
ye shall say unto this mountain," etc. Energy is whole, and is
as much growth and life as decay and death, and Nature as a
sphere of power is not divided from either God, Jesus, or any
human personality, but is one with all and everyone. So also
Will, as equal to Whole-Energy, is as full-toned in the Human
as in the Divine. Therefore faith in Himself was not required
specially, as if He had a monopoly of Power. " Have faith in
God," He said such power was theirs as much as His, and as
368 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
much His as God's. It was whole-power. " Whosoever shall
say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea,
and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what
he saith cometh to pass, he shall have it." Whatsoever the
Church bound on earth would be bound in heaven. " Inasmuch
as ye did it unto one of these least, ye did it unto me." In the
Absolute All of Being, Action, Purpose, Will, is Whole, and
in nowise divided. If we know the least, in our ultimate
consciousness of that least, we potentially know all. Our con-
sciousness of space-being gives the same affirmation of Being
for the blade of grass as it does for What-we-are, and for what
God is. Nothing transcends the ' Is ' for all being. Therefore all
forces, wills, purposes, actions, of either Father, Son, or Disciples
go home to the same source in the consciousness of Jesus. But
on no other basis than the space-consciousness could Jesus have
affirmed His actions and words to have been those of another,
seeing that, at bottom, it required the postulation of but one Will,
or rather, Whole-Will, with no connotations of Another in it.
276. It is this astounding vastitude in the consciousness of
Jesus which perhaps arrests our wonder primarily. It is so
great as to require a far wider interpretation of what a human
being is capable of being and knowing than many are inclined
to grant. Jesus must have been something other than human,
it is argued. He baffles every criterion of historical certitude.
As we have hinted, it is the narrow conception of Human
Nature and the magnified and artificial worth of Historical
Certitude which is the cause of our perplexity. Let us first find
the consciousness of What-we-are on its space-basis, and we
shall then find that it is on this basis that Jesus rationalises the
All that is ; heedless of so-called historical certitude, and simply
appealing to the only true certitude of all men's consciousness.
Compared with His consciousness, indeed, we must admit
that every other seems shallow. Plato, Homer, Virgil,
Shakespeare, Dante, and many others worthy of our homage
how short our journey till we find ourselves thrust against their
jarring limits? Fragments of our consciousness are they, at
their best and fullest, not totals of even ordinary human nature,
every one of them. So likewise are all the great representative
Bodies of that consciousness which we call Religious. The
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 369
imposing architectonic structures, East and West, Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hebraism, Mohammedanism, Scandi-
navianism, are not they, at their very best, but steps in the
ladder of which He is the total sweep ? Is not the advancing
Mind of the world slowly leaving all these Theosophies and
Theologies behind forever? Is not their light, 'the light of
setting suns ' ? Their work being reverently done ; their day
ending ; their candle dies in its socket through the deepening
night.
It is never so with the consciousness of Jesus. Form after
form of the Invisible rises upon our vision as we ascend with
Him from individual man to universal man, from universal
man to the Father, from the Father of all, ' Lord of heaven
and earth/ to the Spirit-God, the ultimate expression of His
consciousness of Whole-Being which is to be worshipped in
spirit and truth. Jesus is but at the dawn, after long centuries ;
and every movement in time is seen to be but another dark
part of the earth flashing into light under His sunrise. There
is a vastitude of enlightenment in the consciousness of this Man
which slowly enables all men to realise, part by part, here a
little and there a little, century by century, what they actually
are as men. His is indeed a Space-consciousness which
envelops and embosoms all other historical human aggregations
and movements whatsoever.
277. For it was not that He merely improved the day-to-
day morality of His locality and nation, that He corrected the
notions of worship prevalent among His contemporaries, and
gave a higher pattern of human goodness than men had
experienced. The modes and manners of the street and home
and temple, all indeed felt His influence, but His antagonism
to the convictions and conceptions of men went much deeper
than the sphere of Ethics and social amelioration. He opposed
the more vital conceptions on which these are based, viz., the
conception of God and the conception of Man, and the universal
conditions under which 'these primary forces bias and direct
all religious and civil progress. He also found the conscious-
ness of the world as regards the far deeper conviction of
Permanence, on which, in turn, both conceptions of God and
Man rest, misplaced, and itself Impermanent. The Greeks had
2 A
370 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
no convictions regarding even the permanence of their gods ;
and except a vague trust in the Supreme Creator, no conscious-
ness of Absolute Permanence pervaded the minds of any
Hebrew. Jesus overturned and reversed this consciousness as
false, and proved to the Pagan that there was a veritable
Permanence beyond all his scepticism, and to the Hebrew
that his conception of ' God ' was itself in the sweep of the
Impermanent, and that Permanence for any conception, of
either God or Man, was to be found in Man alone. And one
can easily divine that it is for this reason that He affirms so
persistently the fact of His being a " Son of Man." For it is
upon this basis that He grounds the pillars of His teaching,
and through it leads to His great and comprehensive concep-
tion of God as Father \ and again, from the fact of Life on which
the conception of the Father itself is built, to the conception of
God as Spirit, with our consciousness of Sflace-bemg, as the
absolutely natural fact on which the category of Spirit is
mediated to the human mind, as absolute concrete Permanence.
278. From this standpoint, we understand more clearly why
He so earnestly urges men to come to Himself, to leave all and
follow Himself, to deny not only father, mother, and all kin, but
' self,' and the world, in order to learn of Himself and live His
life and, if need be, to accept His death. The consciousness
which He held of Himself as Man and all that He had derived
from that basal fact, left Him no other option. It was the sole
path of Truth, or Reality, and every other way was imperfect
and transitory.
No doubt, the conception of Man, both in the ancient and
modern judgment, has not been without its exaltations. We
have heard of men in early historic days who were worshipped
and glorified as Gods because they seemed to eclipse their
fellows as the tree shoots above the shrub so grateful are men
for the presence of deity on any terms. And moderns have
seen Comte set Humanity itself on the throne of ' God.' But
no single individual, coming among men eating and drinking,
has ever, in even his most exalted moments, ventured to assure
the world that he himself was sincerely conscious of being all
that ' God ' means to man, or even to dare to maintain that he
was all that ' Man ' connotes to men. Ip the very greatest and
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 371
best men of history, limitation, finitude, earthy creature mannish-
ness and imperfection are so apparent to all. How grievous is
the grandest of human characters, even when the highest creative
powers of men set themselves to evolve an Ideal Man ? Such
creative geniuses are never devoid of a consciousness that they
themselves are conscious of being greater far, in what-they-are,
than any ideal yet brought into the sphere of their imagination.
Such geniuses, if they should, on the other hand, attempt to
palm off their ' creations ' upon the deluded world, as truly
forms of true ' God,' would find their pretensions vain, and
their horizons narrow indeed. For their own boundaries of
Race, Region, Nationality, and Sex, as well as those of their
creation, are all confessed and staring to every eye, deceiving
no one. Homer or Plato is but Greece, Virgil but Rome,
Dante Italian Medievalism, and Shakespeare, at his best, but
European. They are, to our consciousness, simply illustrious
fragments of Man.
279. How does this stand with the consciousness of Jesus ?
Is He also but a fragment ? Is He ever conscious of Himself as
being but a fragment ? After the floods of criticism, has any
one measured Him by the limitations of His age, His race,
nationality, sex, and the like 'personal' tests of Man ? At this
day, can we even give Him His right Name? 'Jesus,' say
some ; v Christ,' cry others ! He is clearly indifferent to either,
knowing that names are mostly vanity. Can any name define
what-we-are, and what He was as Man ? Have not the powers
of the Church in the past centuries been beggared in the effort
to characterise Him? Has the Church succeeded yet in under-
standing His own characterisation of Himself?
But filtered through Aramaic, Greek, and modern languages,
how do we profess to apprehend His conception of Himself as
"Son of Man?" On the very front of it, this expression of
His consciousness seems at once to declare fragmentariness and
limitation. But in saying so we but unbar the doors of the
amphitheatre and admit the lions !
For the best scholarship of our time has immense difficulties
with this Name, and the consciousness underlying it ; and
without assuming in the least any capability of entering such
an arena of contention, we may be allowed to consider ourselves
372 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
safest to accept " Man " as the term which, all things considered,
yields up the nearest equivalent of the true consciousness
expressed by Jesus as to who He was. The fact that He never
traces His life to man, but always to the Father in heaven,
confirms our leaning to the simple term " Man," and not " of
Man," as the better interpretation of His consciousness of
Origin. He is Man, but out of no personal man. Again, the
term " Son of Man " inclines rightly towards totalising Man,
rather than to differentiating between man and man. He is
conscious that He does not narrow downwards to the earth and
the earthly, but widens ever upwards to the Highest. He
refuses, in fact, to be fixed down, or ultimatised, by any name.
His origin belongs neither to the human class of Jesus of
Nazareth nor to the spiritually begotten ' Messiah ' of the
heavens. He is conscious that when heaven and earth pass
away, He Himself shall not partake of their dissolution (Matt,
xxiii. 35), and that therefore neither heaven nor earth, as
themselves brought forth in time, has any power over the
Being whom they did not create.
280. This is a great consciousness without any parallel. It
knows neither country nor place. It is beyond nationality,
and soars above sex. Yet it is Man. And as a matter of
common consciousness, every man, in his Inmost, knows that he
also has this capacity. For there is something in man,
individual or racial, which transcends these ' particulars.' Was
it not said of old, " And he called their name, Man " ? (Gen. v.
2). It is a world-old consciousness. And we must accept it
that Jesus is conscious of being Man in the widest sweep of
that term. He equates Himself with man, wherever, whenever,
and however we find Man. Neither Time nor Eternity can
alter what He is as Man.
The world is more and more accepting to the full all that
He Himself affirmed Himself to be, without shifting the
foundations of His Being from Manhood. Men are conscious
that they cannot realise His 'divinity' except through His
Manhood. He certainly has vindicated all that is Man more
than any man. In comparison with men who are conscious of
being mountain peaks, lightning-robed, sea-girt, continental,
the consciousness of Jesus has the genuine earth-bearing,
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 373
heaven-supporting, Atlas characteristics. He is the ' Light of
the world.' He 'overcomes the world.' He also lifts us, the
world, and sublates all ' opposition ' between earth and heaven,
man and God, for seeing Him we see the Father-God, and
abiding in Him we abide in the Father-God, and the Father-
God in us. The ' ultimate ' of His consciousness is not a ' pre-
supposition,' but the Fact of facts, the eternal Permanence.
Man mirrored in this ' crystal sphere ' of Jesus' consciousness,
sends back the same Man as God to our vision, and beholding
this Space-Being all men can say, " It is I." That is to say, in
the consciousness of Jesus, Personality is subsumed and tran-
scended in a consciousness of Impersonality, in which, neverthe-
less, every attribute of personality is glorified. For we deify it.
His consciousness transcends personality in the same way that
He transcends Place, Nationality, Race, and Sex. These ' pass
away.'
281. But this consciousness in Jesus is but the wheel within
the wheel. We see Him ascend above the ' particular ' human
being to the Universal Human Being, or from Jesus of
Nazareth to Man as World-Man. And clearly, His conscious-
ness " I am Man," would on any grounds be a unique conscious-
ness, for a man ; and yet it is historical truth that there has
ever been in all ages a pulsing desire to add something more to
the content of the term * man,' not only as applying to Jesus
but to every man, in order to interpret the latent consciousness
in the world as to what man is in the reality of his being. The
prophets spoke of it as the "desire of all nations." Plato-
Socrates outlined this ideal-man (Republic, ii. 362). The
Hebraic ' Messiah ' was only a form of the same universal
consciousness. It is, indeed, the root of every passion of
heroism and worship of the human being. We gladly hail it in
the Drama, the Poem, the Painting, or the sculptured Image.
The noble action, the noble life that reveals it ; even in part ;
how sacred is the treasure in the heart of the world ? Men
boldly call it ' divine,' and yet the worst man upon the earth is
conscious in his highest moments that if he were all revealed
to himself, in all he is, he would be more 'divine' than any-
thing he has been able to comprehend as divine in the
world. And it is just that Jesus by Himself has revealed
374 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
every man to himself, as he is, that by every man He is
deemed to be 'divine.' For all that Jesus is, finds response
in every man, and being conscious of this, Jesus expresses
the high truth of His consciousness in naming Himself, not
'Jesus' nor 'Christ,' but "Man." Therefore every man who
enters the consciousness of Jesus, is able easily to say, " He is
I." " I find myself in Him." The Evangelist affirmed this
universal humanity in Jesus, even to its infirmities and diseases
(Matt. viii. 17).
282. In our ordinary experience of ourselves, we say, " I
am," and we mean, " I am this man, this personal, individual
man." This interpretation of our consciousness is the philo-
sophical ' Self.' Jesus, however, shows that our conscious " I
am " should widen Space-wards as well as converge world-ward,
and give us as much material for our ' God ' as it affords for our
" Man." The limits of the human, personal, philosophical 'self
are transcended by Him as the tree transcends the bud it
' negates,' or as the elements H 2 O transcend the drop of water.
Far from resting in the consciousness " I am," with its inefficient
content of meaning, " I am this Jesus of Nazareth, this carpenter-
man, a possible king-man, a possible Messiah-man," He rends
these limitations of the philosophical ' person ' and enlarges and
increases the " I am " consciousness through its space-capacity
till its predicates require the widest space-terms, and without
astonishment the world hears Him say, " I am the Light of the
world," " I am the Resurrection and the Life," " I arn the way,
the truth, and the life." He is not from the Earth. He comes
down from heaven. His life is not from man or woman. He
declares, " As the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He
to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John, v. 26). And
again, "I live because of the Father" (&a rov Trare/oa), vi. 57.
He also transcends Time. " Before Abraham was, I am " (viii. 58).
" The glory which I had with thee, before the world was." And
just as He is conscious that He was before the world, so
similarly He asserts that He will remain after it. " Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away "
(Mark, xiii. 31). He will sit on the clouds of heaven (Mark, xiv.
62). He will gather all nations to His presence (Matt, xxiii. 32) ;
all the powers of heaven and earth He will wield (Matt, xxviii.
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 375
1 8), and prepare the mansions of the Father as a place for His
disciples (John, xiv. 2).
Now all this is intelligible, and only intelligible when we
understand Jesus' point of view, and the basis of being from
which His consciousness acts as its Ultimate. Intermediaries,
dependencies, conceptions which lean upon other conceptions,
categories which are themselves under ' laws,' contingencies of
time and place, traditions based on the physical, the historical,
or the ethical ties of family, tribe, nation, or race, everything
conditioned^ in short, and finite, is regarded by Him as 'passing
away/ and fulfilling itself towards a state of Being higher than
the finite implies.
283. This is clearly illustrated in His magnificent panoramic
vision of the Course of Time (Matt. chap. xxiv. ; Mark, xiii.),
which we take as representative of His teaching regarding the
" All Flows " of the ancients, and His own negation of such a
statement as absolute.
He is seated on the Mount of Olives. His disciples are
around Him. They have all just come from the Temple, which
He has quitted for the last time in grief. The buildings had
surprised the disciples into enthusiasm for their grandeur.
" See ! " they cried to Him, " what manner of stones and what
buildings !" (Mark, xiii. i). Jesus had acknowledged in terms
" these great buildings," but had also seen beyond their
oppressive stability and magnificence what the world has long
realised, viz., the same temple reduced to a promiscuous stone-
pile, and the very idea of temple and worship, and adoring
people besides, quenched in a fate of darkness and ruin. The
disciples had been overwhelmed at the bare mention of such a
thing, and enquired earnestly as they sat on the hill-top with
Him, " Tell us when shall these things be, and what shall be
the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world ? "
(Matt, xxiii. 1-3).
The question clearly involved the problem of the human
consciousness of Absolute Permanence, world-old, yet constantly
confronted by a negating consciousness of Impermanence as
final. Jesus at once realises the depth of the question, and
grapples with the universal convictions regarding the imperman-
ence of all things, embodied in the almost universal cry of the old
376 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
world, All Flows ; nothing abides ' fixed in its everlasting seat.'
He takes up the ' fixtures ' one by one, as they lay in the minds
of His disciples, and empties them of all content, as they
regarded them from the standpoint of endurance. First, the
Permanence amid all that was illusive and fleeting was surely
the Messiah. " When he is come, He will declare unto us all
things" (John, iv. 25). Fixed reliance and certainty of Truth
will be found absolutely in Him. Jesus, on the contrary, assures
them that nothing will be less assured to them than the
Messiah. As in the past, so in the future, no one will be able
to find a basis of permanence in the fact of his being the
Messiah. " Take heed that no man lead you astray. For
many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and shall
lead many astray" (4, 5). The Messiah; the Permanent! On
the contrary, no instrument of instability will prove so effective
in its power of deception as this same conception of the Messiah.
In the midst of the universal overturn of all things : home ;
social bonds; temple; religion itself; and when men cry out
for the Rock, "then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is
the Christ, or Here ; believe it not." Nothing you will be able to
confide in will be less satisfactory in its permanence as a Refuge.
And do not suppose you will be able to determine His Personality
and Almighty power by " Signs and Wonders." The Kingdom
of God cometh not with observation ; neither shall they say,
" Lo, here ! or, There ! for lo, the Kingdom of God is within
you " (Luke, xvii. 20-1). " For there shall arise false Christs, and
false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders ; so as
to lead astray, if possible, even the elect " (Matt. xxiv. 24 ; Mark,
xiii. 21, 22). And as greatest Actions will not be able to
confirm Him to you in Truth, neither will Places of Birth or
Origin decide the matter. Neither the utmost of the Wilds nor
the chosen sites of civilisation will prove directive. " If there-
fore they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the wilderness ; go
not forth : Behold, he is in the inner chambers ; believe it not "
(Matt. xxiv. 26). The lightning alone is able to typify the
presence of the Son of Man (Luke, xvii. 24 ; Matt. xxiv. 27).
The disciples have their Idol rudely shattered before their
face, and their confidence in their Messiah, as righting all things
permanently at last, shown to be misplaced. The Master
deliberately places their Messiah in the " Flow," and the
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 377
bewilderment and indecision regarding this conception of a
personal Messiah, both in ancient and modern theology, amply
sustain His predictions of vacillation and illusiveness either
as its representing an eternal purpose or an Eternal Person.
Surely the Absolute Permanence cannot be That! "Believe it
not." This Messiah conception had risen in Time, and in time
it would vanish. It would be as the stones of "these great
buildings."
But Hebrew Religion was also revealed as itself unstable,
and about to fall. False prophets would arise, and to such
degradation should all temple worship come that, as Daniel
had declared (ix. 27; Mark, xiii. 14), "the abomination of
desolation shall stand in the Holy Place." Temple worship,
sacrifices, priestly ministration, religion itself, all would become
a mockery. Temple: Messiah: Religion: all should 'pass.'
But all this is but local and Jewish. The disciples are taken out
into a wider field of vision. The very nations are involved in
the catastrophe of change. There shall be wars, rumours of
wars, famines, pestilences, universal society in the aggregate
of its kingdoms rent in pieces. The Impermanent is beheld
under the domination of violence. The Master outlines the
picture with a massive brush. In the foreground the disciples
see their Temple and their far-famed City. These shall dis-
appear. Trust not these ! Trust the mountains rather than
these. " Flee into the mountains." Go not up to the house-
top for refuge. For the Home and home-ties are impermanent
as all else. All shall flow into the flood of change as in the
days of Noah. But the mountains? Alas, there shall be
earthquakes also in divers places. The old earth itself cannot
afford a Permanence for Man. The earth itself is in the
" Flow." Yea, and far more than the earth. " Heaven and
earth shall pass away" (Mark, xiii. 31).
Jesus is clearly not focussing His attention upon the quite
local occurrence of the Sack of Jerusalem, and the accompanying
destruction of the Temple. His aim is absolute. He is leading
His disciples to the Ultimate Rock of eternal Permanence ;
and his generalisation is on the grandest scale. He is contrast-
ing the Permanent and the Impermanent. He embraces these
local incidents in a universal movement which has the Cosmos
and the whole Course of Time for its area and fulfilment. It
378 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
is for this reason apparently that He shows that sun, moon, and
stars are also in the tribulation of change and controlled
by deeper Power typified by Himself (Mark, xiii. 24). He
represents Himself as Permanent and as Controller of the
Impermanent amidst every change in Nation, People, Temple,
Home, Desert, and Mountain-top. He resists Time and
shortens the days (Mark, xiii. 20). He is conscious that what-
He-is is more than all that Time and earth signify to Man.
He, a Man, has this consciousness.
We should note also that Jesus connects the Cosmos with
the Father as alone identified with its career. Both Matthew
and Mark add after "heaven and earth shall pass away," the
suggestive words, " But of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father "
(Mark, xiii. 32). The point is th&tfesus includes Time within the
scope of the Impermanent. There is no permanent consciousness
given in either the ' Substance ' of the heavens and the earth,
or in Time, which conditions such Substance. He does not
read consciousness, as philosophers have done, to find time in the
consciousness of what-we-are. In His vision He beholds every-
thing that men are accustomed to speak of confidently as their
Permanences, and as He does so, He sees it vanish away.
Nothing objective remains. They are all in the Flow. They
themselves seek a further permanence of Being in That which
abides after they have passed.
So far, He seems indeed to sustain the contention of the
ancient world that All Flows. All? Nay, not all. To the
blurred vision of man it appears to be all. For even the sun is
darkened, the moon gives no light, the stars fall from heaven,
and the " powers of the heavens," so awful, immovable, and
mysterious to all men, "shall be shaken" at last. But "then
shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven." In the
rush and violence of universal impetuousness, the all-controlling
Power becomes manifest. All objectivity having been sublated,
That-which-doth-not-appear takes possession of His and of our
consciousness. And at this point Jesus demands from men the
profoundest discernment into the nature of the Universe if they
are to understand His meaning. For His statement involves
the acceptance of the fact that in Man alone can Man find that
Eternal Permanence which through long ages he has sought
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 379
earnestly as with tears. " Heaven and Earth shall pass away
but my words shall not pass away." Just as He rose above
the ancient conception of God as King, with its connotative
Theocracy, to that of Father ; and, again, from this Personality
to God as spirit which no one is able to realise in any conception
of personality, so from such conceptions of Man as Son of David,
Anointed One, Elect One, Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God,
persistent from the days of Isaiah, He passed upwards beyond all
theocratic and sex connotations, absolutely, to a Consciousness
of Being in which all such God-and-Man conceptions are
swallowed up, for not even heaven and earth are left on which
to frame either a personal or an individuated conception of
such. Form, Substance, Matter, Personality, vanish together.
But That does not vanish out of which all such conceptions
have been created and made by us. Jesus has the assurance of
His consciousness that after The Cosmos, or all that we designate
as the Universe, has been removed from cognition, Permanent
Being will abide.
But now let us ask what category of Being is left in our
consciousness of Being after heaven and earth have 'passed
away ' ? Is there anything save a consciousness of Space ? Yet,
plainly, Jesus never affirms His Being so strenuously as in this
consciousness of the withdrawal of all that we call objective in
the Universe. And all this is incomprehensible unless we can
discern that Jesus identifies Himself with this space-consciousness.
For in such a vision neither He nor we can have any
other consciousness of What-Is, save as Space-Being. And
this is the true consciousness of the Eternally Permanent.
It is simply inconceivable that this Being can " pass away." It
negates every negation. It sublates All that Flows, and makes,
by its own affirmation of Permanence, our consciousness of the
flowing Impermanence rational. That is to say, but for this
eternal Permanence in our consciousness of What-Jesus-Is, and
what-we-are, we could have no consciousness at all of anything
either as fixed, or as flowing, or " passing away." Both rest and
motion are sublated in it. The expression " My Words "
embodies that Potential-which-does-not-appear, out of which
heaven and earth rose " in the beginning," and which as Whole-
Force, including all matter and motion, the personal and the
impersonal, concretes itself in our consciousness of space.
380 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
And it does not affect the truth of this consciousness in the
smallest that Jesus may have spoken in figurative, or in apoca-
lyptic language. Any language must be figurative, ultimately,
which attempts to set forth space-truth ; but so long as His and
our consciousness bear an identical testimony to the Imperman-
ence of all He has described as Flowing and passing away, and
to all that He affirms as Permanent when all that Flows is
passed, the Facts will remain the same whether it is told in one
form of language or another.
And this must remain as the final test of all truth in the
Christian, or any Religion, which is to be held as absolutely
" infallible" Truth. Jesus, the Man, has in Himself a conscious-
ness of eternal permanence as compared with ' heaven and earth.'
And His consciousness, as a Son of Man, is a consciousness of
space-being, or that consciousness in which nothing objective can
be found. What reveals; words, thoughts, consciousness; all
testify to the Presence as abiding absolutely permanent, and
to the Presence being the " Son of Man." And this conscious-
ness which Jesus had for Himself, all men also possess for
themselves.
Where we stumble in reading this chapter is in carrying the
context of personality for Jesus as being merely the 'carpenter's
son.' As Jesus teaches human personality, it must be taken to
transcend such a context. Personality, for Jesus, cannot be
interpreted through anything in the " Flow" And it is for this
reason that we see Him persistently detaching personality in
Himself and Man from all its limitations in heaven and earth,
and widening it upward to the Highest, in which the Father is
in Him, and He is in the Father, the " Lord of heaven and
earth" (Matt. xi. 25.). The Father, this Lord, is in Him, and in
Man. And it is simply a re-statement of the same conscious-
ness that after heaven and earth pass away, Man abides a
Permanence.
284. Jesus assumes no personality for Himself which He
does not accredit to all men. To the last He sees Himself
preparing a place for them, that where He is, there they may be
also. Being to Jesus is Whole. What is objective in the
disciples, and what He Himself is, sitting on the Mount of
Olives, what the earth is, and all the heavens are, constitutes
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 381
the Flow, in as far as they Appear. All visibilities shall pass
away. And the mere manner of their passing, so awful to
many, so full of proof that " there is no God," counts but as a
ripple on the wave. " They shall kill you," He deliberately
tells them. For Life and Death are both themselves in the
Flow. But Man is conscious of transcending Life and Death,
as he cognizes them, and has for himself a consciousness of
space-being into which no consciousness of either ever enters.
For our consciousness of space gives us no consciousness of
either, and therefore they are sublated in this truest of all
witnesses of what-we-are. Or, summarily, Not All Flows; and
Jesus proved on the basis of His and all men's consciousness
of What- Is, that this part of the ancient creed was untrue.
285. " The sign of the Son of Man." The enthroning
CLOUD. " Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in
heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and
they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory " (Matt. xxiv. 30). Here, again, He
speaks a permanent consciousness, it may be in figurative terms.
The language does not invalidate the consciousness. For we
are all conscious that the heavens and the earth are but a cloud
on the bosom of Space-Being. The Son of Man as Permanent
Being enthrones Himself above and upon the Flow. The cloud
is His figure of all that is most assertive of Impermanence, even
as Himself, Man, is the most fitting emblem of Is- Being : Space.
No consciousness we can have is so affirmative of the one as
that which ' passes away,' and of the other as that which abides
forever. Yet there is no division between Man and the Cloud.
Its submissiveness and utter humility, its power and beauty
amid every vicissitude, were never better exemplified and
parabolised than throughout His own historical existence. It
is the wonder of the consciousness of Jesus that He can calmly
bring two such things as Man and a Cloud together, and unite
their ' differences ' in an Ultimate consciousness * beyond ' either,
of "Power and great glory'' He leaves the "Flow" in the
possession of weaker thought and to a day that has gone
forever, and to a few common fishermen He reveals the
unappearing Truth beyond apparent or appearing truth, the
Fixed in the Fleeting, the Mightiest in the most Fragile, the
382 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
' Man ' in all men, the Being that does not pass away in all that
is passing. In His consciousness, Time, Man, Earth, Heaven,
'Nature' are reduced to Space-Being, to What-All-Is, and in
this consciousness Jesus finds Eternal Permanence for Himself
and for All. Heaven and earth only pass from our conceptions
of limited being to be realised in our consciousness of Is-Being.
286. And if we would but remind ourselves that our meagre
Gospel accounts are but the small fragmentary arcs of a mighty
circle which is hid in the folds of History's Mantle, we should
have little difficulty in discerning this consciousness of Jesus to
be the same which, in Nature, men of Science to-day are slowly
spelling out for our advantage. As a matter of common
experience, no one now sees any incongruity in that conscious-
ness which beholds the great oak evolving from a mist of
protoplasmic life ; the vast ocean as a gas-cloud whereon is
enthroned the earthly Power of Empire ; the Solar System
itself as a Cloud, an evolved Nebula ; and the great Cosmos as
a Cloud of ' electric charges.' But we never find what-we-are in
that consciousness, and the vision of Jesus which vizualises Man
as seated on the Cloud, but more than it, is none other than
that which floats lustrous within the thoughts of Science at this
present hour. When, indeed, we are able to wrench our thoughts
free from the despotism of words and thought-forms, and
especially from the tyranny of Creeds and Categories and all
their narrowing associations, the Consciousness of Jesus will
appear, not as mad, as some foolishly have deemed, but as the
one true and sane consciousness on the earth, and certainly
the only one upon which a permanent basis can be built for
all that we include in our Sciences, Philosophies, and Religions.
287. There would, indeed, be little difficulty with this
consciousness in Jesus (for it is in every one of us), if it were
not for the assumed infallibility of the logical findings, regarding
Personality in Man and God, which have been piled upon our
minds with true Teutonic persistency through nigh two
hundred years, and which have deflected the course of the
human intellect afar from the philosophy of truth as it is found
in the Highest Life, and which has thus sorrowfully widened
the distance, where distance should never be, between right
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 383
reason and right faith. The wedge which has been inserted
between them, and hammered by the most powerful of modern
intellects, has been the fallacy that in the " I am " of our self-
consciousness we have nothing more than the content of
personal, individual, isolated * man '-self. It seems to us to be
all to the contrary. Personality, as we usually cognize that
content, i.e. objectified individuality, isolated from every Man
and every ' God,' is the dreariest of solemn deceptions, and
ought to be abolished from both our Creeds and Philosophies.
For it is but the contracted " I am man " consciousness of our
everyday conceptions. The fatal lack of Permanence as a
consciousness in it is also suspicious. In our genuine " I "-
consciousness, no fixed boundaries of being are to be found.
Horizonal limits there are undoubtedly, beyond enumeration,
for every idea and motion of mind creates one, but they are
merely as sky-boundaries to the all-space of the Cosmos.
The true consciousness which every man has of himself is as
inclusive of 'impersonal' as of 'personal,' and is not divisible
from his consciousness of space. It is also quite impossible to
think it other than eternally Permanent on such a basis.
288. There is a suggestive passage in Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason which proves once again how strongly the space-
consciousness as a basis of our self-consciousness allured him,
yet which he refused as a conscious Permanence for Reality.
In the section " Concerning the paralogisms of pure Reason,"
he is careful to show at length that the "Soul" cannot be
conceived as Substance, or as simple substance, or substance of
any kind. Even if we admit, he argues, that it is simple
substance, having no parts and no multiplicity, no extensive
quantity, yet we must grant it to possess ' intensive quantity '
i.e., " a degree of reality in regard to all its faculties, nay, to all
that constitutes its existence. But this degree of reality can
become less and less, through an infinite series of smaller
degrees. It follows, therefore, that this supposed substance
this Thing, the permanence of which is not assured in any other
way may, if not by decomposition, by gradual loss (remissio) of
its powers (consequently by elanguescence, if I may employ
this expression), be changed into nothing. For consciousness
itself has always a degree, which may be lessened. Conse-
384 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
quently, the faculty of being conscious may be diminished,
and so with all other faculties. The permanence of the sou/,
therefore, as an object of the internal sense, remains undernon-
strated, nay, even undemonstrable " (italics ours).
Kant, of course, is perfectly true in his reading of Conscious-
ness of Self as yielding for itself no conception of Substance.
He is also correct in affirming that even if we could suppose
this substance to be simple and a true consciousness of what-
we-are, our consciousness of this substance would stand in peril
of melting away, and of remitting itself into 'nothing.' Its
intensive reality could not be assured permanence. For it is
not enough to have a unit-thing just a unit-thing. The Unit-
thing may shrink in our consciousness of its content so long
as we persist in thinking it substance. The world-unit might
shrink to a marble-unit, e.g., and it might so elanguesce until our
consciousness of it would be of Nothing. But why could not he
accept this consciousness of Nothing as the last and true con-
sciousness which he had of himself? This consciousness at
least could not elanguesce, or remit itself away into the
undemonstrable. It was the consciousness which demonstrates
itself beyond all negation. It is whole Yea. But Kant felt it a
hopeless task to conceive the ' Soul ' by any other category than
those he found in his list. And he did not count space as a
category. Yet he had a strong and irreducible consciousness
of space. He seems to have conceived that because his
ultimate consciousness of himself was a space-consciousness he
was thereby unknown to himself. He was bound to remain a
miserable ^r-thing to himself!
On the contrary, we know everything less than we know
space^ for we only know anything because of our space-con-
sciousness. It is the absolutely essential consciousness to know
anything of what we know. It is true knowledge unclothed by
"categories." It is also the last consciousness to become
unknown after all else has vanished from our knowledge. We
could not know, for example, either Substance, Causation,
Quality, or Quantity, apart from our consciousness of space. It
is both Sub and Super to all we call Existence
289. But it is because this consciousness of Space counts
' nothing ' for absolute Being, or Being-value, that weare hindered
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 385
from realising by it either ourselves or our f God.' We have
also thereby been unable to realise the eternally permanent in
ourselves or in our ' God.' We have tried constantly to interpret
the * Self and ' God' by what was in the Flow, and hence
through all ages, up till this present day, our conceptions of the
' personality ' of ' Self and of * God ' are as uncertain and vari-
able as ever. And it must so remain until we base our concep-
tion of ' personality ' on the space-basis which is so terrific in
the consciousness of what-we-are. It was, as we presume to
think, Kant's defective grasp of our consciousness of space as
being homoousious with What-we-are, that led him into these
mythical conceptions regarding our consciousness of our " Soul."
A study of the consciousness of Jesus would have yielded him
far more satisfactory results, and saved the philosophical and
theological worlds from the blinding influence of his genius.
For in Jesus alone do we find this space-consciousness as the
fundamental one for every right and exhaustive conception of
the Cosmos, the Self, or * God.'
290. What we have to bear in mind in discussing Person-
ality is that we are never conscious of its edges or boundaries,
and that as Jesus holds it in His consciousness, without our
contexts of limitation, every ordinary ' personality ' is sublated in
His consciousness through reducing it to its fundamental space-
being, until Space itself, which He names 'Spirit' (see below
passim}, becomes Whole-Personality for our consciousness of
Whole-Being. We humbly submit that this is His invariable
method. We also seem to be compelled to assume that if He
had to get beyond the consciousness of all that is related and
fleeting, in all we call c ours,' no other method was possible to
Him. His Teaching simply follows the compulsions of His
and our consciousness of Being.
Therefore (summing up so far) Jesus, beginning with the
Child set ' in the midst,' affirms that the Child-' personality '
(as we usually cognize it) is such that when we receive it,
we do not receive it, but the Jesus-Personality, and that when
we receive the Jesus-Personality, we do not receive it, but the
Father- Personality. He sees continuous Whole-Being sub-
tending these * personal ' individuals, and sublating them in
itself. There is in Jesus a consciousness of Being which is not
2 B
386 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
limited by these * personal '-beings or the sex-terms by which
they are defined. He again sublates the Father-Personality
by the same space-being till Spirit-God is identical with
Whole-Space-Being, and our consciousness of ourselves as
' spirit,' and of God as ' Spirit,' becomes a consciousness of
Being without parts or multiplicity.
The facts of the Four Gospels unfold a sufficiently clear
order of consciousness in Jesus. So far as the Father-Person is
concerned in His cognition of Being, Jesus strives to keep the
Divine we know not within the concept of ' personality ' as we
are accustomed to conceive it. But the God-Being which we
know not embraces the Impersonal as we are accustomed to
cognize impersonality. Consequently it is through the concept
of ' Father,' as also God-Being, that He seeks to enlarge our
conception of personality, so as to embrace within it a far wider
concept of personality than we find in either theology or
philosophy. He draws within our conception of the Father-
Person the whole Being of Heaven and Earth ; that is, both
what is ' personal ' and ' impersonal ' in heaven and earth, as
these concepts lie in our cognitions. Jesus then affirms person-
ality of the Father by identifying the term with Himself, " I
and the Father are One," and also secures * impersonality '
within the same term by extending the Jesus-Personality,
which is ' one ' with that of the Father, to be ' Lord of heaven
and earth.' For the Father-Personality whom we receive when
we receive the Jesus-Personality (Mark, ix. 37) is 'Lord of
heaven and earth ' (Matt. xi. 25).
It is clear that we can have nothing but confusion of ideas
as regards personality if we decide to hold ' personality ' as only
numerically Three : Child, Son, and Father. The sublation of
these Three persons, however, in continuous Being, Whole as
space, receives constant verification in Jesus' consciousness as
He transcends them. He reveals His own consciousness of Him-
self as being all three. He calls Himself the Son of Man, which
involves our conception of ^z/#-personality. But He is also
all that Man is. And, strictly, no man knew the full content of
the Man-term till Jesus revealed it to the world. In the same
way, no man knew the Father till Jesus revealed the fulness of
that term. The * Man '-Son of the Father-God showed that all
fatherhood stood on identically divine levels. Jesus raised the
THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 387
human animal into Being Divine. Therefore he could affirm
that He alone knew the Father, and knew the Father and Him-
self to be One, and knew this common Self to be ' Lord of
heaven and earth.'
Therefore the * personality ' of Jesus transcends both our
conceptions of the ' child ' in the midst, and that of the ' son of
Joseph.' The personalities of the child and that of Joseph's
son are sublated in a higher personality which is seen to
embrace the * Divine ' as well as the ' Human.' They become
space-beings. That is, they lose all objectivity. The ' Lord of
heaven and earth ' becomes instead the only objective of Jesus
to our consciousness, and it is evident that it is this Personality
whom He assumes Himself to be in all His dealings with
diseases, demons, and death. But, as the Father, this Person-
ality includes, as we have said, the Impersonal, as we cognize
impersonality. This is very clear in the incident of Peter's
confession to Jesus. Jesus points out to Peter (Matt. xvi. 17),
when Peter confesses his conviction that Jesus is the ' Son of
the Living God,' that he has not received such revelation from
' Flesh and Blood' " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah : for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven" (Matt xvi. 16). The Being who has
revealed this truth to Peter has none of the connotations of
human personality \ the only form of personality conceivable by us.
That is, He who is the Father of Jesus and as personal as Jesus,
is also as impersonal as That which is not Flesh and Blood.
Or, in other words, the conception of personality lying in the
consciousness of Jesus, is something which far transcends the
ordinary conception of personality so prevalent in the great
fields of ancient and modern thought. He places the conception
on quite another basis. He can speak of the Father as 'in
heaven,' and as ' in ' man, and ' in ' Himself, and as ' one ' with
Himself, yet again as One who is greater than Himself, and
one yet again to whom he ascends as " God." The human and
the divine, the earthly and the heavenly, are separated or
united, many or One, just as He views Being from the common
consciousness of men, or from the unique consciousness which
is peculiarly realised by Himself.
But these motions or processes of personality defining or
transcending personality as we are accustomed to cognize it
388 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
cannot be rationalised except from a deeper basis of conscious-
ness where motion or process is not present. This high
conception of personality which embraces heaven and earth,
that is, the Cosmos, is still a limited or Unit-personality ; for
our consciousness of even heaven and earth does not include
our consciousness of Space, and, therefore, it is not capable of
rendering to us a consciousness of that Whole-Being which we
desiderate for our conception of ' God.' But that Jesus does
transcend even this " Father-God " personality in a higher
sublation, it will be our endeavour to show in the following
chapters.
CHAPTER XII
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY
291. We affirm, then, that in the consciousness of Jesus,
Personality, as we usually conceive it, is not a changeless
permanence. It is in the Flow of universal change. There is,
however, a background of unchanging permanent Being in His
consciousness over which the ' personalities ' of the ' Father/ the
' Son,' the disciples, and the Child, i.e., all ' personalities ' known to
us, move and change their ensemble^ as distinctly as do the flashes
of the aurora borealis over the dark background of the heavens.
Each, of course, has its own individual unit-personality, around
which our thoughts play, just as they play around all conceptual
1 objects ' universally ; but such unit-personalities never yield a
consciousness of eternal permanence of isolated and distinct being.
It is all the other way. They come under a consciousness of
evanescence. What each Is, cannot be fixed under our con-
ception of each * personality.'
And, therefore, it becomes evident that what we designate as
1 personality ' is the product of a constant effort, on the part
of Conceptual Thought, to qualify and define what-we-are ;
an attempt which our consciousness is unceasingly affirming to
be impossible absolutely. And, consequently, the perpetual
change under which the conception of ' personality ' labours, is
not really Change of Being, but merely the necessary change of
judgment, and therefore of conception, in readjusting relative
truth to a closer approximation to Whole-Truth, or to What-
we-are. For no conception of personality which we ever
formulate ever exhausts the consciousness of what-we-are.
Personality, as it lies in our thought, and fills its place in all
schemes of thought, comes always far short of our consciousness
of Being. And thus it is perfectly natural that Jesus, under the
390 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
constraining consciousness of Whole-Truth, should ever ascend
higher and higher, through such limited conceptions of Person-
ality, in order to realise ultimately the full-open consciousness
of Whole-Being. And the whole question of personality will
be more intelligible to the reader, if it is borne in mind, as we
proceed in our argument, that our conceptions and convictions
regarding personality are never identical with our ultimate
consciousness of what-we-are.
This may appear clearer to us if we ask ourselves how we
conceive personality. By which concepts, or characteristics, or
qualities do we commonly apprehend this conception? Com-
pletely isolated Being seems to be the chief characteristic of
* personality.' ' The bounded, the fenced, the separate, the
enclosed ' is what one writer claims for it. Hegel declares that
" Personality is the free being in pure self-conscious isolation "
(Philosophy of Right, p. 45, Dyde). And we understand by
* free being ' and ' pure,' that he means complete isolation. But
complete ' isolation ' for any ' personality ' is just the quality of
what-we-are of which we have not the remotest consciousness.
This completely ' isolated being ' is a pure conventional ideation,
abstract and unreal. In pure reality, as our consciousness
maintains for us, no mortal has the least consciousness of being
' free ' other than as Space-Being is free, and, similarly, no one
has the very faintest consciousness of isolation from Space-
Being. Before we can accept such a statement regarding such
' freedom ' and such ' isolation ' we have first and foremost to
annihilate all consciousness of space-being in what-we-are.
And this is the impossible. In any conception of what-we-are,
the consciousness of space-being is inseparable. If we try our
hardest to think the two as two, we cannot do it. This view of
'personality' is therefore illogical, artificial, and untrue. Hegel,
however, boldly persists to the contrary. He says, " I can
abstract myself from everything, since nothing is before me
except pure personality" (ibid.). We can certainly abstract
ourselves from every objective thing, as we conceive an object.
It is a matter of our conceptual judgment, and it may be
narrow enough. This is our usual and conventional way of
treating the matter of personality. It is the normal conception
of personality in all time. Every one thinks and says, " I am
this man : I am no other than myself : I am all of myself there
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 391
is." We have no difficulty in abstracting this ' personality '
from everything that is objectively conceived. And if our
consciousness were incapable of yielding a deeper content of
being for what-we-are, we should all have to accept this
' personality ' as the final consciousness of what-we-are. But it
is not the final consciousness we have of what-we-are. We
cannot abstract ourselves from Space-Being. And if we could,
we should not then have the least consciousness of our own
reality. For it is because our consciousness of what-we-are is
identical with our consciousness of space-being that we have at
all a consciousness of reality for anything. The absolute truth
of our own reality could not be sustained unless our conscious-
ness of absolute or whole-being sustained it in our consciousness
of whole-being itself.
It is indeed this ultimate consciousness of what-we-are
which, though never acknowledged, acts as the tidal force
under the philosophical waters, causing them to rise or fall
as the ages advance. And it is to maintain the uncleft aspect
of being as sustaining the absoluteness of our own reality, that
the philosophical battle goes on incessantly to support the
'Unity' of Being. Instinctively, philosophers feel that unless
Being has an uncleft aspect for itself, such cleavage may be
just as easily predicable of what-we-are, and for everything
that is, as for Absolute Being. It all stands or falls together.
If a being may be absolutely itself, then we have no guarantee
what sole being is, seeing that everything may claim the same
isolation. Consequently, the consciousness we all possess of
what we call Whole Being could not be accounted for in our
consciousness. How it had come there would be the mystery
of mysteries, and on the supposition that isolated being was
as true for what-we-are as for anything else, this consciousness
of Whole Being would have less to sustain its truth in us than
any other thing we could think of, and would amount practically
to being the greatest falsity we could conceive. Consciousness
itself would prove the well of all deceits.
292. Personality is not completely 'free' and it is not
'isolated.' Until we can accept its absolute truth of space-
being, we are safer to conceive it, for objective purposes, as
being which is analogous to the wave on the ocean, the leaf on
392 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the tree, or the vibration in the Ether. Steeped in Whole
Being through unthinkable past ages, it is somewhat hard to
conceive ourselves as suddenly wrenched from that Being when
we become flesh and blood and enter this world. We are apt
to ask, by what power were we isolated from this Whole
Being ? By what power are we now kept isolated from every-
thing ?
But in a generally received sense, everyone admits, to a
certain extent, the procession of personality. The body of the
man, we say, is not elementally the same body which he had
in his youth, nor the body of the youth the same body which
he had in his childhood. We all grant the consciousness of
impermanence or flow in the personal body. We are not
conscious of any fixed or permanent Thing in our bodies
which abides through-and-throughout all changes of the
' matter ' of our bodies. There is procession of our personal
bodies. Nothing in breath, brain, blood, or body abides per-
manently. Our ' personality/ so far, is in Flow.
But, on the other hand, we are far less certain, in our con-
sciousness, of impermanence of body, than we are of eternal
permanence for what-we-are. The certainty of permanence for
what-we-are as compared with the certainty of impermanence
for our bodies, is as the All to zero. And we find that in dealing
with such a consciousness as that of Jesus of Nazareth, the same
superabounding consciousness of permanence for What-He-is,
is just as deep and strong in Him as it is in every * personality.'
There is, however, a distinction. We find that the ' personality '
which we account to be so permanent, He accounts to be as
changeful and as impermanent as we account our bodies to be.
Our consciousness of the impermanent part of our 'personality'
has a far narrower range and content than His. We transcend
the personal body only, whereas He transcends the entire content
of that ' personality ' which we usually assume to be ^//-we-are.
In short, He shows that every category by which we define
our ' personalities ' is completely inadequate to define what-we-
are, and that all such categories merely designate the fleeting
and the impermanent. They simply designate, that is, a
f personality ' which, like our bodies, passes, by and by, into the
' impersonal.' Or, in other words, there is no conception of
' personality* known to us, which is not also known to Him as
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 393
changing and passing away in the Flow of the AIL And His
final statement of what-He-is, as Being, is not capable of being
conceived in the human mind save as -Being which we call
Space.
293. We shall now try to show in some detail, the data upon
which we found this judgment. And it will be necessary, for
the sake of focus and clarity, to condense our attention upon
the consciousness which He reveals of Himself ~ The Father, and
the Holy Spirit, as ' Personalities.' We shall thereby also seize
the concept of * personality ' at its tensest. And as leading up
to His conception of * personality,' we may now answer our
question as to how we conceive ' personality ' by assuming what
is supposed, viz., that every human being is conscious of being
Something which is
I. Single, substantial, indivisible, one, and ruled by one
Will.
II. Sole source of its own feelings, conations, and thoughts.
III. Sole source of its own speech, or words, and acts.
IV. Possessed of one simple and indivisible Life.
V. Definable by one name, and knowable as one character.
VI. Occupier of one space which it is impossible for any
other Something to occupy.
1 Unity ' and ' Identity ' of personality are, of course, implied
in these categories.
294. Now, we have to show that Jesus throws every one of
these categories of 'personality' out of His consciousness of
His real Self, or What- He- Is. He withdraws every one of
these ' qualities,' and all quality absolutely from His ' person,'
by which it is possible for the human mind to characterise Him
as Jesus of Nazareth, and thereby He leaves no category to our
understanding by which we can conceive Him as a ' person.'
That is to say, What-He-is then enters our understanding as
' impersonal,' the Something which we cannot think as ' personal.'
But it is just then that we find him affirming What-He-is the
more : " I Am " : Is : and in such a dilemma we have only the
alternative left us to conceive Him as the Nothing, the Space-
Being, of which we are ourselves conscious of being. From the
394 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
facts which He Himself gives us in all His teaching we cannot
scientifically conclude otherwise.
This is not, of course, a new statement of Being, for all have
experienced this perplexing aspect of ' personality/ but the
great world has spanned the gulf by saying ' It is spirit' ; and
there ended the matter. The consciousness of what-we-are is
so deep and strong, that it must be expressed somehow. Yet
as soon as we ask, what do you mean by spirit ? the space-
content of that term is exposed. For we cannot think differently
of Spirit and Space, if we are faithful to ourselves.
We shall also see that Jesus in boldly negating His 'person-
ality ' as it is usually conceived^ determined this process as necessary
to the highest realisation of absolute perfection of Being. His
teaching throughout bears out the fundamental consciousness,
viz., that consciousness of space-being, for what-we-are, is
also identical with a consciousness of absolute perfection for
what-we-are, and that a consciousness of absolute perfection
for what-we-are is impossible by any other path. Or,
summarily, our consciousness of space-being is identical with
our consciousness of perfect-being. But we must leave this
consideration of absolute perfect-being to later chapters. We
now take up the categories of ' personality ' which we have set
forth above.
295. I. After ' free,' ' isolated ' Being, Will may be taken as
the most characteristic element in our composite conception of
' personality.' Will-power enters consciously or unconsciously
into every motion of what-we-are. It is will that guides and
determines the space-spread of our concepts, and moulds the
objects of our knowledge to be this or that. It goes much
deeper. Will leads the child's lip to the breast, and the proto-
plasmic cell to its destined form and individuality, by a light
which is far more inextinguishable than the light of conscious
intelligence. It seems to be the chief distinguishing feature
of individuality and personality, in so far that, if will cannot bt
predicated of an individual or person^ neither can we affirm the
individuality or personality.
Jesus lays immense emphasis upon Will. For Him, as for
us, the conception of either God or Man practically means, in its
content, that will-power upon which Creation and human destiny
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 395
rest and are upheld. Civilisation, as we see it, stands forth as
the embodiment of Will, even as heaven and earth epitomise the
Will of Whole-Being.
Now, will-power is not more a characteristic of ' personality '
than the negation of that will-power is the chief characteristic
of Jesus. He makes it His meat and His drink to subdue, to
subvert, and to annihilate this will-power in man. He cannot
tolerate this will in Himself. No doubt, He speaks of His own
will, just as we all do, but He steadfastly forbids to it the
slightest dominion or authority over His thoughts, feelings,
purposes, acts, or words. " The will of The Father" is the true
Will to Him.
It would be superfluous, perhaps, to insist upon this fact.
But if it were necessary, the proof is abundant. The Four
Gospels may be said to teem with it. His recognition of will
in Himself, as factual, has first to be admitted. Men appeal to
His will. " If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." " I will,"
He replies, "be thou clean." He also freely recognises will-
power in man. " If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell," etc. " If
any man will come after me," etc. But the facts are so evident
that they need not be pressed. But what we have to press is
the fact that He everywhere seeks to persuade men to lay down
this will-power and accept His own will-power instead. " Come
unto me." " Come after me." " Follow me." " I have given
you an example." " Believe me." " Let him deny himself."
But the sacrifice of will-power which He demands from all,
He first makes for Himself. His own will is absolutely
surrendered to His Father in heaven. " Not what I will but
what thou wilt." " Thy will be done." " Thy will be done on
earth, as it is in heaven." " My meat is to do the will of Him
that sent me." The true Will-power which all are to obey is
not on earth. It is not in man. The entire sphere of Creation,
as well as the inmost being of men, is to be ruled by a will
which is not included within the categories of any human
personality.
Jesus thrusts His own will out of His person, and out of the
person of every man. He declares that unless this Father-
Will is done, man will inevitably fail in his highest capabilities
of Being. The sum of all perfection also consists in negating
the personal will in order to do the will of the " Father," who is
396 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
not yet accounted to be in the make-up of any * person.' More-
over, He affirms that the wisest and the best relations of man
to man, are to be founded not upon man's will but upon the
Will of the Father. " For whosoever shall do the will of God
(' of my Father in heaven,' says Matt. xii. 50), the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother" (Mark, iii. 35). "Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven (Matt. vii. 21).
Jesus places a subordinate value upon man's obedience to
His own will. It is only a constitutional method of leading
man to the Father, in order that man may obey the Father's
will, to which will He Himself has surrendered His own
will. In His own hour of crisis, when the trial of death
comes upon Him, He finds His own will useless and vain.
"Thy will, not mine, be done." And why is it vain? //
is because His own will is not absolutely permanent, but
passing. " I came not to do mine own will but the will of
him that sent me." " I seek not mine own will but the will
of him that sent me." " Whosoever will come after me, let
him deny himself," that is, let him deny his own will. The
most characteristic feature in any man's 'self or 'personality'
is commanded to be denied and annihilated, if what-he-is would
be perfect.
296. Jesus thus recognises the procession of will-power.
" 'Twas mine ; 'tis his." He regards the will of man as passing
under His own will, and His own will as passing under the
will of the Father, who is not on earth but in heaven. And
this Will of the Father, so far, appears to Him to be the
Real, True, Permanent Will. From first to last, He casts out
of Himself such 'will' as we usually understand to be the
principal determining feature of ' personality ' in a man. But
a will that is so obliterated and negated by a greater Will, has
in reality no will-power, except as accepting negation, and so
does not exist as a permanence. It is sublated. It does not
rule but serves and passes. As the body of the child is sublated
in that of the youth, and the body of the youth in that of the
man, so the will of the person-Jesus is sublated in the will of
the Father-Person in heaven. Jesus substitutes His Father's
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 397
will for His own, and, so far, negates the most characteristic
category of ' personality ' in Himself. And by all the tests of
philosophy, the Jesus-Will being withdrawn from the person-
Jesus, the Jesus-Person should "cease to be" a person to that
extent. As a matter of conception, when His will is gone, we
cannot conceive Him to be a ' person ' at all, on the usual basis
of our concept of a personality. His 'personality/ in such a
case, is seen under process of passing away. Personality is in
the ' Flow.'
It will now occur to most people to say, " But it is still His
own will which so negates and annihilates His own will." And
this fact brings us immediately into the presence of the
inadequate conception which is generally held concerning Will.
For so we must conclude when we insist upon conceiving our
wills to be distinct, separated, and isolated forces acting
independently absolutely. But the very fact that we are able
to deny ourselves, or to negate our wills, proves that the will
which we consider to be so indispensable to a ' personality ' is
far from being indispensable to what-we-are. It is seen to be
a mere motion in what-we-are, which can be subsumed under
higher motion of Being, even as the motion of the stone to the
earth is subsumed under the motion of the earth round the
sun. Our view of ' personality,' in short, as we at present hold
it in philosophical and religious thought, and as based chiefly
upon will, is in exactly the same unscientific position with
reference to whole-being as the stone used to be with reference
to the earth and the sun before Newton enlightened the world.
It is held to have no relation to Being except one of isolation,
independence, and self-assertion. It is only for itself! It is
independent of even ' God ' ! It can assert its power against
Whole-Power !
Now we think it will be granted by all that just as we have
a consciousness of Being far transcending the limitations of
what we usually call our 'personal' being, so we all have a
consciousness of Will-Power far transcending that which we
characterise as our ' personal ' will.
Whenever, indeed, we conceive a Being as exalted above
ourselves, we must needs conceive a greater and more impera-
tive will in such a Being than in ourselves. And, necessarily,
until we realise what-we-are to be space-being we must always
398 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
have this conception of higher will. For in our consciousness
of space-being, whole-will is alone given us.
But in the same way that we are never conscious of our
' personal ' being as isolated absolutely from all-Being, so we
are never conscious that our ' personal } will is absolutely
isolated from All- Will. In fact, as we see, it is in the realisation
of His own will as nothing that Jesus reaches a higher conscious-
ness of Father- Will. But He is not conscious of being de-created
in His being because He has abolished His own will. On the
contrary, What-He-is without a 'personal' will is more than He
is under its sway ( 1 54-6). For when all * personal ' will ceases
to determine itself, Will which is not so determined through
' personality ' prevails beyond that ' personality.' ' Personality,'
in realising its space-being, determines itself by that very fact
as nil, and finds itself then under Will which is determined with
Space-Being as Whole-Power. Indeed, the recognition of our
own will, as merely the isolated and independent ' force ' of our
concepts, is the first step to our realising the truth of Whole-
Will as it Is. Jesus clearly aims to teach that man is ever more
than his so-called 'personality! as he defines it conceptually by
substance, unity, will, etc., and is always nearer to the truth of
what-he-is when he negates and annihilates every one of these
arbitrarily created categories by which he assumes to define
tf//-he-is. The more fully he can realise himself as space-being,
the more fully he will be able to realise what-he-is absolutely.
The more he can transcend ' personality ' as he thinks it con-
ceptually, the more he will realise his true being as it is. It is
towards Whole- Will in Whole-Being that Jesus ever seeks to
lead men, and by obliterating the conceptually isolated 'will' of
the conceptually isolated 'personality,' to enable them to realise
Will as Whole in Being which is Whole. And as we advance
in our investigations of His consciousness, it will become more
and more convincing and rational to us, that it is the force of
the great consciousness in Him that He is Whole with Whole-
Being, which enables Him to deny and annihilate, and to
command all men everywhere to deny and annihilate, every
defining limitation of ' personal ' being, of which ' personal will '
is held to be the chief. It will become more and more certain
that just as all cosmical forces, the force of gravitation not
excepted, are homed in Space- Whole-Force, so all forces in
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 399
man originate in the same Space-Being. We thus understand
that when we conceive our own wills to negate our own wills, it
is the consciousness of Whole -Will or Space-Will which is so
realised in such negation, Father-Will being but a higher form
of the * Will ' we call ours, and which is in turn sublated even as
the Son-Will is sublated in Father- Will.
It seems evident enough that the very fact that will can be
reduced, changed, denied, or negated, even as one force is reduced
by another, gives proof sufficient that What-we-are is not
founded on Will, whatever 'personality' may be. For no
conception of unchangeableness and impossibility of reduction
can ever equal the consciousness we have of such absolute
permanence in what-we-are. Will cannot be the fundamental
and absolute postulate for Being, for the consciousness of Will
infallibly yields us a conception of change, or possibility of
change, even when that will is conceived as the " Will of God"
Will is in the ' Flow,' and is not conceivable as Self-imperative
and Self-directive. Will connotes a Force, and Motion ; whereas
in our consciousness of What-we-are and of Space, we have no
such connotations ( 133). We have only the consciousness
of Whole-Energy in the consciousness that we are ; and with
this consciousness of energy we also have the never-failing
consciousness that such force or energy is not changeable or
reducible by any force or energy known to us in this Universe.
Therefore, whenever we conceive will as force, energy, or
motion, we necessarily connote change and limitation in it,
and then we know that what-we-are is in no wise dependent
upon such a Will in order to be. Such a Will, and the ' person-
ality ' said to be founded upon it, are in no respect commensurate
with our consciousness of what-we-are.
Now, the consciousness in Jesus that He is, in Being, ' One '
with the Father, but that His Will is negated by the Will of
the Father, proves that He has no consciousness of Will as
counting for the fundamental postulate of Being. Being abides
when Will has vanished. For the fact remains that when He
has annihilated His Will He is all the more assertive of even
greater Being. But, undoubtedly, what we then conceive to be
the " personality of Jesus of Nazareth " built up on such a Will-
Quality so negated, is now only thinkable as Space-Being. The
'personality' is transcended in our consciousness of What-He-
400 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Is, which is not so transcended but is more and more affirmed
through such sublation of His " personality."
We draw a deep distinction, then, between the conception
of personality as based on Will, and our consciousness of what-
we-are. Consequently we may have separate conceptions of
the Personalities defined as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
recognising in each a separate Will which each may subdue
or follow, and yet have a Consciousness of Being in which all
these ' personalities ' are sublated as Whole-Being, and in which
we find Whole-Directive-Energy which knows no personal
limitations of unit-will absolutely. What we really have before
us, in this process, is the transcendence of Will, as we conceive
it, by our consciousness of Whole-Will which cannot be put
under conceptuality. And therefore we should expect to
find that consciousness in Jesus which sublates the wills of all
men in His own, and which sublates His own will in the will
of His Father. But we should also expect that when ultimate
* personality ' is sublated, the wide-open consciousness of Whole-
Being should have no 'Will' affirmed in it, except that of
Whole- Will: Whole-Energy: Is: Being. With the sublation
of ' personality ' sublation of Will should also take place. And
this is exactly what Jesus teaches. In his doctrine of highest
Being, i.e., of God who is Spirit, and still more so of His con-
scious ' I am/ there is no affirmation of a particular will, even
as there is none of personality. The Father-personality is the
ultimate of Objectivity in the consciousness of Jesus, and with
the sublation of all personality in His consciousness of Whole-
Being, all consciousness of Will also vanishes. The Is-Con-
sciousness alone abides enclosing all that has been subsumed
within it. Jesus rends every limitation asserted in every con-
ception of ' personality ' and will, and affirms in their stead the
full-open absolute consciousness of Reality ; What-Is.
297. From what has been already said regarding Substance
( 1 80, 181), it will be evident that Jesus also teaches that His
1 personality,' in as far as it can be held to be ' single, substantial,
indivisible, and one,' is under change or process. " I and my Father
are one" " I in them and thou in me," " Abide in me and I in
you," " Whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me, but Him that
.sent me," and other similar passages prove the same remission
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 401
of ' personality ' to the space-consciousness. He does not
"cease to be," but He ceases to be a 'single, substantial,
indivisible-unit, or one ' ' person ' whom we can designate ' Jesus
of Nazareth.' In His consciousness, if not in ours, the Father
and He are not dual-being but unit-being, and it is the same
with His ' I ' and ' them,' His ' me ' and ' you ' ; and such unit-
being cannot be conceived except as spatial, or, as the theologians
say, ' spiritual.' We may call it what we please, it is being which
cannot enter our consciousness save as Space-Being. All the
qualities and quantities of ' personality ' have vanished, for
without this \ve could not conceive two persons to be Same-
Being. As He conceives Himself, He is without Will, and
without Substance, and is as truly the Father as He is Himself.
298. II. and III. He likewise negates all His feelings,
thoughts, purposes, aims, and desires, in the same way as we
have seen Him negate His 'will' and the substance of His
' personality.' For each of these particular ' qualities ' of
personality is dependent upon His Life, a term which includes
more than feeling, willing, and conating, and He does not
regard even His Life as His own. He calls upon all to lose
this Life in order that they may save it. So far as Life is
necessary to our consciousness of ' personality,' He withdraws
it from what-he-is, and " lays it down " in order that He may
" take it again." What- He-is is not dependent upon this Life.
But when Will, Substance, Unit-Being, and Life are withdrawn
from our conception of any one, what of that being remains in
our consciousness that we can define as * personal ' ? Has it not
been reduced to ' Nothing ' ? Have we, or can we have, any
other consciousness of such 'personality' save one of Space-
Being?
In like manner Jesus affirms that His 'words' and His
' works ' are not His own but His who sent Him. So
completely is He not Himself, as a ' self/ to Himself, that He
declares " I can do nothing of myself." "The word which ye
hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." " The
Father in me doeth His works." He repudiates His 'person-
ality ' as being the source of what He either Thinks, Does, or
Says. What remains, then, of the 'personality' of Jesus?
What characteristic, quality, or feature is left us by which to
2 C
402 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
form a concept of * personality ' for Him ? Have we more than
a space-being consciousness regarding Him ?
299. Transcendence of the Jesus-Personality is practically
admitted by Bishop Westcott in the following statements.
" Perfect Sonship involves perfect identity of will and action
with the Father." " Separate action on His part is an impossi-
bility, as being a contradiction of His unity with the Father."
11 His action is not only coincident but coextensive with the
action of the Father" (Gospel of St John, p. 85, on v. 19).
Nevertheless, when we have unity of Being and 'perfect
identity of will and action' in that unit-being, we cannot
predicate 'personality' of the same save as of one total
Personality. Which 'personality,' then, are we to sacrifice?
The duality of the two * persons ' is incognizable, and is
reduced to space-inobjectivity. Do we count the Father-
Personality as nil? Must we count the Jesus-Person as still
conceptual and representable to our thought ? Would not
this course run counter to His own consciousness of the Father-
Person as being the Highest Person either in Heaven or on
earth? And would not this course be directly in the face
of His own teaching that Will, and Life must be denied and
laid down, and sacrificed for the will of the Father and the
Father-Life eternal ? Does not His language expressly enforce
the fact of His abolition of 'personality, as we think it, for
that consciousness of space-being which for Him, as for ourselves,
is our ultimate consciousness of What-we-are ?
The abolition of personality has not the same context of con-
sciousness to Jesus as it has to us. We think of abolition of
' Will and Life ' as abolition of being, but He of abolition of our
concepts of Being. Our conceptual ' Will ' and ' Life ' are untrue
to fact, and in discarding or ' laying down ' both, we do not militate
against what we really are. We rather advance a higher
realisation of what-we-are to our experience. Every sacrifice
Jesus makes throughout His earthly existence is based on
this context of consciousness. ' Personality/ as men conceive
it, is, to Jesus, utterly untrue to His consciousness of What-Is.
He seeks to destroy the concept of our imperfect judgment
in order to establish the Reality of our Absolute Consciousness.
Transcendence of the Jesus-Personality is clearly affirmed
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 403
by Him. This is more emphatically confirmed in the word
He employs. In the statement, " I and the Father are One "
(John, x. 30), the word for ' One ' is the neuter ev. As Tertullian
pointed out, it is not Unus but Unum. It is neither masculine
nor feminine. The Son and Father, therefore, are not One
Person, but One Thing, or One Essence. Perhaps the intention
of Jesus was to teach ' one Being.' What is certain is that, in
it, 'personality' is sublated and transcended in impersonality,
as we cogitate that concept. The ' One ' is not different-being
from the * I '-person Jesus, nor from the Father-Person. Each
is IT. And IT is more than either ' person.'
And being neuter, the signification of ' Son ' is then im-
possible for Jesus. 'I Am ' is the only characterisation of
What-He-Is, in this transcendence, for the * I Am ' conscious-
ness does not connote sex-being, man-being, or 'personality*
of any denomination. It contains no quality, feature, or
characteristic, save space-connotations.
300. IV. * Personality,' it is said, connotes the possession of
one Life, simple and indivisible. But, as already shown, Jesus
does not regard His Life as accounting for What-He-Is. He
lays it down to take it again. It is a motion of His Being.
It is not His own. The Father gave it to Him. " I live by
the Father." " For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so
gave he to the son also to have life in himself" (John, v. 26).
The fountainhead of 'personality,' so far as it is conceived
to be Life, lies not in man himself, but in this Father. Seeing,
therefore, that this basis of ' personality ' is not in ourselves,
originally, can we expect this basis to remain eternally
permanent as it is, and as we at present understand it?
That Jesus affirms the transcendence of this ' life ' there
can be no doubt. " Let him deny himself," implies the " laying
down of life," as John phrases it. But, as we have pointed
out, life implies the summation of all sensation, feeling, and
thought, as we are able to cogitate these terms. Yet He
negates them by negating Life, and assumes that His hearers
will understand that What-He-Is is more than this Life. And
although He frequently speaks of His Life as His own, as we
do, and of His life given to the world, and of Himself as ' The
Life,' yet His higher consciousness of What-He-Is rises above
404 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
this Life-Concept ; and on the plane of what we know as
'personality' He has no affirmation of a single, unique,
indivisible, unit-life, as particularly and absolutely His own,
and as permanently His own eternally. On the contrary, His
' personality ' is always represented as in the flux of Change,
and Himself is beheld as deliberately furthering its process
of transcendence. He deliberately takes away from us every
quality of ' personality ' for Himself, and leaves us with only
the same consciousness for What-He-Is that we have for Space-
Being. There is nothing in His teaching of Being to sustain
the modern conception that Real, Permanent Being is to be
found in Appearing, Fluxional, Being; or that Personality
and Impersonality exist through each other in a kind of
conflux or endosmosis of Being. For He does not leave us
with even the conceptions of substance or motion for what-he-is,
and therefore He cannot be affirmed as Being unless as we
affirm Space-Being. And His transcendence of Life, in a
consciousness that He is more than Life in What-He-Is, is
rationally sustained in our own consciousness of what-we-are.
We have no consciousness of a thing. Life, in What-we-are.
We are conscious only of motions in space-being. What-we-are
does not generate, grow, assimilate nourishment, propagate
itself, decrease, decay, or die. We have no consciousness of
such qualities in what-we-are. What-we-are does not appear,
show, or become. The * I '-am consciousness, fundamentally, is
the same as we all have for the Universe fundamentally,
viz., a consciousness of Space, and space as also Being. The
transcendence of personality, in the teaching of Jesus, is com-
pletely sustained in our own consciousness of What-Is.
301. V. His own name He also finds insufficient to define
His conception of Himself, in all He Is. In His own teaching
we never find Him favouring a permanent definition of Him-
self by any name. Could He have truthfully done so ? Did
His expression " I am," to Judas and his predatory band, imply
" I amfesus"? Probably it did, but perhaps as subject to the
sense in which St Paul is said to have heard it and understood
it. In any case, we are not bound to assume that He fixed His
person, in all He believed Himself to be, to the narrow content
of any name, whether it were ' Jesus,' ' Christ,' * Door,' * Vine/
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 405
1 Shepherd,' 'Light/ 'Truth,' 'Way,' 'the Resurrection,' 'the
Life,' or even 'the Stone' which the builders rejected. His
deliberate purpose seems always to be to empty Himself of
predicates which strictly define him as a 'person ' and to employ
others which transcend 'personality' in order to include in His
Being the so-called ' impersonal ' as well as the ' personal.' As
we have seen, the Name which He prefers with especial emphasis
is " Man " And however we may decide to interpret this
term, it seems safe to assume that He did not intend it to cover
merely what we mean by an ' individual ' person. It gives far
more than the connotations attachable to the "son of Joseph
and Mary." It signifies a Nature, and not a mere isolated
' personality.' We have Type in it. It appears quite useless as
a term of singularity. And those who are anxious to 'define'
Jesus by a singular name, forget that He Himself discourages
every such course. He asserts " I am come in my Father's
Name " (John, v. 43). This Name alone is to be " Hallowed."
For this Name really sums up the content of every other name
by which Jesus has characterised Himself, or by which we can
define Him. And, consequently, just as His Will, His Life, with
all that they connote of ' personality,' are sublated and negated,
so also His ' individuality/ so far as a name is concerned in His
definition of His ' personality/ is carried up and beyond the
negation of all such ' personal ' qualities. So far as a Name can
personalise Him, He negates it, and thereby shows His convic-
tion that every name fails to define true personality. The WILL,
the LIFE, the NAME, He withdraws from His consciousness of
' personality/ and regards them all as subsumed and melted in
the Flow of impermanence. If we name the child, we name
Jesus, and if we name Jesus, we name Him who sent Him.
We shall also see that in naming The Father , we only give
a name to all that is in the Universe, conceptually defined. It
is by this Name that Jesus defines the Universe to Himself, for
everything within its compass is, in the consciousness of Jesus,
Fathered. Therefore is He " Lord of heaven and earth "
(Matt. xi. 25). And it is in this sense that we should perhaps
interpret the Name, " Son of Man." In this Name, " Man " is
named universally. Jesus as an individual man is named in it,
but so also are the great collective conceptions, Child, Son
Father. It is not a name which merely mediates a conception
406 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of individuality, but universality as well. And this is clear in
the fact that Father as a term does not, in the consciousness of
Jesus, limit itself to a conception which excludes Child, or Son,
or Man; for His 'Father' is as much a Child as Father, as
much Man as Son. The Father is received when we receive
the Son, and the Son is received when we receive the Child.
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." " I am in the
Father and the Father in me." " I, the Child, the Son, the
Man, and the Father, are One." Whether, therefore, His names
be individual or universal, particular or collective, their connota-
tions of Joeing conceptual are far more than their actual conceptual
content. Their bounding limits are seen to melt away from
mere individual 'personality' towards a consciousness of Being
which transcends them. That is to say, every so-called Name
of Jesus denotes Impermanence of Being, just as the terms
Brain, Blood, and Breath denote the impermanence of the
motions of our Body ; or as an idea, impression, or sensation
connotes the impermanence of Thought.
Jesus therefore refuses to be defined by one name exclusively
individualistic. He casts forth from His 'personality' every
name or designation which personalises Him as One, Separate,
Unique, Independent, Isolated 'person,' wholly and absolutely
apart in His being from all beings.
302. VI. Neither does He claim to have and to hold
exclusive possession of a ' space ' in which He is absolutely
isolated by Himself, and which no other ' person ' can occupy
save Himself absolutely. We can only understand such
passages as, " Thou in me," " I in the Father," " the Father in
me," " I in them and thou in me," and many others of a
kindred connotation, to mean that space-being is whole and
common being to Father, Son, Man, or Child. It is in this
consciousness that Jesus transcends individualising terms, and
affirms Whole-Being as that of which Father, Son, Man, or
Child are but mediating concepts. Every ' quality ' of being
which can be placed under either of these concepts is to Jesus,
and in His consciousness, unreal in that it is impermanent
ultimately, and can be eliminated from the 'persons' who
thereby " cease to be."
Clearly, then, in this consciousness of Jesus, the ' personality '
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 407
of our psychologies, philosophies, and theologies is transcended.
He leaves us without the faintest shadow of a category, or
quality by which we can think, cognize, recognize, or conceive
His individual ' personality ' as Jesus. His Will is Father-Will,
His Life is Father- Life, His name is Father-name, His person
is Father-person, for He is One (ev) with the Father.
303. It must be evident, too, that Jesus, in using the above
noted terms concerning the * personalities ' of Father, Man, and
Himself, inferentially withdraws from them the category of
Substance, as we are able to conceive it. As He discusses two
and three and more ' persons ' as all ' in ' each other, it is clearly
impossible for us to apply to either the category of ' substance.'
It is the unthinkable. Moreover, we have tried to show above
that no one has any consciousness of substance in the connota-
tions of the personal " I," except as substance is taken to mean
space ( 181). For Jesus is not seeking to abolish our conscious-
ness of space when He speaks of one person being ' in ' another
person. He is rather abolishing our conception of personality,
and affirming space and what-we-are as yielding an identical
consciousness. To abolish space in the consciousness of any one
is the absolutely impossible, for the simple reason that this
consciousness gives us no 'qualities' of its being which we
can withdraw, eliminate, or annihilate. It has no 'qualities,'
yet it does not " cease to be." It is rather the most insistent
and subsistent consciousness we have of Being. And it is this
Being which Jesus is insisting upon for Himself, for Man, and
for the Father. It is the real Permanent Being, transcending
all ' personal ' being which is in the flood of all that is flowing
and passing away.
We are shut up to this conclusion as the only possible one
to be drawn from the unmistakable data given in the words of
Jesus. Beyond all doubt, He persistently withdraws from our
minds every category by which His 'Personality' can be con-
ceived in our understandings. " The son can do nothing of
himself." " I can of mine own self do nothing." " If I honour
myself, my honour is nothing." "Then shall ye know that I
am, and that I do nothing of myself." When He wills, it is
His Father willing. When He acts, it is the Father that works
His works. When He is conscious of Life, it is the Life of
408 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the Father. When He speaks, the words are those of His
Father, and not His own. He does nothing of Himself. He
cannot, therefore, be put under a name, for He has come in the
name of the Father. He is the Father, to be seen of all men,
as He plainly declares. He frees what-He-is as Son from the
qualified, the categorical, and the historical, as we conceive
and cognize these, and through the nothingness of the Son,
qualifies what-He-is, as Father-Being. He transcends the
personality of Himself, the Son.
Now it is a scientific fact that we can all sublate our wills,
passions, purposes, ideas, and sensations in a consciousness of
Being which we are convinced is not enclosed within all we
conceive to be our ' persons.' Even Life we do not feel to be
our very own. Every feeling, every thought, every motion of
will, may be so negated. But this is the annihilation of
'personality' as we usually conceive it. Take feeling, think-
ing, and conation away from the predicates of our being and
what is left of our * personality ' ? Nothing. Yet we are still
conscious that all we are, IS. Jesus affirms all the more our
permanent being after all we attribute to * personality ' has
been extinguished !
304. It is here, of course, that He far transcends the con-
clusions which are philosophically affirmed by the great thinkers
of the East and the West. Buddha, for example, in his earnest
search for deliverance from the Impermanent, delineates step by
step the journey he pursues, until he arrives at that conscious-
ness of Permanent Being which gives him at the same time
a true consciousness of deliverance from all change inherent in
his * personality.' He begins by placing behind him the " idea
of form " internal and external. " By passing quite beyond all
idea of form, by putting an end to all idea of resistance, by
paying no attention to the idea of distinction, he, thinking
' It is all infinite space,' reaches (mentally) and remains in the
state of mind in which the idea of the infinity of space is the
only idea that is present this is the fourth stage of deliver-
ance." Similarly, the one who is being freed from all desire of
Existence leaves this idea of * infinite space ' behind him, and
reaches a consciousness which enables him to say, ' It is all
infinite reason.' He further advances beyond this conscious-
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 409
ness to one in which he finds ' Nothing at all exists.' There
are then but two more stages to go until he attains Deliverance,
or Nirvana. " By passing quite beyond all idea of nothingness
he reaches (mentally) and remains in the state of mind to
which neither ideas nor the absence of ideas are specially
present" a state which admits him to the goal of his long
quest, viz., a " state of mind in which both sensations and ideas
have ceased to be." This is the eighth stage in the famous
" Eightfold Path" of Buddhistic Deliverance from the burden of
Being (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi., par. 33-42).
Modern Philosophy has advanced no further than the
philosophy of Buddha. Buddha simply, as we can see,
engages in the process of withdrawing every category of
personality from our conceptions until the ' person ' is reduced
to a consciousness of Nothing. Buddha, of course, called for
the entire repression of the existence and pride of the " I am "
consciousness. All personality must be abolished. There
could be no 'deliverance,' and no Nirvana, until this were
effected. And he never hesitated to take the step into
Nothing in order to attain the unthinkable yet Permanent
Being sans personality. Modern philosophers of the West
hesitate to eliminate ' personality ' from their conceptions of
Being. To do this would not, they believe, give them Reality
but Unreality ! The Nothing-consciousness is Nothing to them,
' and it is nothing more ' ! Yet it yielded a consciousness of
Permanent Being to Buddha, and therein he read his conscious-
ness " without mistakes " so far. For higher enlightenment and
deeper truth than Buddha saw, we are indebted to The Master.
305. For, with Jesus, Personality is not swallowed up of
Impersonality, nor Life buried in the womb of Death, as
Buddha would suggest. Buddha believed that he passed into
absolute bliss by the loss of consciousness of self, and the
annihilation of 'personality.' The whole teaching of Jesus
assumes that man rises into absolute beatitude by gaining,
not losing, the supreme consciousness of what-he-is. Man by
widening upwards all his limited conceptions of personality gains
what these limitations always hide from him, viz., consciousness
of unlimited being: li'Jiat Is: Reality. In the Doctrine of
Jesus, the Nothing-consciousness not only leads us to a
410 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
realisation of Whole-Being, for which Child, Man, Son of
Man, Father, are mediatory, or revelational terms, but to
a realisation of this Whole-Being as that in which both
Personality and Impersonality, Life and Death, and all similar
Relativities are sublated, and in which, moreover, Whole-
Being is Personal and Living^ with no possible relative
' Impersonal ' or ' Dying ' conceivable in it. He affirms, in short,
that our consciousness of Space, 'within' us or 'without' us,
is also a natural consciousness of Ultimate or Whole-Person-
ality and Ultimate or Whole- Life. He calls it 'Eternal,'
4 Everlasting,' ' Abiding forever,' ' Shall not perish,' and such
like terms. He always conveys in each of these expressions
the meaning that no possible relativity of Temporality, Flow,
or 'passing away' is to be found in it. It is Being without
the least shred of 'relation,' 'quality,' or characteristic in it;
yet again it is Being in which all we are conscious of conceptual
being, or of ' God ' as being, is fulfilled, exalted, and glorified.
Buddha sought to realise Being through loss of conscious-
ness, Jesus by gaining our highest consciousness, of what-we-
are. The process of suppression of consciousness in Buddha is
reversed by Jesus in one of ever fuller and fuller consciousness
of What-Is : Reality : Space-Being. Buddha saw the seed fall
into the ground and die, but he did not see it, beyond death,
alive and bearing much fruit. This was the vision alone of Jesus.
The Space-Consciousness which both East and West have
found so pressing, so insistent, so overpowering in its strength
of sovereignty beyond every other consciousness ; so ineradi-
cable from the necessary postulates of Knowledge and Being ;
is the same great consciousness which we find fundamental in
the Teaching of Jesus. But with him it never leads to ' empty
nullity,' 'impersonal' being, blank lack of life and motion,
' nirvana,' but to the utmost conceivable negation of such, and
the affirmation of the fullest consciousness of Being, on the basis
of our consciousness of what-we-are.
306. But is it not the weakness of both Eastern and Western
philosophy that they have never admitted into their postulates
the mediating category of Life? There has been no mediating
postulate set between the extremes of Thought and Being.
Hence the necessity to find the Ultimate Postulate in either the
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 411
Hegelian ' Notion ' or the Buddhistic * Nirvana.' In each system
the entire sphere of Life, with its millionfold connotations of
Vitality, has been ignored and disrespected. The Father, the
Child, the Poet, the Biologist, Motherhood, Social and National
enthusiasms, and much besides, are all frowned upon and
negated when they seek a place in these cosmologies. Conse-
quently, we may either have from Buddha a desperate oblitera-
tion of all ' Personality ' and that Knowledge which it sustains,
or with Hegel an exaggerated exaltation of Knowledge, and its
eternal permanence affirmed in its identity with * personality,'
supposed to be identical with the ' Notion.' In either case we
miss the mediating living personality which is so familiar in our
everyday conceptions of ourselves, and we never find the way
out of our ' personality ' to either Notion or Nirvana. East and
West, by their highest minds, have acknowledged the funda-
mental importance of the consciousness of Space, but both have
denied it Life. " Space is Dead," has been the accepted inter-
pretation of this consciousness. The consciousness of it has
been that it was less than Life, instead of being far more, by
our consciousness of Infinity. To build upon the space-con-
sciousness was to build upon Death, and living * personality '
has refused to yield itself to that ' Gorgon ' ! It has been
considered better to bear those ills of * personality ' from which
yet every thought turns back dissatisfied, than fly to those of
the narrow and too straitened Notion, or the too expansive
Nirvana.
There are signs in modern thinking that this postulate of
Life must be founded in its proper place in any system of
universal interpretation of Being. The consciousness of the
Whole of Being appears to be felt to be impossible apart from
it. We seem to see in the able works of Eucken and Bergson
an effort to redeem this lost position. So far, however, such
efforts do not seem to have profited by the deep lessons of the
past. Buddha and Hegel recognised to the full the space-
consciousness, though under different terms, but both regarded
it as the abode of blank Being and Abstraction. Modern
writers, of whom Bergson and Eucken appear to be the best
representatives, emphasise Life and ' Spiritual' Life, but they
leave aside the consciousness of Space as fundamental. And
' Spirit ' is pure assumption. We are no more conscious of the
412 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Thing 'Spirit' than we are of the Thing 'Life.' It is but a
swing of the old pendulum to the other side. Space to them
does not yield a consciousness of Personality, and therefore we
are not surprised that it is avoided as a Nullity. And yet it is
an open-eyed truth to every one that no consciousness of Life
or any conception which we may form of Life, can ever yield to
us a consciousness of Eternal Permanence for What-we-are
conscious we are. It is a conception that never gives us any
other consciousness than simply the Flow at its worthiest and
best. It is never other, that is, than the Correlative of Death.
It is never Whole-Being to us. We do not escape from a cleft
universe by founding on it, nor from the Plurality, the Duality, and
the Unity of all the dreary past. The parade of scientific facts by
which it is sought to be sustained may serve many useful and
meritorious purposes, but no so-called 'scientific' fact ever so
much as explains its own existence, and need not be asked
to explain ours. The one ' scientific ' fact of Space is
the only Fact that can do this, and when we realise with
Jesus that, in the consciousness of it, we have all and far more
than our consciousness of Personality and Life can bestow upon
us, we shall, like Him, see in it the glorious transcendence of
both conceptions of Personality and Life, and realise the fuller
Whole-Being after which our deepest consciousness continually
craves. We shall also realise the true consciousness of Eternal
Permanence, unchanging for ourselves and for the All that is
truly All.
307. Jesus places Life into His interpretation of Existence
with as much care and emphasis as He postulates Space. It is
by the Life-category that He shows the mediatory process of the
passing of ' personality,' as we conceive it, to that higher concep-
tion of Being which He embodies in the term ' Spirit,' and which
is shown below to have no other possible content for our con-
sciousness than Space-Being. Thought, Life, Spirit, are distinct
representative postulates in three distinct spheres of His great
interpretation of What-we-are and What-God-Is. And His
method of interpretation is exactly the one which modern
philosophy finds impossible and yet retain Being. He negates
every quality or relation by which we characterise what we-are,
and where we find a Blank, He reveals the highest consciousness
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 413
of glorified Being. " A thing without qualities is clearly unreal,"
Prof. F. H. Bradley boldly affirms (Appear. & Real., p. 130).
" Isolate a thing from all its relations, and try to assert it by
itself," says Prof. E. Caird (Hegel, 162), "at once you find that
you have negated it, as well as its relations. The thing in
itself is nothing." Philosophy says " It is nothing " ! Jesus,
after stripping Himself of every relation, quality or character-
istic by which we know Him to be a person, declares that He is
the Father ! Through the utmost negation of ' personality/ as
it is summed up in Thought for us all, He substantiates a deeper
postulate of Life, and condenses that postulate in the term
" Father." He puts Life as a mediating conception between the
extremes of Thought and Whole-Being. Men thought they
saw a 'personality,' Jesus, who had Form, life, will, love, act,
word, work, motion, and mission, yet He denuded Himself of all
of these and affirmed what-He-was, to be still more as ' Father/
when all these were negated. His Life was not His, nor Him,
and their Thought of Him was based on a transient Appearance.
Both Thought and Appearance, however, were based on the
motions of Life, and as the Father, this Life was held to be
Eternal, Permanent Being. " No one shall pluck them out of
my Father's Hand." There was every encouragement to
believe so, for Jesus declared the Father to be "Lord of
Heaven and Earth." We shall see, nevertheless, that in
the enlarging consciousness of Jesus, Life with all it con-
notes of both Father and Son, heaven and earth, is also a
conception of Being which is under process of 'passing
away/ in order to reveal the deeper postulate of * Spirit/
which is the final representative term which Jesus employs
to interpret our consciousness of Whole-Being. There is no
final revelation of Eternal Permanence in the term Father, and
it is only used as mediatory of a higher consciousness in the
Doctrine of Jesus.
308. The facts of our consciousness, then, are (i.) Personality
is eternally permanent, but not the * personality ' of Literature
and Philosophy. The ' personality ' of disciples, the Child, the
Son of Joseph, the Son of Man, the Father, is under process and
flow, as much as everything framed out of the concepts of
Thought. The fundamental implication in the Doctrine of
414 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Jesus is that, by the nature of Thought, no concept or concep-
tion formed by it can indicate other than what is in the Flow of
the all, and that the ' personalities ' of those mentioned are
necessarily, in all thoughts of them, processional, or changing,
and passing away. Permanence is not given in our conscious-
ness of them. They are only temporarily helpful and revela-
tional as Media. Procession of Personality^ as taught by Jesus,
is indeed but the highest vision of that Whole-Process of
Being which moderns know in the Cosmos as Evolution, (ii.)
No conception of ' GOD ' can be accepted and sustained as
Eternally Permanent Being which fails to fulfil that conscious-
ness of eternally permanent being which we each, in our space-
consciousness of ourselves, have for our own being. And as the
concept * God ' has hitherto been built-up out of the qualities and
predicates of evanescent ' personalities,' it must be held to be
also, so far, necessarily Impermanent. This is in accordance
with theistic history which reveals the concept ' God ' as ever
changing and ever varying in its content of Deity. For this
reason Jesus necessarily allowed all such * God '-concepts to lapse
into desuetude. But a new concept of God required an antecedent
new definition of Man, for only through himself can man form
any concept of God. Past conceptions of Man had traced his
descent from God, not through Life as in God, but through God's
power of creation. Man was a living thing, but not living by the
same Life which was in God. Jesus traces the Life of Man to
the same Life of God. Life is the true nexus of these two
concepts Son and Father. ' I live by the Father.' It is the
same nexus which binds Jesus to the world. " I give unto them
eternal life." He himself is thereby truly Father to Man, and
on this basis of common Life, Jesus sees God, Himself, and Man
as One. Any concept of c personality,' therefore, for either, is
possible of application to all or each. " That they all may be
one as thou, Father, art in Me." " That they may be one as we
are." " I in them and thou in Me." " Abide in Me and I in
you." " I and the Father are one." We have in these state-
ments a concept of Being which is common to each ' personality.'
There is a true consciousness given to us of a ' Unity beyond
the difference ' of ' personality.' That is, ' personality ' is so
far transcended. And LIFE is the common basis of the
transcendence.
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 415
309. For Life is not necessarily solely ' personal.' Science
declares Life to be in man, beast, fish, plant, and protoplasm,
the cell-source of Life. And clearly Jesus carries His concept
1 Father ' far beyond the concept Man. He is ' Lord of heaven
and earth.' Luther felt this to be a just conception. He
says : " If I thoroughly appreciated these first words of the
Lord's Prayer, Our Father which art in heaven, and really
believed that God who made heaven and earth, and all
creatures, and has all things in His hand, was my Father, then
should I certainly conclude with myself, that I also am a lord
of heaven and earth" (Table Talk}. The concept Father, in
His consciousness, covers everything that lives. Jesus sees the
Father to be as much the Father of the plant, the lily, the
grass, as of Himself, the Son. For it lives. And just because
life is, a Father is. All fatherhood is based solely on the gift
of life, and not necessarily upon 'personality.' And to Jesus
just because this 'Father' alone 'has Life in Himself
(John, v. 26), and is self-sustained, He is thereby The Father
Absolute, the Father of All. For Life is one. It .is evidently
the same conception which enables John to say that ' In Him
was Life,' and on the basis of the conception of Life being
before all things, to conceive Jesus as being in the beginning
"with God "(i. i).
Hence the conception of Jesus that everything has behind it
a Living Father. The Father is inseparable from his conscious-
ness of the sun as it shines, and of the rain as it falls, and of the
grass as it grows. It is the same consciousness which has come
into our knowledge with the discoveries of science that no life
could be upon the earth for either plant or man without both
rain and sun. The width of vision which also in Jesus is
covered by the concept ' Father,' has only lately come into our
conscious knowledge through the scientific assertion that life in
protoplasm, amoeba, plant, fish, bird, beast, and man, is the same
life. Life is One. As a conscious fact, we are conscious only of
one life. ' Natural ' and ' Spiritual ' life are terms of expedience,
and do not connote duality of lives. All that Jesus is, He is
conscious of having come whole from the Father, and as going
whole to the Father.
There is therefore no life except the life which is given from
the Father ' in heaven.' It is this fact that fills up the content
416 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of the term ' F'ather ' in the consciousness and statements of
Jesus. This Father clothes the grass, glorifies the lily, feeds
the raven, is bound up in the sparrow's fall, and is in Man, His
Son. And He does so through His own life in them. The
' Person ' of the Father is constructed wholly out of creational
material. Jesus by this consciousness carries His conception of
' Father ' beyond the bounds of Human Nature and widens it to
the full extent of Nature as a Whole. It is co-extensive
with the Cosmos, or the Universe. For under the * Father/
Jesus assimilates the vital as well as all that we regard as
inorganic and non-vital.
And, as we have said, this is in strict harmony with His
conception of the Father as alone intimate with the final destiny
of * the heavens and the earth." The great process of Life, as
we know it, shall pass away, and also heaven and earth as its
Form. They shall pass away, but of that hour knoweth no one,
'not even the angels in heaven, neither the son, but the Father'
(Mark, xiii. 32). The power over all Nature is purely Father-
Power. It is a Father, and not merely Law, that is ' Lord of
heaven and earth.' Jesus, as Son, makes no pretension to know
the destiny of Life-Process : Jesus, as Father, does. Now
science believes that all Life is one, and that no life comes
save out of life, and that Life is the highest phenomenon of
Nature, and yet persists in believing that all life is Unfathered,
a mere product of lifeless law. Have the theologians done
worse in believing that God created all things ' out of nothing ' ?
310. Putting aside for the moment that the term Father
indicates a defined Person, and looking at it as a name for what
we call Nature, we might now ask ourselves if Nature could be
conceived to rise to a higher altitude of Being than as the
Source of all Life. The term Father does not, of course, rise
higher than this conception. To be the self-determined, self-
sustained source of Life, or, in John's phrase to have Life, ' in
Himself (John, v. 26), truly defines the absolute conception of
Father ; and to give life is to create the relationship of Sonship,
which again shows us Fatherhood passing over from the
potential or passive state to that of the active. This is the
same conception which is given in the sentence, " That which
hath been made," or Creation, " was Life in Him," where Life is
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 417
viewed as also Personal. Now, our difficulty in conceiving
Nature, the Unive/sal Cosmos, to be Personal, is in limiting
Life-giving to the human personal form. But to put Life-
giving as a conception within the limits of the narrower one of
human personality, is to render the term Father, as Jesus uses
it, wholly abortive. The term " Father " transcends human
personality as a source of Life. It is the absolute Source, and
if fatherhood is to be our conception for What gives Life, then
Nature is the highest form we know of fatherhood. ' Person-
ality,' as we are accustomed to conceive it, is not necessarily
bound up with fatherhood. In the conception of Jesus, it is
not because Nature is personal, but because she is the great
Life-giver, that He identifies His ' Father ' and our * Nature '
as One. If we take the predicate 'Life-Giving' from either
His 'Father' or our 'Nature,' each term becomes a nullity.
For it is only and solely on the basis of Life and Life-giving
that the conception of Fatherhood exists, and this fact of Life
is the highest we know in Nature. Neither the 'Father' of
Jesus, nor the ' Nature ' of science, yields us a higher concept
of Being.
311. Life in the consciousness of Jesus has therefore but
one Source. And this is doubtless the reason why He never
mentions or even hints at the entity 'Nature! All that we
attribute to ' Nature ' He attributes to the ' Father.' He only
knows the Father in heaven as the sole source of Life, and con-
sequently He never conceives anything in Nature which may
be without life, or capacity of response, as being on the same
plane of life as Himself. He is a Son, a Child, of the same
Source of life from which all that lives draws its being. Hence
He addresses all things as alive, even the dead corpse being
conceived as ready to respond to Him, and the very stones as
ready to cry out in their sympathy. The conception of Nature
as ' dead,' ' inert,' and ' mechanical ' is therefore as far from
truth as is that pantheism which is based on it and which now
we must consider as mere deistic lumber.
The ' personality ' which we associate with both Fatherhood
and Sonship, heavenly or earthly, is a conception which His
and our consciousness of What-we-are continually transcends.
For Life is that which is given, given to the ' other/ or as it
2 D
418 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
is profoundly phrased in the Fourth Gospel, " laid down." In
the conception of Jesus, to give His life for the sheep, to
"lay down His life" is not merely to expire. His action is
conceived in the same form as that of His Father who gives
the Son also "to have life in himself." The Father 'dies' in
the same sense when He gives life or ' lays down ' life in His
Son, as does Jesus when He gives His life for and to the
world. It is begetting, it is not losing, life. It is so that Jesus
conceives that eternal 'personalities' are begotten by life given
or laid down in them, just as temporal ' personalities ' are by
the same process. But what we do not always grasp is the fact
that He conceives that when Life is thus Maid down' in a
* personality ' the Father also comes into that ' personality '
and makes His abode there (John, xiv. 23). Similarly, Jesus
conceives Himself as being 'in' another 'personality,' and it is
this conception of Life given or ' laid down ' which rationalises
such statements as ' I and My Father are one thing, or being,'
' I in them and Thou in Me ' where ' personality,' as we
conceive it, is sublated and transcended. He transcends the
' personality ' which is held in the limitations of our conception
of Life, and reveals His consciousness of Personality as sublating
all that we associate with even the conception of the ' Father
in heaven.'
He that receives the little child receives Jesus, and he that
receives Jesus receives Him not, but Him, the Father, who sent
Him. The child personality is negated in the personality of the
Son, and again the personality of the Son is negated in the person
of the Father. Therefore, " He that hath seen Me," says Jesus,
" hath seen the Father." " The Father in Me doeth His works."
312. Have we reached then in the conception of The Father,
the Ultimate conception of Personality as it lies in the
consciousness of Jesus ? Does the Father-Consciousness of Jesus
yield an Absolute consciousness of Personality? The Son is
sublated in the Father, and we do not have any difficulty in
accepting this reading of His own consciousness. " The Father
is greater than I." " I am in the Father and the Father in Me,"
" If ye had known Me ye would have known My Father also."
With the concept Life in our thoughts, as held and given in
Father and Son, their ' personalities ' are as easily identified as
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 419
One as they are dualised as separated. The Father is Jesus,
Jesus is the Father. The Father is the Child, for the Child is
also Father. The Father-Name must be given to Jesus. He
says it is given to Him by the Father (John, xvii. n, 12).
They both likewise dwell together in one man who loves (xiv.
23), and thus having one Name and one place, they are unified
in One Being, for " I and My Father are one being." This is
clearly an analogous consciousness to that which sees the child-
personality disappear into that of the youth, and that of the
youth into that of the Man, and that of Man into that of
Nature.
But it is also clear enough that this Unified Being is simply
Unit-Being and not Whole-Being. We are here in the same
perplexity with the unit Father-Son as we always are with the
unit concept Subject-Object, One-Many, Cause-Effect For no
conception of Unity or Unit-being ever gives an adequate
consciousness of Whole-Being. And similarly, no concept of
Unified 'personalities' ever gives us a satisfactory concept of
Whole-Personality, in which no possible duality can be found.
It is clear, then, that some fundamental concept other than LIFE
must be taken up, if a higher conception of Personality than
what is given in the sex-terms, Father-Son, is to receive
rational substantiation in our consciousness. The concept
Father-Son-Personality cannot be transcended on the basis of
Life alone. And we have now to try to show that Jesus does
transcend this God-concept of Father-God by that of Spirit-
God, and that He does so on the basis of our consciousness of
Space.
313. Let us reverently remember, however, that, in the
great past ages, no conceptual name for God has ever exhausted
that consciousness in man. But this consideration only presses
more earnestly the question, Why should man have a God-
Consciousness at all ? Whence comes this wonderful and all-
prevailing consciousness in him ? Since the world began it is
this consciousness which man, savage or civilised, has steadfastly
striven to put into words, and focus in a Name. His names for
it are as the sands of the seashore for multitude. At bottom,
they all point to this stupendous Fact. And every name of this
conscious Being has had some particular truth in the heart of it,
420 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
satisfying for a time the limited lives of those who esteemed it
to be their " Most High." In Egypt, India, Mesopotamia,
Arabia, Greece, Scandinavia, the one consciousness of this
Whole-Being is ever present in every man, although its name is
Man-given, and adored by man after his special instincts and
capacity of discernment.
314. It is not otherwise in the consciousness of Jesus. The
Divine to Him as to us, and to all, is what we are able to think
as Highest and Best ; and to name it is to postulate what is
highest and best in our conscious knowledge of all the Universe,
and in that consciousness nothing is deemed to stand higher or
better than Life. The terms Son and Father, or, in the
amplest synthesis, Man and Nature, are then but mediatory of
our experience of Life.
The Two ' persons ' Father and Son are thus, in Jesus'
consciousness, conceived as One Thing, on the basis of One
identical Life. Therefore all that relates to the one ' person '
relates to the other. " He that hateth Me hateth My Father
also," says Jesus. " He that honoureth not the Son honoureth
not the Father who sent Him." " He that receiveth whomso-
ever I send receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth
Him that sent Me." " He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father." The Glory of their common Being is identical. " The
glory which I had with Thee before the world was."
315. We cannot say in our consciousness where the Son's
being ends and that of the Father begins. We can but take
the expression of Jesus Himself and say they are ' One.' All
the ' qualities ' of the ' person ' Jesus as ' son of Joseph, Son of
Man, or Man, are withdrawn, and such * personality ' negated in
the affirmed * personality ' of the Father. Personality is widened
upward in a synthesis which embraces Heaven and Earth, or
the Universe. What we have left of the 'son of man,' is space-
being. For we have no category left to us by which we can
conceive Him as Objective. That is to say, after the process of
reasoning through which Jesus leads our thoughts of Himself, as
<( Man," it is impossible for us to think differently of the Is-
being remaining than of Space.
But while this is the fact regarding Jesus' ' personality/ what
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 421
we desire the reader to note is that the consciousness in Jesus
of \vhat-He-is, is now not less but intensely more. In the
consciousness of Himself as space-being He is far more than His
disciples conceived in the ' person ' who walked by their side. It
is this fact which misleads commentators into asserting that
Jesus claimed a unique relationship with the Father. His
persistent claim that Man, Son of Man, and the Father are One
is inconsistent with such a view. To them and to all that saw
Him He was the visible Jesus, whereas to Himself He was the
Invisible Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth. " Show us the
Father and it sufficeth us," the disciples cried. " We see you,
Master, but where is the Father ? " And He replies, " Have I
been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me ?
You have seen Me, why do you not also know Me ? Look with
the mind as well as with the eye. Has the Father-God done
more than give Life ? And have not I given Life to the world ?
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He that hath
eyes to see, let him see.
That is, as He is conscious of negating the Child in Himself
and affirming Himself as " Man," so He is also conscious of
negating himself as " Man " and affirming Himself as the
heavenly Father. Hence He declares His 'personality' by the
same ' qualities,' relations, or categories, that are the exclusive
attributes of the Father. The name-tara is only changed ;
Personal Being is more intensely affirmed. But now, Jesus is
simply Space-Person^ inobjective, and the Father alone stands
before our thoughts as the Object of contemplation.
But that which is the Ultimate consciousness for His own
Man-Being must be the Ultimate consciousness for the Father-
Being) if they are to be conceived as ' One? Therefore the
Ultimate consciousness of the Father- Being must be also one of
Space-Being. And it is this resultant-being which Jesus sets
before us. He reverses the process, and all that was the Father
becomes the Son. By withdrawing every 'quality,' relation,
category, or attribute of being from the Father, Jesus shows
that the Father-Being yields exactly a consciousness of Space-
Being as the Ultimate Reality of Father-, or Life-Being. And
in doing so, it is evident that our Lord's aim is to show that
Permanent Eternal God-Being cannot be put into the shallow
concept which we denominate ' personality.'
422 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
316. To be Lord of Heaven and Earth, was satisfactory God-
Being to all the past ages before Jesus. But He, Jesus the Son
of Man, proceeds to qualify Himself with the attributes of this
God-Being. The outlines are swift and sudden, but they are as
lightning lines. " All authority hath been given unto Me in
Heaven and on Earth" (Matt, xxviii. 18). So far, the Father-
term is seen empty of Lordship of Heaven and Earth. It is
now in the power and being of Jesus. He thereby not only
decreates the 'son of Joseph' personality, but the 'person-
ality ' of the Father. It is tantamount to a consciousness in
Jesus that neither the sex-terms of Son nor Father can express
Whole-Being-God. Neither the attributes of Father nor of Son
define Whole- Being of Heaven and Earth. Let us Name this
Being as we please, through all the categories possible to our
consciousness, until we reach the very Highest and Best Name
of Father, Giver of Life, it still remains for this Man to say,
" All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father" (Matt,
xi. 27). " All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine "
(John, xvi. 15). "All things whatsoever " ? Yet Jesus confesses
to have received Life from this Father, and through Life,
Personality, and to have received now also all that is meant by
Heaven and Earth. But we cannot conceive ' personality '
except as a possession within the realms of heaven and earth.
If it is not, it must be conceived as space-personal. Every
person has received personality from this Father. The Father,
however, is conceived as having given away Life, Power,
Possessions, "All" even Himself as Personal, for Jesus is the
Father ! It is impossible for us, in such case, to possibly think
differently of this Father and of ' Nothing/ that is, Space-Being.
The Son has received even His Power of Judgment, so
absolutely * empty ' is this Father. " For neither doth the
Father judge any man but He hath given all judgment unto
the Son." Nothing of any attribute of Being remains to us by
which we can think this Father * personal,' and finally, we are
conscious of Jesus as being alone in the space which this Father
filled in our consciousness of Him, with the very Name ' Father '
as His own. The Father-' person ' is negated, possessing nothing,
not even that Nature which is connoted in the Name which
Jesus defines as His own. The Father has given All, even
Himself, and His Name in Himself. " Keep them in thy Name
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 423
which Thou hast given Me" is twice repeated (John, xvii. 1 1, 12).
And the Name implies Nature and Character. Jesus reveals
the truth that the Father has given all of Himself to all, thus
revealing His own true Being as that Space-Being which alone
gives.
Yet, once more, let us emphasise the fact that in the
remaining consciousness of Space-Being which survives for
both Son and Father, personality is not annulled though
negated. It is, on the contrary, more intensely affirmed for the
One they are. But it is not then the '.personality ' of our common
conceptions. It is the neuter-personality which is identical with
our consciousness of Space-being and has no 'qualities'
absolutely save that of Unity. In both passages (John, x. 30
and xvii. 21-23) where Jesus speaks of Himself and the Father;
and Himself, Father, and Disciples, as One, the numeral is
neuter. It connotes finite-being, and is only conceivable as a
Null-quantity in mathematics is conceived. It is by this
process of depriving the Father-term of all its relations or
qualities by which we can think it Objectively personal, that
Jesus more intensely affirms the Is-Being beyond all ' person-
ality.' All conceivable relations are subsumed ; and the terms
Father and Son are seen sublated in a consciousness of Space-
Being in which every connotation of even that Life, on which
they are built, vanishes. What is left to our consciousness of
Being is simply the identical consciousness which we all have of
ourselves, fundamentally, viz., Space-Being. And as neither
Jesus nor any of us can conceive a value which transcends this
Space-Being, His designation of it as "Holy" entirely meets
the sanctions of our estimate of its worth.
317. Want of attention to a God- concept beyond the restric-
tions of numeration has led to much friction between Unitarians
and Trinitarians. Neither the one nor the other can ever
find solid ground in the conceptions of Being as One, or Three,
or Three-in-One. The teaching of Jesus is constantly sublat-
ing the Son in the Father, and again the Father in the Son.
It is the assumption that our God-concept must necessarily
and essentially be limited within our conception of * personality '
that works confusion. Jesus accepts * personality ' for His God-
concept much as we accept foetus, growth, assimilation, and
424 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
production for What-we-are, but always with a consciousness
that our being transcends these motions of life.
318. This conception of God-Being as Space-Being is not
so strange as it at first seems. Men who dare to think
independently, and unhampered by the theological and philo-
sophical categories of ' God,' and who reveal their actual
consciousness of God, always approach towards an expression
of the Nothing-consciousness as nearest their consciousness of
what God is. That is, they have the same consciousness as
Jesus possessed, but they do not define it so boldly as He did.
We give an example from an able Essay by Prof. L. P.
Jacks (Hib. Journal, 22, p. 415). He says (the italics are ours),
" In the whole realm of thought there is no partition so thin as
that which divides God from nothing, and such is the eagerness
of the soul in its flight Godwards that it constantly breaks through
and plunges into the abyss on the other side. Certain forms
of Buddhism and Plotinus among the mystics of the West,
have done this. But when once philosophy has reached the
point of conceiving God as the only true, or the truly Real,
the moment has come for thought to return upon itself. Not
a step further can be taken, and the warning to turn back
is instant and peremptory. If thought neglect the warning,
and tries to refine once more its last refinement, if thought
ever seeks to rest in its goal and refuses to continue the
endless cycle of its allotted movement, it passes the boundary
between God and nothing, and enters the realm from which
there is no return."
The assumption here is that the Space- or Nothing-
consciousness is one that cannot yield a consciousness of God,
and that the God-Consciousness is independent of, and distinct
from it. The consciousness of a " realm from which there is
no return " is, however, fully admitted, and evidently admitted
as one which gives an alternative consciousness of Being from
which the consciousness of God is shut out. Or, Prof. Jacks
may only mean that there is a consciousness of Being which
gives God to our Thought, and a consciousness of Being from
which all Thought is debarred. This conception of " God "
is clearly the old, old one of God who lives 'up in the sky,'
and who can * come down ' among men for His own judgment-
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERSONALITY 425
purposes, and again re-ascend to the height of His Dwelling,
separated from the earth and man by the sky-gap. This
' God ' is objective, and purely relative to that Being which
remains in the * realm ' where He is not. It is a Platonic ' Idea '
with another name ; a Hegelian " Notion " ; an abstract ideation
of the mind. In all ages and in countless forms, this deistic
Will-o'-the-wisp has allured men as professing itself to be
the true and only God. It has been the high instrument in
the power of philosophical and theological Thought to cleave
Whole-Being in twain, as in this instance now quoted, and
out of these twain, God and the Universe, to make possible
the multitudinous 'differences,' 'contradictories,' and 'opposi-
tions 'with which we are so familiar in the mental sciences.
It is the ruinous assumption, like the crack in the bell, which
all philosophers have taken as their sine qua non, viz., that our
consciousness of Being necessarily gives in itself, fundamentally,
a consciousness of Difference. Hence the long quest for a
system of Thought which will ' reconcile ' this Difference, ' pass
beyond the difference to the Unity which is the presupposition
of all our thinking,' and heal the grand breach in Being
which is never there !
319. Jesus banished forever this spurious dualism between
' God ' and ' Nothing,' both thought-entities, by withdrawing
every category or quality with which Thought might create
a ' personal ' God, or a ' person ' of any kind, and charged upon
this remaining consciousness, so maligned as * Nothing ' and so
fierce in its insistence in all ages, the sole burden of being
God as well as What-we-are. For this is the consciousness,
beyond all other manifestations of it, which gives the deepest
and most imperative impression of What-Is, or Reality. If
no thought ever returns from it, it is because all thought
is at home there, and finds its eternal satisfactions in it. It
is perfectly true that Thought must be ' warned ' back from
this consciousness instantly and peremptorily, for without the
severest constraints put upon its course, it seeks it as eagerly
as the bird its nest. It is indeed where all Thought is sublated
in Being. When we cannot think, it is just then that we know y
the true ' God.' In plain words, ' God ' cannot be put into a con-
cept. The ' God ' of our thought-creations becomes sublated as
426 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
well as negated in the ' Nothing ' which renders up in conscious-
ness the Reality which is God-Being. For the so-called fulness
of the great Universe which is so real to Thought, is the
emptiness of our ' God ' ; and the Nothing-Being which gives
it its possibility of being, is True God. Or rather, what we
call Fulness and Emptiness are both mere processes through
which the true God is definable to us both as Thought and as
Nothing. The consciousness of Space is the ultimate conscious-
ness for both forms, and alone gives the most unnegatable
affirmation of all that Is ; God, Universe, Man ; and gives
this Is as Whole-Being. The "further step," which neither
Buddha, Plotinus, nor modern Philosophy has taken, is to know
this ' Nothing ' as the true and whole consciousness of both
What-we-are and Whole-Being;Is; using dual terms for purposes
of exposition.
320. In the Kenosis, or Emptying of the 'personality' of
Jesus, He finds the Father, and in the Kenosis, or Emptying
of the Father-' personality ' He finds the Spirit, Is-Being, which,
He asserts, will abide with us " forever." But without a Postu-
late deeper than Life, it would have been a sheer impossibility
for Him to have formulated the term Spirit as based on Fact ;
for we have no consciousness of Spirit. But this Fact He
founded in His Nothing- or Space-Consciousness, of which
we all have a consciousness the most profound. Against every
conception we possess of Nothing He sets increasing nothing-
ness of ' personality ' as the true path to realise what is fullest
and most actual to our consciousness. In every step He takes
in the negation of ' personality,' whether conceived as Child,
Man, Son of Man, Father, or Lord of heaven and earth, we
are increasingly conscious of a fuller content in Him and in
His thoughts of what truly Is. The more we see Him become
' Nothing/ and all we count conceptually as ' God ' become
' Nothing/ the more we see Him and ' God ' become Everything.
Being, personal and impersonal, is seen Whole. When He
takes the * further step ' where Thought cannot follow and from
which it cannot return, our inmost Experience of Him, ' God/
and ourselves, becomes the more and more intensely Real on
a common basis of a consciousness of Space- or Whole-Being.
CHAPTER XIII
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY
321. The Father-Conception of God, then, in the conscious-
ness of Jesus, is but the ultimate conception of Objectivity.
The consciousness of Jesus and our own thus coincide in one
consciousness that we abide after heaven and earth have passed
away. Moreover, our consciousness of ourselves sustains Him
in all that He affirms of Himself, His Father, and the Holy
Spirit. For when He has exhausted the personality of the
Father of every quality by which it is possible to cognize Him
as personal, it is the identical consciousness of our own ' spirit '
that abides. Heaven and earth are sublated, and the conscious-
ness of Being which remains is that consciousness of 'Spirit*
which has dominated the Weltbewusstsein from of old until now.
But, in the sublation of the persons of Son and Father, what we
have to impress upon ourselves is the conscious fact that they
are still " One." The reason for this conception is that in neither
the conception of Son nor of Father is the Space-consciousness of
Whole-Being given. They are One, but we conceive this One
as we conceive any Unit, viz. as space-defined, and conditioned
in space. The Father is ' in Heaven/ as Jesus conceives Him.
He is a ' Person ' in a Place. He is space-surrounded. The
consciousness in us of space does not, therefore, identify The
Father and Space as Whole-Being. Therefore, the Father term
only subsumes all personalities as identities on the basis of One
Life in Him. Personality is totalised ; but it is still personality ;
and as such it connotes only finitude. Although, indeed, it is
the widest and by far the most universal form of our conscious-
ness of finitude, it is yet clearly a term of limitation. Its
sublime value, nevertheless, lies in this fact that it gives to us a
consciousness exactly identical with that which is given in our
427
428 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
term Nature, with Personality added. It is really the conception
which Pantheism in by-past ages has laboured in vain to
formulate, and one which we have elsewhere ventured to call
Pater-Pantheism, or, as some prefer it, Patripantheism (The
Advent of the Father , chaps, vii. and viii.). Cosmic Being in it
is raised by Jesus to the level of our own conception of our-
selves as Living Being, and all as identical Being in One
Life-Being.
322. But while this is true, the term Life itself never gives
us a consciousness of Whole-Being, for the reason that it never
sublates Space in itself. Our conception of Life is unthinkable
apart from Motion. It always connotes Motion, growth,
change, etc., and as such, it is conditioned by the Space-
consciousness which defines it in motion. For the same
reason, Life never connotes Infinity, Everlastingness, Eternal,
until it is freed from the connotations of Death, and but for the
Space-Consciousness as His basis, Jesus could never have
convinced the world of the truth of Infinite, Everlasting, or
* Eternal Life.' But when on this basis He affirms, and affirms
with the full approval of our own consciousness, personality as
' Spirit/ a term whose content cannot be scientifically thought of
as differing from Space, then we have no choice but to accept
the connotations of Life in our consciousness of Spirit as not
only personal but also Infinite, Everlasting, or Eternal. For in
the Spirit- or Space-consciousness no connotation of Death or
of limitation is ever possible to us. For the same reason, based
on the corroboration of our consciousness, Life never connotes
Infinite Permanence until it is freed from the relativity of
motion, and only when we are conscious of ourselves as
personally alive, and as living c Spirits/ and ' Spirits ' affirmed as
space-beings, can we have the full consciousness of Infinite
Permanence, or Permanence identical with the unchanging
Permanence given in our consciousness of Space-Being.
323. The attempt, therefore, which such as Eucken and
Bergson make to base a theory of Being upon the Postulate of
Life, as we know it, is doomed to failure. Life itself, as a
postulate, has neither in itself the connotations of the Infinite
nor of the unchangingly Permanent. And that a consciousness
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 429
of Being is always given us beyond our consciousness of Life, or
of any process, is very well shown indeed by the latter writer.
Speaking of the " evolution of life," and doubting if it can ever
be explained by "a mere combination of mechanical forces,"
Prof. Bergson says (Hib. Journal, No. 37, p. 40), " Obviously
there is a vital impulse : what I was just calling an impulse
towards a higher and higher efficiency, something which ever
seeks to transcend itself, to extract from itself more than there
is in a word, to create. Now, a force which draws from itself
more than it contains, which gives more than it has, is precisely
what is called a spiritual force : in fact, I do not see how
otherwise spirit is to be defined."
Tested by our consciousness of what-is, there is by general
admission a congeries of motions which all agree to call ' Life/
in their total or universalised ideation. " A vital impulse," " a
force," are alternative terms, if we like to use them, which may
mean the same thing. The actual duty each fulfils is to
conveniently cover our ignorance of ' Life ' as it is. But each of
these terms, connoting as it does Motion and Change, is
absolutely helpless in cognition until the fact of Space is stated
with it. Apart from our consciousness of Space, the cognition
of anything as moving, or changing, is impossible. Why then
is this consciousness ignored? No scientific fact is better
attested as Real. Should not Science then take this fact into
her problem of ' Life ' ? Does it actually assist us in the least
to call Life " spiritual " ? Have we the faintest testimony in our
consciousness as to the truth of this qualification ? Surely it is
the amplest charitable concession to popular belief to so qualify
the phenomena of ' Life.' For unless we accept " spiritual " in
its original meaning of ' breathing ' and thus come back to
Motion and Change once more, ' Spirit ' has no place in the
scientific realm of fact at all. The actual fact connected with
the motions of ' Life,' as affirmed by both eye and consciousness,
is Space-Being. And no qualification is possible to it.
But M. Bergson assures us that the ' impulse ' of ' Life ' is
" towards a higher and higher efficiency." It " seeks to
transcend itself." We must not be surprised at this transcend-
ence. It is the natural course which all things take absolutely
when we demand from them the satisfaction of our conscious-
ness as to their Reality. We have a certain general conception
430 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of them as realities, but such conception never seems to take in
all the truth of being they give us so as to satisfy our conscious-
ness of what-they-are. And it is undoubtedly the omission of
the space-fact from our conception of them that permits such
unsatisfactory results. We have to widen our conception to the
full truth of being which they profess before we can realise
what-each-is absolutely. And when we elect to do this they at
once lead us home to their Nothingness, or Space-Being. For
being so under Motion, Impulse, Change, nothing finds itself
except in the consciousness of its own unchangeable reality as
Space. And as 'Life' yields neither a consciousness of
absolute permanence, nor of anything absolute, there is a
necessity to carry its special * qualities, quantities, and relations '
to more ultimate ground than is covered by " what is called a
spiritual force." It seems to us that when M. Bergson describes
his consciousness of Life as a force which draws from itself
more than it contains, and gives more than it has, he is simply
saying that he has a consciousness of Being which transcends
Life. He has exhausted all the known ' qualities,' ' categories,'
and relations of Life, and reduced it to the consciousness of
Space-Being, of which he has a clear consciousness as being
there after all connotations of Life have vanished ; and perforce,
as we see, he must name this Being which consciousness persists in
placing before him, and so he names it ' a spiritual force.' Now,
according to all the tests of modern philosophy, Life under such
conditions should rather be declared as having " ceased to be " !
This is the same consciousness of His own Being and that
of His Father, which is so fundamental in Jesus ; but He does
not say, when both Himself and His Father are negated as
to their personality, that either has "ceased to be." On the
contrary, His consciousness of such Being approaches that of
Bergson's in affirming Being to which the predicates of Life
cannot apply, although it sublates and transcends them.
It yields also a consciousness not merely of ' a spiritual force '
but of Being, which is more than is contained in * Son ' or
* Father/ and gives more than these Life-Beings, from which it
" goes forth " or " proceeds," for Jesus says emphatically " God
is Spirit" (Westcott). (John, iv. 24.)
This Name ' Spirit ' is, of course, the term which by mutual
consent the human mind has found best interpretive of the
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 431
space-consciousness, seeing that space itself, as a conscious-
ness, has been steadily misread as being one merely of Death,
Impersonality, and Non-Being. For even the humblest savage
has a consciousness of this Great * Spirit/ the Being which is
more to us when devoid of all categories of being, than any-
thing else we can conceive by any other category of being
whatsoever.
324. But let us now consider the content of the con-
sciousness of Jesus with regard to what He calls " Spirit."
It does not seem difficult to show that Jesus has a well-
defined consciousness of the ' Father ' as cognized on a different
basis or postulate of Being from that of the ' Spirit.' He also
shows that His consciousness of the Spirit is of Being which
takes up into itself all that is found in the Father, and
transcends it. His consciousness of Life as particularised in
Son and Father is transcended in a Postulate of ' higher and
higher efficiency,' as Bergson puts it. But there is no conceivable
Postulate of Being higher than Life except the Postulate of Space.
And Scientific accuracy will endorse this finding as well as
Reason and Religion, for we cannot think differently of 'Spirit'
and of Space. We have an identical consciousness under both
appellations. Neither consciousness gives any predicates of
Being save Is, the identical consciousness which we have of
ourselves. And because Life and Space are the highest facts
attested by our consciousness as Real, it was necessary that
Jesus, abandoning all the deistical nomenclature of the Old
Testament, should found His God-terms only upon these,
and thereby include under them their native idioms of Father
and Spirit^ which sufficiently embrace all we mean by the
Natural and the Supernatural. In these two God-terms He
clearly exhausts our whole consciousness of Being.
325. Viewed from the most general standpoint of thought,
we may say that the conception of ' God ' being primary, it was
natural that Jesus should not desire it to remain subordinate
to the weakness of sex-terms and their connotations, or to the
finitude of numeration. These, of course, must always possess
important uses for the instruction of mankind, just as all our
imperfect conceptions have. The important thing to notice in
432 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Jesus' teaching, is that neither the conception of Son/ * Father,'
nor ' Holy Spirit,' in their connotations of l personality I is for
Him the ultimate consciousness of ( God,' any more than the
conception of these Three Persons being One God, as affirmed
by the Church Symbols, is the ultimate consciousness in us
of Whole-Being. Both ' Father ' and * Son ' are always, for
example, strongly entangled in our conceptions of embodied
being, out of which each at will may * go away.'
No doubt this very limitation is their chief value for our
conception of divine proximity to Humanity, as made flesh and
dwelling among us. God is thereby conceived as living and
loving, with affections and desires similar to those of man.
And, if man had had no consciousness of Being beyond life,
this conception of God would have sufficed. But possessing
such a consciousness, Deity could not be conceived as ultimately
enthralled in corporeity, or substantially incarnated. Man
himself is conscious of escaping from these limitations, and
cannot conceive his ' God ' as ultimately remaining within them.
Sex-terms and numerical Beings, therefore, have to be subsumed
in a conception of untrammelled Being, lifted up above all
cosmical connotations ; and * Spirit ' is the name which Jesus
gives to this conception of Deity. But even 'Spirit' while
transcending the ' Father ' and * Son ' conceptions of Deity,
requires itself to be transcended, in as far as we conceive
the term to denote ' personality? For this is limited by
4 impersonality.'
For as we at present conceive ' personality,' that term
connotes Life, and Motion; and as a matter of fact, Jesus
involves the spirit-term in connotations of motion when He
speaks of the Spirit as like the wind, blowing where it listeth
(John, iii. 8), and as the * Quickener/ or Life-Giver (John, iii. 6 ;
vi. 63). And we have to note that while the ' Son ' term is
transcended through the ' Father ' term, and both through the
4 Spirit' term, each term in its limitations of Life and Motion,
Substance and ' Personality,' is finally transcended by a term
in which it is not possible for us to find any such limitations.
That is to say, just as Jesus subsumed every name of Himself,
such as Son, Son of Man, Man, Son of God, in a conception of
Father-Being, declaring that He and the Father were One-
Being, so He resolved all these terms, Father, Son, and
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 433
Holy Spirit, so far as they connote limitation, finitude,
and * personality,' under Being-terms which know neither
'personality,' 'impersonality,' motion, life, corporeity, nor any
relationship whatsoever. And this Being is declared in His
consciousness, "I AM" (John, viii. 58). Human consciousness
knows no term which transcends the connotations of this
Being-Name. It is the consciousness of What-We-Are, the
Space-Consciousness, and one through which every conception
of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is interpreted. It is also the
consciousness in which both personality and impersonality are
sublated, no concept or conception of either being found in it.
From this standpoint we easily realise how Jesus could
speak of diseases as ' demons,' and attribute a devil-father to
the Jews (John, viii. 44-5), and compare God and Mammon
as possible masters to be served (Matt. vi. 24). He was
compelled to accept the conceptions of His hearers and make
them wires for His truth-currents. They could not receive
His truth ' wireless,' or spatially conceptless, although to
Himself it was clearly just as true to put 'evil' under a
concept of personality as ' good ' ; to have a Father-Evil as a
Father-Good. For when division of Being is postulated as
factual, all these * opposites ' and ' contradictories ' are inevitable.
Hence it is immaterial whether we count His words "that
Thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John, xvii. 15) to
mean personal or impersonal evil. If the term "them" means
personality then ' evil ' must be in some way personal also, but
if impersonality then the concept ' evil ' cannot be other than
impersonal. But Jesus held all that appears to be fathered.
And in the presence of Absolute Reality or Truth everything
depends on man's conceptive or inconceptive consciousness of
I-Am-Being. If it is a consciousness of space-being, then no
form or appellation which denotes objective-being will suffice.
But if not a consciousness of Space-being, all names and
conceptions of Being, either ' human ' or ' divine,' will be
merely conveniently true. Where relativity is accepted as true
of all Being, absolutely, * Satan ' is as rational as * Father-in-
Heaven.'
326. The I Am consciousness is indeed the final expression
of Whole-Being in the consciousness of Jesus, even the term
2 E
434 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
'Spirit' being subsumed under it, in as far as it connotes
personality, Life, Motion, Wind, or Breath. But we must again
caution the reader that this " I Am " is not identical with the
'Self' of modern philosophy. The one has nothing to do with
the other. The latter is limited and isolated, as Unit-Thing,
while the former knows no limitations absolutely. It is, as we
shall try to show from the teaching of Jesus, a Timeless
consciousness of Being. Neither, of course, is it the " I Am "
mentioned in Exodus, iii. 14, seeing that that conception of
God-Being is one more than ordinarily restricted and limited ;
not being even Cosmic, like the ' Father ' of Jesus, but merely
racial, and local, imperfect in both knowledge and personality.
The " I Am," or " That I Am," of Jesus' consciousness, is His
highest consciousness of His own Being (John, viii. 24, 25, 28),
and as this Being is ' One ' with the Father, and That from
which the Holy Ghost proceeds, being breathed by Jesus upon
His disciples (John, xx. 22), it is a consciousness in which
Being, as affirming God-Being, necessarily transcends every
form and objectivity of that conception as we can think it. It
is a consciousness, in short, of which Space alone can be the
basis.
327. i. The first distinction between ' Father ' and ' Spirit '
seems to come before us, in Jesus' consciousness, in the
relationship of worship. Jesus did not ask His followers to
worship Himself. But He seems to encourage worship of God
under any Appearance, so long as men see in that Appearance
the " Most High." Hence He did not check the worship of
men for Himself when He was certain that in Him they saw
the Highest. And of course that men have seen in every Object
in heaven and in earth, the Most High, is the reason that there
has been universal Worship. And we may say that, generally,
whatever is conceived by man as Most High, will be truly God
to him, no matter under what Form it may appear, and he will
do well to worship there. In a deep sense, if he discerns what
is Highest, he must worship it. Such discernment is worship.
But Jesus, in His conversation with the Woman of Samaria
(John, iv.), acknowledges that she can worship the Father both
at Jerusalem and ' in this mountain,' although He assured her
of a time when neither at the one place nor at the other would
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 435
men worship the Father. It was only a little way above idolatry
but in both places men beheld the Most High, and their worship
was genuine. Yet, on a higher plane of devotion, Jesus declares
that the Father * seeks ' His worshippers to do so ' in spirit
and truth' (23). The Great All-Father may be worshipped
through any appearance in heaven and earth, yet seeks that
men should not rest in the Appearance, but raise their
adoration to the full height of their own being, worshipping
in ' spirit and truth.' The entire history of the worship of
mankind has borne testimony to this urgement to ever higher
altitudes of adoration of 'God.' Jesus discerned the 'Father'
behind such movement. And indeed although man did not
discern the ' Father ' in their worship before the time of Jesus
(John, xvii. 25) He is now clearly seen to have been a Latency
in all worship whatsoever, past or present.
2. Jesus does not however reveal the same alternatives in
the worship of God who is Spirit, for He says that they that
worship Him must (Set) worship Him in spirit and truth (24).
There is no possible alternative. And it is common experience
that the Father and Spirit have distinctly different connotations
in the consciousness of those who worship ' God ' under these
revelational-terms. There is a true transcendence of the Father-
connotations by the worshipper when he realises himself in the
conscious Presence of Spirit, just as all connotations of Cosmic
Appearances are transcended in the conscious presence of
Space. Worship then attains its sublimation. It becomes Whole
with ourselves as spirit and truth. Communion is then an
experience existential rather than relational. The Spirit e.g.
was in His disciples while the Master was promising that He
would be given. " He abideth by you and is in you " (John,
xiv. 17) is a reading which has the strong support of B, D.*
La. 1 Tr. WH. It is not therefore a consideration of rendering
that love, service, and obedience, which fathers desire from their
children, or of offering prayer to a Father, but a consciousness
of blending spirit with spirit as Whole-Being, where all con-
sciousness of relativity ceases, and every need of prayer is
transcended in absolute beatitude.
328. 3. He also teaches us to pray to Himself (John, xiv. 14,
supported by x, B. La. 1 Tr. WH.), as it is inevitable that prayer
436 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
will be made to what man conceives as Highest Objective Being,
but Jesus has not taught us to pray to the Spirit. He Himself
only prays to The Father, for in such a God-consciousness there
is a conception of Relation. In our deepest consciousness of
our space-self, there is no relativity with the Space-Being-God,
but only a consciousness of Whole-Being. Worship then
passes into Being-Communion, as one communes with one's
Self. Spirit is realised as in us, and only conceivably related to
us as we are related to ourselves. In this consciousness, also,
Life as a basis of Being is transcended, and consequently
Fatherhood also, and space alone remains. For we have no
consciousness of Life in our consciousness of Spirit and Truth.
And it is evident that when the Father desires to be worshipped
' in spirit and truth', '-fekart the Father-conception is intended to
be transcended also. The Father is represented as giving up
Himself as Father, and entering Spirit-Being, who alone must
be worshipped in f spirit and truth.' This transcendence is given
by Jesus Himself when He declares to Mary Magdalene, " I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and
your God." (i) He Himself, (2) The Father, and (3) God who
is Spirit, are set before Mary as a conceptual path of ascending
and transcending Being which she as He and all must follow.
She would have been content to follow Jesus alone, the sensibly
objective Highest, and ascend no higher in her worship than
the Person seen. Jesus urged her to ascend, as He was doing,
to the Higher Objective of conception, the Father, and to the
Highest of all, Spirit, or 'God,' realisable only through the
Space-consciousness. He reveals to her that her ' Spirit ' must
ascend to the full whole of itself, to find its worship consummated
in that Whole-Being, of which ' Jesus,' the ' Son,' the ' Father,'
and * Holy Spirit,' when considered as l persons, are but mediatory
conceptions. It was a common path to Jesus and to her, for
He Himself was not yet ascended, but was ascending to the
Father, by transcending Himself, and to " His God and her
God " by transcending the Father known to her and to Himself.
This ascendence above Himself, by the transcendence of the
inadequate conception of what-He-is, is the rational standpoint
of all the many sayings of Jesus where He expresses His con-
viction that He is one with the Father ; that His disciples see
the Father when they see Himself; that He is in the Father,
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 437
and in them. ' Personality ' is shown to be a mere mediatory
process for Being that is deeper; and all that we conceive
through the conception of Life to be transcended by the conscious-
ness whose ultimate content is Space-Being.
329. 4. Jesus therefore is quite intelligible when He
applies terms to the Father-conception which He never uses
when speaking of The Spirit. The Father, for example, can be
seen. Jesus avers" I speak the things which I have seen with
my Father." " The son can do nothing of himself but what he
seeth the Father doing." " He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father." " From henceforth ye know Him (the Father) and
have seen Him." Sense and Understanding are employed in
the conceptions of Son and Father ; man can be impressed by
them through all that is included in a Common Life ; and in the
fact that Jesus includes Himself as one seen by the eye, and
identifies Himself objectively with the Father, we seem to be
shut up to the conclusion that as we see Jesus and as He was
seen by men, so can we see The Father.
Now, this is the position we occupy towards all Nature, or
the Universe, and as we all have an intensive consciousness
regarding Nature, and see the Unseen in all we see, so Jesus
reveals in Himself an intensive consciousness regarding the
Father, which deepens in degrees from Himself, the Visible,
towards the Father, the Invisible ; and again brings this
Invisible into the foreground of Objectivity which men can see.
This is the " Immanent God " of modern thought. It is this
consciousness in all men that renders the conception of God-
Incarnate and God- Incorporate a true consciousness, and it also
proves that we all have a true consciousness that ' personality '
as we see it and know it, must be transcended.
Nevertheless, while Jesus speaks in this way of the Father,
He does not so speak of the Spirit. No doubt, He Himself is
said to have seen the Spirit like a Dove descending, and it
should be admitted that Being as Whole must connote revela-
tional power of all that Being is. But the Spirit, as Spirit, is
never objectively given to the mind of men in the same way
that The Father is given, even when designated ' He,' because
no sex is connoted in the Spirit-term and neither is Life,
although The Spirit is set forth by Jesus as the highest Source
438 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
of all Life (John, iii. 6 ; vi. 63). In short, the consciousness of
Spirit, while sublating all of which we are conscious, is never
itself in its fullest content sublated in a higher consciousness of
Being. That is to say, it is impossible to sublate the conscious-
ness of Space, the true scientific basis of our term ' Spirit,'
though the consciousness of Life, and all it connotes of Father
and Son, can be so sublated in the higher consciousness of
Space-Being.
5. But with the sublation of all objectivity in our conscious-
ness of Spirit-Being, there also necessarily vanishes every
consciousness of Will. The " Will of the Spirit" is non-existent
in the consciousness and teaching of Jesus. The "Will of the
Father" is frequently on His lips, and in His prayers, and is
confessed as inspiring all His purposes. But The Father is
objective and conceptual, and changes His will, conditional to
the acts of man (Matt, xviii. 35 ; vi. 14, 15). He changes in
every way, for He delivers all things to the Son. ' The Father/
just as ' The Son/ is a term, the connotations of which, as we
have said, convey no consciousness of absolute Being. It is
a mere limited conception, and, as such, is not commensurate
with our wide-open consciousness of What-Is.
The Holy Spirit indeed gives knowledge but never imposes
His will (John, xiv. 26). His witness is to be of Jesus (xv. 26).
His f will ' is so utterly absent, indeed, that He is not represented
as coming to men, to the Church, or to the world, by the initiative
of His own Will. He is sent by Father and Son. Nay, His
being is begotten from them. He 'goes forth' or proceeds
from the Father and Son. All He is so 'goes forth ' from them
(John, xv. 26 ; cf. Luke, xxiv. 49), and it is here where He is
conceivable as Child, as far as language and thought permit
the conception.
Again, although He guides men into all the truth, yet He
is never shown as doing this on the initiative of His Will. It
is simply said "For he shall not speak from Himself, but
what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak"
(John, xvi. 1 3). And as there is no trace or evidence of Will
in the * person ' of the Holy Spirit, who only acts and speaks
from others than Himself, and acts by the Will of Father and
Son (for Jesus also said, ' I will send Him '), it is clear by
that fact that He cannot be conceived at alias having 'personality?
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 439
Both will and personality are transcended in the consciousness
of Jesus regarding Spirit. Yet in the consciousness of What-we-
are ; I am ; we have all the realisation of Spirit -Being that is
possible. Or, in other words, in the transcendence of the con-
ceptions of Son, Father, and Holy Spirit, in as far as they
are conceived personally, Jesus leads us to an ever-deepening
realisation of what-we-are as Spirit- or Space-Being. Particular
and determined Personality and Will pass away, and with
all objectivity of Godhood also gone, we then enter the conscious-
ness of Whole-Being, Whole-Person, Whole- Will ( 156).
330.6. Jesusagain speaks differently of Himselfand the Father
as compared with the Holy Spirit. He does not designate
Himself as " Holy." He but once applies this term to the
Father, and only in the John Gospel. Jesus, in the Synoptists,
is never ' Holy,' except to the man ' possessed,' and he is
rebuked. Neither is the Father ' holy ' in their writings. They
had been taught to reserve this designation of Holiness for the
God Yahweh alone, and doubtless hesitated to confer it upon
a man whom they saw and heard, and upon a Father of whom
they were in so much perplexity (John, xiv. 8). But in all Four
Gospels Jesus characterises The Spirit, in His own words
several times, as "Holy." The Father, on the other hand, is
often defined by Jesus as c heavenly,' and as ' in heaven.' As
already said, it is as one resident in a Place, objective and
limited, that He conceives the Father. The Spirit comes forth
from Father and Son revelationally, but He is in no place and
knoivs no limits, and while Jesus characterises Him as ' Holy,'
He, the Spirit, does not define Himself in any way. Space
cannot be defined, and our highest consciousness of * God ' must
always remain undefined by any term, seeing that it is a
consciousness of Whole-Being which no term comprehends.
' Spirit' has no objectivity, either as possible to perception or
conception, and so far as knowledge is concerned, it is a conscious-
ness of Space-Being solely and only. The conception of the
" Holy Spirit," in as far as it is personal, related, and qualified
by Life and Motion, is transcended by it.
331. The great realm of our Lord's consciousness of Being
is thus sufficiently distinct. For Himself He has the conscious-
440 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ness of consummating all that is ' Man ' ; of the Father as
comprehending all that is * Heaven and Earth ' ; but of The
Holy Spirit, His full conception is not realisable to our
consciousness save on a basis of Space-Being. But neither
' person ' is apart from the Other in Being. Jesus discerns the
Spirit as given to men, yet as in them, and again as sent, or
* proceeding* from both Father and Son. Each Unit person
is subsumed in space-being, all qualities of personality being
taken away, and then both are subsumed in a space-conscious-
ness of Spirit in which all personality, unit-being, and relativity
are subsumed in our consciousness of Whole-Spirit-Being.
332. Theology has defined the Triune-Being in such
language as, "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the
Holy Ghost is God : and yet they are not Three Gods, but
one God." The ' One God ' is again explained to mean
The Godhead.
This conception of God leads directly to, and culminates in,
an abstraction, viz. " Godhead." The Three ' persons ' stand
out before the understanding as distinct and separated Beings,
the one from the other. They are numerical Units. Their
fundamental basis for Thought is Life. And as living Beings,
the statement is supported by the teaching of Jesus Himself,
for He declares that each of these ' persons ' gives Life, or is
the Source of Life to man. But for the statement, " They are
not Three Gods but One God," there is not the slightest
scientific foundation, or rationality, and there is no basis in
consciousness sufficient to meet our God-crave until the basis
of Space is postulated. Indeed it is because this consciousness
of Space is really in every one, that it is possible for
theologians to assert, without any outrage on human nature,
that the Three Gods are One God. For the capacity for such
a result is always maintained by our consciousness, although
Theology has never revealed any concrete basis on which her
statement of Triunity of Being is laid. So long as each is held
to be a Person, each for Himself, the basis of Personality is
found impossible for a conception of common Unit-Being :
Three = One.
333. But even if we grant that Theology has been successful
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 441
in giving a scientific basis for the Unity of the Three ' persons,'
Son, ' Father,' and ' Spirit ' ; and we do not grant this ; yet it is
evident that this consciousness of Being is never more than
the unsatisfactory one given us in the philosophical Unit which
is made by concussing 'Subject' and 'Object' together.
Difference never becomes existentially Whole. It is still but
a tied-up Total-Being, and we yet to the last, have a conscious-
ness of Space-Being beyond and surrounding this One ; and
we are never certain when the so-called Unit-Being may
become undone once more into its former differences. As we
have tried to explain in a former chapter, no conception nor
perception of unity is ever possible to us except as an abstraction,
for it is never, as is supposed, isolated from Whole-Being. It
owes its existence entirely to what we have called the Point-
and-Spread consciousness in which all our usual Thoughts,
Feelings, and Conations live, move, and have their being. And
each ' person,' Son, Father, and Holy Spirit, is a Unit by this
capacity in us, even as is the One God out of Three. But we imagine
a vain thing if we conclude that our consciousness of Whole-
God-Being is scientifically explained in that way. Jesus, and
we, and all men, are conscious of Being which is beyond
these Unit-Beings, and we are conscious of its being Space-
Being, in which no consciousness of Difference or of ' persons,'
is possible. And clearly, it is to this consciousness that Jesus
is ever leading our thoughts, in His Teaching, in order that,
through the mediatory conceptions of the highest consciousness
of personality, we might rise to a consciousness of Being in
which all personality as well as impersonality is sublated.
Hence He extinguishes every category by which we can think
Himself as anything but space-being, and extinguishes
every category by which we can think the * Father ' as
anything but space-being, and gives the name * God ' as
* Spirit,' in which no other consciousness than that of space
is possible to us. In this way, the Unit-Beings of Son,
Father, and Holy Spirit, in all that we conceive of them as
' persons ' ts sublated in a consciousness of Is-ness which has
no difference absolutely, for in it we also have the identical
consciousness of ourselves as Whole with Space - Being.
' Personality ' and * Life,' as summational postulates of either
' human ' or ' divine ' Being are thus transcended in a conscious-
442 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
ness which gives us far more, by infinity, than they are as
1 Persons,' or as * One ' out of Three.
The rationality of the ' Nothing ' consciousness in us could
never have been effected by Jesus unless He had stood upon
the consciousness of Himself as being Space-Being or " Nothing."
And it is because He has found this Space-consciousness in
Man to be the Reality on which all rationality can alone rest
that He proves Himself to be indeed " The Light of the World."
We shall also see that this same * Nothing ' consciousness is the
basis of His entire Ethic of Life for the world. And it is so,
of course, because in this ' Nothing ' consciousness of Being,
Relative as well as Absolute^ are subsumed in that consciousness
of ' higher efficiency ' which we have ventured to term Whole-
Being. In such a consciousness also, the terms ' />zzYarian ' and
' TW^zVarian ' are both seen to be false as God-terms, unscientific,
and irrational. They are mere mathematical or numerical
God-terms, and they shut out our true God-consciousness from
its connotations of Space- or Whole-Being. The Unit-God
equally with the Three-One-God never includes our being in
theirs. For we ourselves are as much ' One ' as they ! We are
thereby independent beings, and nothing is ever Whole in such
a consciousness of any one, either for * God ' or ourselves.
334. Jesus thus unmistakably stands upon the conscious-
ness that Space is the fact which gives the true basis to all
we Know. He knows everything through the Spirit. " In that
same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank
thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst
hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst
reveal them unto babes : yea, Father ; for (or that} so it was
well -pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered
unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth who the Son is,
save the Father ; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him" (Luke, x. 21-22)
(Matt. xi. 25-27).
It is in the joy of the Holy Spirit that Jesus realises the
knowledge of the Father as revealer to Himself and to the
babes, and of Himself as knowing the Father Himself, and
being the revealer of that Father to whomsoever He willeth.
There is reciprocal knowledge of Father by Son and of Son by
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 443
Father, but behind such sphere of revelation stands the Holy
Spirit who is not known as they are, but is only a joyful
consciousness of Being which sublates both Son -and -Father
' persons.' // is the Spirit who has shoivn Jesus the " Father?
He is really addressing the Holy Spirit as ' O Father] in joyful
consciousness of such knowledge. He finds the spring of that
joyful knowledge to rise out of the Holy Spirit. But all
knowledge of ' Subjects ' and * Objects,' ' Son,' ' Father/ and
' Whomsoever,' is sublated in the consciousness of the Spirit
who stands above them. All that the Son is can be learned
from the Father, and all that the Father is may be learned from
the Son, and Man may know the same Father through the same
Son, but neither reveals all that the Spirit is. In other words,
Son and Father, Man and Creation, interpret each other, to the
highest terms of personal and impersonal being, and to the
deepest foundations of the vital and non-vital, but all that is
known of Life cannot exhaust all that is known in our consciousness
of Spirit. This is a Joy ; Being aflame : it is not strictly bare
Knowledge. The word (j/yaXXmVaro) (Luke) denotes exulta-
tion, high, dancing Joy, "in the Spirit, the Holy One." It is
rapture, in which His own 'spirit' is caught up into the All-
Spirit. He then addresses the Holy Spirit as Father, Lord of
heaven and earth. We have happiness through the motions of
Life ; but Life in all that it connotes of Son, Father, and Babes,
or the world and the Universe, is sublated in rapturous being in
the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Jesus represents the Holy Spirit as
taking the things of Himself and showing them to His disciples
(John, xvi. 14-15). And as the 'things' of Jesus include the
' things ' of the Father, the Father having delivered * all things '
unto Him, we see that the Holy Spirit, in Jesus' consciousness,
sublates all knowledge of Father and Son within the knowledge
and purpose of Himself, as that Being, in which both conceptions
of Father-Being and Father- Knowing are subsumed. The Son-
Subject who knows the Father-Object, and the Father-Subject
who knows the Son-Object, are elsewhere * One ' in the con-
sciousness of Jesus, and it is here we have the proof of it. For
Jesus represents His own Spirit as joying in the Holy Spirit
with Himself the Son, and The Father, as both objects of the
subject Spirit. Knowledge of each other by both is transcended
by a conscious motion of Joy, which is yet mutual motion of
444 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Spirit, Jesus and the Other, of Whom only the predicate of
Space remains.
335. The passage is a great one, and perhaps it was the
circumstance of Jesus' motions of demonstrative joy that
impressed it upon the writer's memory. For all that John
has elaboratively written concerning Son, Father, and Spirit is
condensed in it. The allusion to the wise and understanding
and the Babes also compresses for us the entire policy of
heaven.
But lest it should be doubted that when Jesus says ' Spirit '
He has also said ' Space ' in His consciousness, as to its content,
let us turn to the conversation which He conducts with the
Woman of Samaria (John, iv. 21-24). " Woman, believe me, an
hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem,
shall ye worship the Father. Ye worship that which ye know
not . . . the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such doth the
Father seek to be His worshippers. God is Spirit, and they
that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth."
In this account, neither the term God nor the term Spirit
conveys the slightest objectivity to either our thought or
consciousness. The one consciousness that is given by either
is simply Is. Being is affirmed by Jesus, without any predicates.
He takes up the universal consciousness which was named
universally Spirit, and unites that other universal consciousness
God to it as Whole-Being. This was necessary. But both
would be pure abstractions, and have no foundation in anything
concrete, unless Spirit gave us the consciousness of what-we-are,
and of Space-Being. And that it does this is proved, in that
our own consciousness of ourselves as ' Spirits ' (this conscious-
ness being always put under limits by our conception of
' person ') gives us nothing else than a consciousness of space-
being. We can always say " We are Space-being " with far
deeper consciousness of truth and reality for what-we-are, than
we can say any thing else about what-we-are. All the rest that
we usually do say about what-we-are is untrue, or at most very
partially true. The consciousness of ourselves as space-being is
absolutely true, and is theflrius of every truth we know.
Jesus, then, shows the nexus between this GOD who is
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 445
SPIRIT and our own spirit by declaring that the one must be
worshipped by the other in ' spirit and truth.' " Spirit with
spirit can meet." Communion really becomes soliloquy. That
is to say, Jesus is conscious of identical being with this God-
Spirit, for neither He nor we have the remotest consciousness
where each is divided from the Other (using dual terms for
expository purposes). Similarly, Father and God are identical
terms in that both receive the same worship "in spirit and
truth" (John, iv. 23). Worship in its highest connotations is
then Existential Communion, and is not Relational. We pass
from the Father-consciousness to one of 'higher efficiency.'
Jesus can then "rejoice in the Holy Spirit," for His Spirit is
identified with and in the Holy One, and this consciousness in
Him rationalises such expressions as " If I by (or in) the Spirit
of God cast out devils " (Matt. xii. 28) where He clearly gives
over His own work to be that of the Spirit, and thus identifies
Himself with the Spirit. The ' person ' Jesus, is then consciously
the Holy Spirit. St Mark indeed understands that when men
blaspheme Jesus (iii. 29-30) they blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
The whole force of Jesus' caution against blaspheming the Holy
Spirit is traced to the fact that "they said, He hath an unclean
spirit." It will be remembered also that Jesus assumed Himself
to be the Holy Spirit when He breathed upon His disciples,
saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost (John, xx. 22).
336. The Ultimate Consciousness, then, for both God and
Worshipper of God is Spirit. Spirit worships Spirit. And
only then is it ' in truth.' And our absolute consciousness of
Spirit is Space. And the Space- Consciousness is the sole con-
crete consciousness of Everlasting Permanence we possess. As
' Things; however, neither " God," nor " Self," nor " Spirit " is to
be found in our consciousness. Our consciousness of Spirit is
Whole-Being.
The full force of this fact is felt in what follows. For the
entire meaning of Jesus, in this teaching to the Woman of
Samaria, would be rendered abortive, and lose all its point, if
the term Spirit, which is God, did not identify itself with Every-
whereness, or Space. This is His main teaching to her.
Worship is not confined to either 'this mountain' or to
'Jerusalem,' for the local God-Yahweh is an insufficient revela-
446 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
tion-term for God who is Spirit. God who is Spirit is not to be
conceived as localised anywhere, or confined to any one people.
Being : God : Spirit : is Everywhere. Neither is there any
choice in this view of God. To conceive Spirit as limited or
finite, is to conceive the impossible. No such consciousness is
possible to man. When, therefore, Jesus says ' Spirit ' He says
' Space.' Or in other words, the consciousness in Him of
Every whereness, Space, and of Spirit, is identical. This also is
our consciousness of 'God' even as it is of what-we-are ( 172).
And as the true and only idiom of Space-Being is Is, the same
idiom is alone possible for what-we-are, in its form " I am."
337. Jesus thus finds for all Three 'Persons' in the 'God-
head ' a basis of Space-Being in which the numerical ' Three '
are not merely conceived as Unit-Being but as Whole-Being, a
consciousness of Being which is as common to us as to Himself.
And, of course, at bottom, it is the Space-consciousness in us
that renders this consciousness possible for anyone. And the
right order of this consciousness, as it appears to us, is that
which'Jesus follows, viz., not Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but
Son, Father, and Holy Ghost, in an ever-widening conception of
Being. This is also the natural order of the Apostolic Blessing,
" The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all " (2 Cor.
xiii. 14). And we may note in passing that the central concep-
tion for each, i.e. Substance for 'Son,' Life for 'Father,' and
Space for Spirit, marks the historical development of the
Christian Mind since the days of the Nicene Council, in which
same substance of Son with the Father was the principal conten-
tion and victory. The new emphasis which has been laid upon
Life, following the rise of the conception of the Father-God,
has practically been made within the last century, and marks
the entrance of another phase of Jesus' consciousness to the
world.
Having thus shown that Jesus founds our consciousness of
Whole -Being on our consciousness of Space-Being, subsuming
therein every shred of conception of personality or imperson-
ality for any being, man or God, we shall now try to show that
He also subsumes in His consciousness of Space-Being which
is Spirit, the conceptions of both Life and Time. That is to
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 447
say, the connotive consciousness which is given us in Son and
Father, of both Life and Time, is, with their 'personalities/
taken up into our consciousness of Spirit, in which yet, as
space -consciousness, no trace of any conception of either Life
or Time is found.
Life subsumed in Spirit.
338. A. The Holy Ghost, and not the Father, is found to
be the Ultimate Source of all Life. We must be ' born of the
Spirit' (John, iii. 6) for 'It is the Spirit that quickens' (vi. 63).
Or, more intelligibly, the conscious motions in our being which
we term Living (for we have no consciousness of a Thing called
Life), are found by Jesus as native only in the Being which He
calls Spirit. These motions, so relational in the conceptions of
Father and Son, are no longer relative to anything in the
Spirit, but are common consciousness in all consciousness of
Spirit-Being.
We have postulated the term Life as fundamental for any
conception of Son and Father. If we eliminate this postulate,
by eliminating its qualities, these * persons/ as objects, vanish.
Without this basis of Life the conceptions of both Son and
Father are impossible. The Early Church possessed the con-
viction that the Holy Spirit was the True Father of Jesus ', as
regards His incarnated Life. The angel is reported to have
announced to Mary " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee" (Luke, i. 35).
And no conception of Power, or Force which we receive from
modern science, transcends for a moment the sublime energy
which is thus attributed to the Holy Spirit. On the broadest
plane of vision He is always seen controlling the great Material
sphere out of which heaven and earth are fashioned in the
Beginning (Genesis, i. 2). Then in the narrower domain of
Human History He is represented as moving on the seething
masses of men, bringing order out of disorder; government,
arts and industries, out of warfare, slavery, and desolation
(Isaiah, Ixi.). He is the true Potter who fashions His human
vessels by His wisdom and might. So great is His power that
human will and human force seem as the bowing reed by
comparison. But every manifestation of His power is dwarfed
448 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
in the conception which Jesus gives of Him as convicting the
World of Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment (John, xvi. 7-15).
The dark ' chaos ' of the Heart of Mankind is brooded over in
the same vision that shows us His hovering wings upon the
Material Waters, the wide Wastes of History with its rise and
fall of billowing dynasties, thrones, and dominions ; and Time
and the Perfection of Man are seen to be His special purposes
by which, as instruments, ' God ' is fully revealed through His
Creation in His fulness. The worlds of Matter, Mind, and
Spirit, as we usually conceive these spheres, are all seen under
His Power. Science knows no power greater than Life, and
the vision of Jesus reveals the highest expression of this
category in ' Father ' and ' Son,' or Heaven and Earth and Man,
as being directly subject to the Holy Spirit, and Spirit also,
as Spirit-Space, uniting both categories of Life and Space, in
Whole-Being.
339. It was considerations of this complexion that biassed
the Early and Medieval Church to take the view of the Holy
Spirit as the stern and strong * God ' of the * Three.' He was
the Fierce One as compared with Father and Son ; great and
irresistible in intellectual and moral power ; wrestling with the
World, the Devil, and the Flesh ; making His word as a Fire, as
a Hammer, and as a Sword. He was indeed the Dove, but
He was also the Driving One who gave the Christs their
Deserts, and taught them to encounter victoriously the opposi-
tions of wild beasts, devils, and their own passions of thirst,
hunger, and lust (Mark, i. 11-13). He it is that is seen to bow
the proud hearts of kings, confounding armies, and suppressing
oppression ; disposing the ebb and flow of races and the great
epochs of Time ; protecting the Child, ennobling Woman, free-
ing the slave, humanising Laws and Manners, flooding barren
lands with human influences, purifying literature, and sanctifying
art. It is He who stands behind all self-denial, presses the
agonising duty, steels the heart to highest sacrifices, demanding
to endure persecution, to lift the cross, pluck out the eye, cut
off the right hand, slay the affections and the lusts, and humbly
May down' the Life. He sits as Flame upon Man (Acts, ii. 1-4),
inspiring emotion, directing thought, and subduing tongues. All
ages and all races are His materials, and all forms of Energy
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 449
are His motions of Presence. The gentlest of the gentle, He is
also the terriblest of the terrible, the joy of the sunshine and
the splendour of the lightning, the weakness of the seed and
the majesty of the tree. The spirit of Nature and of the
Church is the Holy Spirit, the Holy One, who begets the Babe
which is laid in Mary's as in every mother's bosom, as well as
the converted * little child ' which is laid in the arms of the
Eternal Father, thereby subsuming thus in Himself all we mean
by Time and all we conceive as Eternity.
340. The Holy Spirit is undoubtedly Jesus' supreme Name
for our consciousness of ' God.' No other approaches it in
width and comprehension, sublating as it does every attribute
possible to our conception or consciousness of * God.' The
Names of Father and Son as connoting number, Sex, and Life,
and thereby the great realm of Feeling, Conation, and Thought,
are conceptions of Being which are transcended by the Name
Spirit, connoting as it does Space-Being, or Being that is
Whole-God-Being : a consciousness in which all ' attributes ' are
subsumed.
Therefore, while He connotes fatherhood with that which is
1 born of flesh,' it is through a higher consciousness than that of
such Fatherhood that we discern the spirit which is ' born of
Spirit.' It is never to realise the fulness of Life to be merely
born of the Father or of the Son, to be born of blood, of the will
of the flesh, or of the will of man. Such conceptions of the origin
of Life are infirm and inadequate. We must be born of God.
From the birth which is connoted in the ' Father in Heaven,'
there must be a second birth, ' from above,' ' anew,' or ' again,'
and this birth is through the Spirit whom Jesus does not yet
name ' Father,' because He is Being which transcends every
conception of Fatherhood, as we know it. And the reason is
that even our consciousness of Life and all it connotes of
motion and change, cannot give permanent ' origin ' to Being.
Spirit-Being is to Jesus but the ultimate possible conception of
Life-Origin which transcends conceptual origins of blood, flesh,
Man, Son, and Father, but it is one which is itself transcended
in a wide-open conception which is identical with His con-
sciousness of Space-Being. For although the Origin of Life is
ultimately given to Spirit, our consciousness of Spirit transcends
2 F
450 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
every consciousness of Life and Death, and sublates every
subordinate relativity in Whole-Being. The consciousness of
Space-Being has no taint of either Life, Death, or any
Limitation within itself. And in this ultimate consciousness
we realise once more that, for Jesus, the Names Father and
Son, so hallowed to us in our ebbing and flowing experiences
between cradle and grave, are merely used as mediatory
conceptions, leading ever upwards and onwards to His con-
sciousness of Life-Source, as identical with His ultimate
consciousness of Spirit. Therefore, to Him, " It is the Spirit
that quickeneth," or giveth Life, absolutely (John, vi. 63). The
" Father," as Life- Source, is never emphasised so profoundly in
Jesus' teaching, and neither is the " Son," as is the Life-Source
in Spirit. " He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said,
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this He
spake of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to
receive" (John, vii. 38). Jesus and Truth are regarded as
mediatory channels to the possession of that Life which, in its
fulness as of rivers of water is to be realised in the Spirit.
When Jesus, i.e. has exhausted every gift which He or the
Father have to give mankind, there is still the Holy Spirit to
be accepted as the highest of all. " Receive ye the Holy
Ghost" (John, xx. 21-23), completes tne mediation of Jesus in
that marvellous outpouring of the revelation of God- Being
which He has bestowed upon the world.
Time as subsumed in the Holy Spirit.
341. B. And as all Life is seen carried beyond the Father-
and-Son Source to the Holy Spirit, so also Time is put under
Him in the consciousness of Jesus. Neither Son nor Father are
conceived by Him as " abiding forever" This Eternality is the
special content of the Spirit-Being. Jesus does not promise
more for Himself than that He will be with them ' to the end
of the world,' or Time (Matt, xxviii. 20). But it is the special
promise to His Disciples that the Other Comforter whom the
Father will send shall be with them 'for ever' "That with
you He may for ever be," seems to be the emphatic form
of the Greek (John, xiv. 16) (^ VJULWV e/V TOV aiSn/a g) (WH.,
alternative reading).
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 451
It is The Spirit also who is conceived as gathering up all
the results of past Time and utilising them for the good of
the Church. He is to teach "all things," and bring to the
remembrance of the Disciples "all that" He said unto them
(John, xiv. 26). The Future is also in His hands. " He shall
declare unto you the things that are to come" (John, xvi. 13).
Time past and Time to come are sublated in His Being. He
Himself is the Present. We have all the same consciousness of
Spirit-God-Being as we have of ourselves in the present. It is
the consciousness which we call Space. And it is in this great
consciousness of Jesus regarding the sublation of Time in
Spirit-Being that we discern the limits which He finds in the
Conceptions of Father and Son as God-Media. He admits
that He must 'go away.' It is expedient for them. But all
that the Son has been to the Church, the Holy Spirit will be,
and far more. He will abide * for ever.' Jesus places the
vision before them that in Heaven the Father has ' resting
places,' or ' Mansions,' and that He will prepare a place for
them there, 'that where He is, there they may be also' (John,
xiv. 1-3). But there may be a possibility that the Church may
lose all consciousness of both Father and Son. And ecclesi-
astical history proves that at least the consciousness of The
Father has been the dimmest of realisations in the Creeds and
Worship of the Church. If it were possible, therefore, owing to
both being " away," to obliterate all consciousness of Father and
Son, it is impossible to forget or ignore the continual presence
of the Space-Being who is ever present with the Church " for
ever." And it is this Comfort which Jesus holds out to His
Disciples. With both Father and Son * gone away ' from them,
they will not be left " orphans " (John, xiv. 18). The Spirit will
always Father them, and be 'in them,' the Living, Quickening
One. And but for the perpetual Fathering of the Church by
the Spirit in Her, She would indeed be 'orphaned' by the
absence of Father and Son, as Jesus conceives these two limited
revelational terms.
342. But this consciousness in Jesus is really the sublation
of the Father and Son in the Spirit. Neither is conceived as
present in the Church or even in the World. Jesus has gone to
the Father. His words, ' I go away,' 'I go to the Father,'
452 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
are unmistakable. And they are repetitive and emphatic.
" Nevertheless I tell you the truth ; It is expedient for you
that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not
come unto you ; but if I go, I will send him unto you " (John,
xvi. 7). This is a true consciousness. Both Father-term and
Son-term, used for 'God,' are totally inadequate to all the
demands of the human being, and of our consciousness as to
Whole God-Being. The highest deistic conceptualities of the
Mind of man as based in concepts of Life and Time, or, all
that rests on our common conceptions of Man and the Cosmos,
are but in the vastitude of Flowing Being and 'go away.'
They do not abide "for ever." The Space-Spirit-Being alone
is inconceivably absent from the spirit of man.
343. The vision of Jesus concerning His Church is thus that
of being wholly left by Himself and His Father in the hands of
the Spirit. The Father, as we have seen, 'delivers all things
unto the Son/ and thus surrendered, Jesus in turn represents
Himself as surrendering all things into the hands of the Spirit.
But this consciousness requires a far wider area of action for
the Spirit than was conceivable for the Son. Therefore, the
Holy Spirit is seen for the first time wholly devoted to the
good, not of a small section of men merely, in Jerusalem or
in Christendom, but of the whole WORLD. " He will convict the
world." The Spirit takes upon Himself the entire well-being,
progress, and destiny of the World, and uses for His wise
purposes the highest means and material which Jesus has
made available in His Life, Doctrine, and Death. There is
no limit placed upon the work of the Spirit, just as no limit can
be placed upon the consciousness of His presence Everywhere.
Now under the Son-term, Jesus could not perhaps affirm His
own presence in the Church to be world-wide. The universal
consciousness must either refuse such a conception or regard
Jesus Himself as universal Spirit. And the latter view is no
doubt the correct one, for He regards both the Father and
Himself as abiding in the heart that loves (John, xiv. 23).
But before such a conception of Jesus can be admitted to
rationality, /'/ is expedient that Jesus as Son should ' go away,' a
phrase which Jesus uses apparently to avoid saying He would
die, which would have been untrue. That personal-term must
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 453
be subsumed in that of * Spirit, 1 and there is no nexus for such
a consciousness save that of Space-Being.
The universality of both conceptions of Spirit-Being and
Spirit-Work also reveals to us for the first time that the con-
ception of Jesus, finally, with regard to His Church, was one
that embraced all mankind., believers and unbelievers. There
were other sheep not of this fold (John, x. 16), and not even
believers, any more than some of that ' fold ' were, that He would
bring. They had not even heard His voice, as this * fold ' had
done, but they were His sheep nevertheless. Them He would
bring, " and they shall become one flock, one shepherd." And
this cannot be limited to anything less than the World-Church.
The highest conception of the Church, as it is given in the con-
sciousness of Jesus, is not, therefore, conditioned on Belief or
Unbelief. The Spirit is always moving in the spirits of all
men, where as yet neither knowledge of Father nor Son may
be found. It is this great fact that accounts for the universal
religious consciousness, and for the rise and fall of all forms of
worship, and all definitions of God. He is poured upon "all
flesh." He broods upon the face of the waters of the spirit-
world even as He has always done upon the waters of the earth.
But for this fact, unbelief could not be transformed into belief,
nor the corrupt tree into the good tree, nor could the world-
powers of Thought, Feeling, Will, Life, and Time be subsumed
into absolute accord with that Existential Being which is
common to Spirit and spirit. To effect this, a Power is and
always has been at work, the rise of the spirit of man from the
far-past nebula of the Cosmos is not evolved by a Nullity, and
the Holy Spirit, the Space-Being on whose bosom the Cosmic
Nebula lay ' in the beginning,' still takes of the ' things ' of
Father and Son, Nature and Human Nature, in their sur-
rendered totality, and shows them unto men. Thereby He '
convicts the World of Sin, of Righteousness, and of Judgment.
The Thought of Man labours through such conceptions and all
that is implied in them until, in the lapse of centuries, the
consciousness of Spirit-Being is realised above all such concep-
tions as Whole-Being with Man. For so the Spirit abides
" forever."
The limitations of the Church, or the Communion of spirit
with spirit, are not, therefore, bounded by the lines of either
454 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Faith or Reason. There is an Existential Communion, Space-
Wide, spirit with and in spirit, which far transcends the sphere
of the motions of Thought and Faith, as we usually conceive
these. The Church is Whole-Being in Spirit-Communion with
itself. And towards this conception of the Church, all other
conceptions of it are mediatory and temporary.
344. It is also in full harmony with Jesus' conception of
ascending realisation of God- Whole-Being that He should
regard the Spirit as Personal yet as Whole-Person, or Being
in Whom all ' personality' is subsumed. For this reason Jesus
does not pretend to reveal, or show, or declare the Spirit, as
He reveals, shows, and declares The Father. The Spirit has
no such predicates of Objectivity. His ' fruits* are love, joy,
peace, and such like, but He Himself is our consciousness of
Space-Being. The Spirit comes, or rather, &?-comes of both
Father and Son, subsuming all that is Heaven and Earth in
1 personality ' that has no limitations, and which, like Space-
Being, is for ever being, and to be, revealed. All that the
Father and Son stand for, in Jesus' consciousness, is fulfilled in
the Spirit, who is Space to Creation, and yet who is more and
more forever. He is the Space-Fact within which Heaven and
Earth * pass away,' even as the Son goeth to the Father, in
Whom all Is that passes.
It is also fitting symbolism of these holy presentations of
God-Being, that while Jesus is Son of Man, a Mortal most
exalted of all living creatures fashioned of Earth, and laid dead
therein, the Father should be seen seated upon and covered by
the cloud (Mark, ix. 7), most ethereal form of motional objective
Matter ; now seen, now unseen ; home of the gentle rain ; home
of the terrible lightning ; moving wide as the world itself; and
that the Holy Spirit should be the Winged One, dove-\\ke,
descending from the firmament, the ancient seat of the
Cherubim, and living and moving in the Expanse which
envelops both earth and cloud, none knowing whence He
cometh nor whither He goeth (John, iii. 8), seeing that all
'distances' are subsumed in His eternally-present Presence.
And although Jesus is the TRUTH, or Reality, in its limits of
WAY, and LIFE, and grateful, as such, to the world, in its
multitude of bewildering unrealities, because that He leads
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 455
to the Father, who is the desire of every true emotion in man,
the Holy Spirit alone is the " Spirit of Truth," and as such is
the full glory of Truth. " He shall glorify Me" said Jesus
(John, xvi. 14).
345. Surveying the matter, then, in its broadest aspect, we
may say that the conception of ' God,' in this light, is one which
moves and widens upwards through a consciousness in Jesus
which in the same way begins and also ends in the consciousness
of every man. The process of realisation and sublation is the
same. His and our consciousness is of being somewhat. We
are : He is. ' I am,' is common consciousness. This is His
fundamental consciousness even as it is ours for all that Is.
All He is and knows and declares rests on this basis. But
what He is, and we are, is Life : is Child, Son. Neither He
nor we determine our own Being. We live, and, therefore, we
necessarily discern a Father, 'our Father.' If we postulate our
life, Fatherhood is inevitably postulated. For all life is
1 Fathered.' But the knowledge of ourselves as Sons, and the
knowledge of The Father through this postulate of Life, though
knowledge wide as heaven and earth, is yet limited know-
ledge, for such life is relative only to Death. Proceeding,
therefore, from the Son and from the Father, the motions of
Life and Death realise for us the Space-Being, without which
we should have no knowledge of their motions, even as their
' personalities ' would remain undefined forever, and with this
consciousness beyond the knowledge of Father and Son, we
transcend these representative types of God-Being, and realise
that, literally, the Spirit proceedeth from both Son and Father
in the processes of our evolving knowledge of each.
But yet the Spirit is not known to Man as the Son and
Father are. Him the "world cannot receive, for it beholdeth
him not, neither knoweth him." He is objective to neither eye
nor thought. We see and we know spirit exactly as we see and
know Space. And really to know Him is to be. conscious of
His being in us, or Whole-with-Us. Therefore, the conscious-
ness of Jesus is, that knowing Father and Son through Life,
and through hearing, seeing, and knowing, we also, in a higher
sense, know the Spirit. We know them as " away," but we know
Him, for He abideth with (or, by) us, and shall be (or, is) in
456 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
us (John, xiv. 17). That is to say, we realise the Holy Spirit
in what-we-are, and know Him as we know ourselves ; and, in
knowing ourselves as space, we have a knowledge which is whole
with our consciousness of Space-Being. Wherefore, in knowing
the Spirit under one consciousness " I am," the Holy Spirit is
transcended as a unit personal God - Being. We know Him
as Whole- with- us. " He abideth with you, and is in you."
The more we thus transcend 'personality' the more truly
do we ascend to * God,' a consciousness which gives neither He,
She, nor It, but only * I am.' For it must be emphasized that,
in the consciousness of Jesus, personality is never sublated in
impersonality r , as in the method of Buddha, but always in a
wider and more vivid concept of personal-being which finally
merges into absolute or Whole-being, identical in our con-
sciousness with what-we-are, or Space-being. It is this
consciousness of Being which subsumes every relativity of
'personality* and 'impersonality,' but which yet preserves while
it transcends the fulness and value of either concept, and is
nameable only as God-Spirit. The truth of Being is really not
stated until it is affirmed absolutely in its sole idiom, Is; and
this idiom yields up its every remnant of impersonal connota-
tion when it affirms I Am, an affirmation which is given by all,
absolutely.
The path is one. We have seen that, in every system where
thinking, earnest minds search for a realisation of Ultimate
Being, whether in the realm of Science, Philosophy, or Religion,
they inevitably gravitate towards the consciousness of Nothing,
which is not yet Null-Being, but Space-Being, for they find that
every quality, quantity, or relation, or category, has to be left
behind them, and that none of these gives them that conscious-
ness of final and full permanence of being which they possess
for themselves. In the special sphere of Science, every object
of Thought or of sense, betrays a capacity for losing each
quality, or relation, until the human mind has, against all its
deepest instincts, to hang with all its energies to the frailest
objectivity, which hardly yet may be named objective.
" Substance " is eliminated, " Matter " is eliminated, and so
one would think should " Motion " be eliminated. But this is
retained in order to have something like a notion of Energy,
which is the last hope. It is felt that we must all cling to
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 457
Energy ! What is clear is that the consciousness of Jesus with
regard to Heaven and Earth is the true one, and is the
consciousness which is sustained by the common consciousness
of the world, viz., that every such scientific ' object ' must pass
away, and that absolute Truth of Heavenly and Earthly
existence cannot be attained until they do pass ; that is, until
we realise their apparent Being to be subsumed in Space-
Being, the Being that does not appear; Spirit. And in this
Space-Being we then find every quality affirmed of Relativity
as Whole-Quality.
346. Space-Being alone does not pass away for the Universe.
It "abides forever." Similarly, in the sphere of Philosophy,
Personality, when totalised and generalised from its congeries
of qualities, and relations, is seen to melt away into pure
Space-Being, and out of its ' nothingness ' asserts a far deeper
consciousness of its own reality. What-we-are does not ' cease
to be' although every quality of our 'personality' is taken
away. In both spheres of science and philosophy, our con-
sciousness of Reality is deeper than the ' object ' or the ' person '
of either can carry us. To attain to the actual conscious-
ness of what-they-are, we have to transcend them. We see
the Master to have done this, even when 'personality' was
set on the loftiest throne of human adoration, finding Him-
self and God more and more as all such ' personality '
became subsumed. For the sphere of Religion is the sphere
of realisation of what-we-are and what ultimate-Being is, and
all Names of either (using dual terms for convenience) must
be held as only mediatory to our highest consciousness of
what Is.
347. Therefore, it is in the true interest of our deepest
consciousness of Reality, or The Most High, that the terms
Son, Father, and Spirit, in as far as we conceive them to be
1 personal,' should be regarded as the Qualities, or Categories, of
the Being to whom Jesus gives the name " God" in order that
when He takes away these Qualities or Categories by which
a consciousness of ' God ' is objectified to Thought, we may,
through such transcension of all ' objectivity ' and ' personality,'
ascend to the consciousness of God who is equal to God-Spirit,
458 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
or Whole-Being. Thereby we realise the identical Reality
in Religion which we realise in the spheres of Science and
Philosophy, equally as concrete and irreducible, and obtain the
amplest and fullest affirmation of Whole-Reality which is
possible to human conviction. We also in such consciousness
of Whole-Reality have affirmed in us that Being where Man
and God cannot be ' personalised ' asunder from each other ;
and we find, further, that neither mediating category of Son,
Father, nor Spirit, in their * personality,' is less to us as such,
but more and more as the ages fulfil themselves. It is by
these * personal ' categories that thought and consciousness will
always find it easiest and best to realise what-we-are, or space-
being.
348. With these facts before us, we can now realise more
profoundly the vastitude of the ancient conception that All
Flows. Nothing that has come down to us from them is yet
so world-sustained. Every great religion that has held the
devotions of men, and every consciousness of the great spirits
which have founded these religions, the consciousness of Jesus
not excepted, has maintained its vastitude. It is a universal
conception. And the Flow of Being, with all that such a term
means, has always been as deeply convincing to the philosopher
as to the theologian, and as heartily endorsed by the scientist
as by both. But amidst the irresistible testimonies of its truth
we have also seen that there has ever throbbed in the heart of
the world that other fact of eternal permanence of being, and
which each in his sphere has endeavoured to transfix in his
consciousness by an Objective Definition. The man of religion
stamped it as ' God,' the scientist as possibly ' Ether,' and the
philosopher as the conscious ' Self.' But all in vain. For while
the scientist has the hope though not yet the decision of
permanence, both the 'Deity' of the Religions and the
conscious 'Self are as prolific of change to-day, in variant
names and concepts, as they have been in the historical past.
The modern, no more than the ancient, has really grasped the
veritable limitation of the Flow, and we have sought to define
this limitation as negated in the consciousness of Space-Being.
For when the ancients said * Air they did not include Space-
Being in that term. Similarly, when the modern has defined
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 459
his ' Ether,' his ' God,' and his ' Self,' or, the Universe, God, and
Man, he has never included Space-Being in either, and con-
sequently both ancient and modern have failed to include the
very fact of consciousness, the sole fact, which could yield a true
consciousness of what is desired in such terms as ' Eternal,' or
' Infinite' Permanence of Being. The modern mind has never
advanced beyond the ancient people in substantiating an
Absolute Basis of eternal permanence for ' God,' Universe,
and Man in scientific, in moral, or in intellectual affirmations,
which are founded for all in fact, and admitted by all as fact.
We have seen that not even the conceptions of God as * Son,'
' Father/ and ' Spirit,' considered as ' persons,' can be credited
with unchanging permanence. In our consciousness they are
found to be as fluid and flowing as are the 'matters' and
' motions ' of science, or the * notions,' ' egos,' ' thoughts,'
'conations,' and 'feelings' of philosophy. Jesus alone of all
the teachers of men has shown that all that men have firmly
clung to, as imagined to exist in the Objective and the
Flowing, is given them in the Space-Being which they have
ignored, and given back to them in infinite fulness of a
consciousness of the Unchanging, the Deathless, the Sinless,
and the Real.
349. Where, however, it seems to us that the modern mind
has surpassed that of the ancients, is in the clearer grasp of
the Fact of Direction in the All-Flowing-Being. The conscious-
ness of All-Flowing which is so profound and so oppressive in
both past and present literatures, has come, in modern thought,
to include Order in.it. The All that is in Flow is not flowing
anyhow, and anywhere, as the ancients seem to have believed.
The vastitude of its sweep of motion, its stupendous power of
change in the universe of matter and morals, reveals not merely
bare, blind change, but ' Directivity,' and this ' Directivity ' is
seen trending upwards, and forwards, in an ampler Existence
of universal Benefit. The all-flowing is revealed as likewise the
all-evolving and the all-developing, and the ' God,' the
' Universe,' and the ' Man ' of the Past, are discerned as
immeasurably inferior to the ' God,' the ' Universe,' and the
* Man ' of the present, as these conceptions lie in the modern
consciousness.
460 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
350. But this great fact cannot be explained by anything
that is found in the All that is itself Flowing. In such a vision,
and in such a consciousness, there is revealed in man himself a
point dappui which is above and independent of the Flowing
All. He himself stands on a rock that is not itself under the
power of Flux. He has, in short, a consciousness of Being
which does not Flow. The Process, whether we call it Cosmical,
Intellectual, Moral, or the more particular ' Vital,' explains very
little. Nothing of permanence is ever found in the universe,
the mind, the ' soul/ or the Life ; and the Rock of Man which
towers always above their changes cannot be based in either.
The rock of permanence for what-we-are, is the same as that
upon which we see the universe itself reposing, the Space-
Being which is itself more than the Flowing All in that it ever
conditions its flowing, and determines its purposes and progress.
This higher vision of Being to which moderns have risen is
evidently of the deepest significance. For, fundamentally, it is
the ground -fact of that larger structural Religion in which
scientist, philosopher, and theologian will yet be able to kneel
in common adoration of Whole-Being and consummate worship
as a man communes with himself. It is much that each now
discerns a true permanent power ascending in the All-Flowing
Being, in the high consciousness that no matter what changes
may transpire in the realm which each calls his own, that change
makes irresistibly for the good of both the Cosmos and Man. The
tremendous exhibitions of apparently uncontrolled and, as was
believed, uncontrollable Forces, not only in the Earth and
among the heavenly orbs, but in the social and spiritual spheres
of human nature, show an unhesitating determination towards
further changes which, as time elapses, every creature ultimately
realises sooner or later to be "very good." The Cosmic
Processes, no matter how overwhelming their changes, are, in
the end, crowned by the moral and spiritual judgments of
approval. The All-I 'without 'and the All-I 'within,' confess
their common Being in common Beatitude.
351. Pausing now to look back over the ground which we
have traversed and criticising the results we have attained, we
ask ourselves the question : Is this changing spectacle of
Creation, and of human and divine personalities, as seen in
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 461
Jesus, real in itself, and totally independent and isolatedly
apart from the mind which is conceiving it all? Or, Is the
changing process due wholly to the psychological mechanism
of Thought which conditions all His and our conceptions?
( 89).
We have seen that all that is given to our senses and
sensibilities, i.e. to our perceptions, is never completely
exhausted, enclosed, included, and determined in our concep-
tions, and that every concept, idea, notion, or generalised
judgment, lowest or highest, is but temporarily created out of
the material which is arbitrarily selected from our perceptions,
and is continually unstable and liable to be changed with new
accretions of perceptive matter. We have seen also that until
every concept in its wide-open, unenclosed, and undetermined
state becomes identical with our consciousness of Space-Being,
change of conception is not only certain but necessary. For
this is how knowledge is said to increase. Therefore, we seem
justified in concluding that such changing conceptions of
Creation and Personalities are due not to Reality itself, but to
a Consciousness which is more than ordinarily sensitive to the
presence of Space-Being-Truth, and is impelled to reach it and
reveal it through eliminating every imperfect concept of Being
which obstructs such revelation. And this Consciousness we
believe to have been the grand driving power in Jesus in His
teaching of Being and ' Personal ' Being.
Such a concept as Child, for example, is imperfect and
limited by the fact that it is conceived as defining being which
is One, isolated, formed, figured, substantiated, etc. Similarly,
the concepts, Jesus, Son of Man, Father, are limited and
imperfect definitions of Being. These are all limited by the
concept, Life. Take Life from these conceptual generalisations
of being, and they are not. The concept ' God ' is also limited
and inadequate because it is a closed and determined judgment
of a personal, Other-Being. Such a one is not us ; He is only
One by Himself in such a conception. And as we always have
a necessary consciousness of Being extending beyond every
such limited and imperfect conception, viz., Space-Being, all
such limited conceptions must sooner or later dissolve away
under that consciousness. Jesus, consequently, in realising
this undetermined, unlimited consciousness of Space-Being, was
462 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
necessarily compelled to negate every concept of Being, Personal
or Otherwise, which did not accord to the full with it. And
this seems to be the key to the so-called ontological changes
which He effects in Creation and in ' divine ' Personalities. The
actual Change is process of Thought.
His consciousness of Being was limitless, and therefore
required a limitless conceptualisation. And even to us, it is clear
that no possible conceptualisation of Being which should give
mere Unit - Being, and not Whole - Being, could be regarded
as absolute and final. Every such concept or conception, no
matter how revered and consecrated by time and hallowed
uses, was doomed to change and pass away. This seems to
have been the actual experience of Jesus. For all the names,
or conceptualisations of ' God ' which were hallowed, for Him,
in His people's history and Sacred Writings, were set aside by
Him, and their professed definitions and determinations of
Absolute Truth abandoned. And even those which He Him-
self set up in their place before His generation, were clearly
transcended by Him as often as it was possible for Him to do
so in His teaching. In His efforts to realise His conscious-
ness of God-Being, He abandons gradually every conception
of personality for conceptions of impersonality, until conceptual
impersonality is also abandoned as a realisation of Being, and
Whole-Space-Being alone remains in His consciousness of
What- Is. This is the content of His name 'God' to which
He 'ascends' and which is only fully affirmed in the Space-
idiom, I AM.
Contemplating thus the facts before us in their widest scope,
and with only the one desire to humbly learn Truth, it must
be said that if Christianity is to stand forth before the world as
the sole and only Religion which is justified and sustained by
Highest Reason, by ultimate Scientific Fact, as well as by
universal Faith, we must accept the Great Master's position
and regard every possible conception of Personality and
Objectivity as * in the way,' and merely mediatory, of our
ultimate consciousness of Reality, or What-we-are. He
' ascends ' to conceptions of Being in order to transcend them.
He transcends them in order to ascend to still higher; thus
manifesting a consciousness of the imperfection of all such
affirmations of Being, seeing that He sublates all qualities of
TRANSCENDENCE OF SPIRIT PERSONALITY 463
Being absolutely, till a wide-open, limitless conception of Being
is set before us, whole and identical with His and our ultimate
consciousness of Space-Being ; Is; I Am.
He never has the least intention of affirming any Person-
ality to be absolutely isolated Being from all other Beings.
The service-conceptions Son, Father, Spirit, which seem to
be separated so severely and rigidly in thought -form and
nomenclature, are, in actual fact, and fundamentally, Whole-
Being in their Nature and Function. All Three give Life : and
therefore all Three are FATHER. All Three are CHILD, for
the Father is one-being with the Son, and the Spirit 'goes
forth ' or ' proceeds ' from Father-Son Being. The ' Spirit,'
that is to say, comes forth from Father-Son Being as our
' spirit ' comes forth from our father-son being. And, again,
all Three are SPIRIT, even as we are spirit. Moreover, man is
seen surrendering all WILL to the Son, and the Son surrender-
ing all Will to the Father, and the Father surrendering, and
* delivering,' all things to the Son, even including ' all judg-
ment,' while, as we have just seen, the Spirit has no semblance
of Will, and does not even " speak from himself." And in the
matter of our Knowledge of such beings, the Holy Spirit is
thanked by the Son as 'Father' (Luke, x. 21-22). The Son
knows the Spirit as Father and rejoices therein, and the Son
only knows the Father, even as the Father only knows the
Son, and Man only knows the Father through the Son. But
the Son is Himself pre-eminently ' man.' This Knowledge is
thus clearly a process of conceptualisation of Being which has its
foundations in Man ; in Jesus, or any Man ; whose highest
affirmation of what-he-is is finally asserted by this Highest
Man in the Is-idiom, / Am. And in this Knowledge all con-
ceptual being is sublated, and becomes identical with the I Am
consciousness. The I Am consciousness of Being is indeed
necessary and essential to interpret Being as it is, for without
it the conceptions, Son, Father, and Spirit, would have possibly
remained indurated in the imperfect qualifications of Unity,
Totality, Plurality, etc., etc. But in the / Am consciousness
we stand in the limitless Space-Consciousness ; Is : Whole-
Being.
CHAPTER XIV
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS
352. Our position, then, is that Jesus transcends, in His con-
sciousness of Being, every form of personality known to us,
even Personality in the Highest, * God '-Personality ; not, how-
ever, by asserting Impersonality in its place, after the manner
of Buddha, but by affirming What-He-is as sublating all
conceptions of both personality and impersonality in His
consciousness of Space-Whole-Being. He is identical with
Father-Being and with Spirit-Being, affirming first the unity of
Himself and Father-Being in Neuter-Being (John, x. 30), which
cannot be cogitated as either Father-Being or Son-Being. He
is also that Being which, as Spirit, He breathes upon His
disciples, and by which He casts out demons, which also
originates in, or is Begotten, or 'goes forth from/ Father-Son-
Being and transcends them, seeing that the 'Spirit' subsumes
every function of both as Life-Givers ; and because, unlike both
Father and Son, He " abides forever " with men.
And with reference to this indwelling of the ( Spirit,' ever-
lastingly, it is evident that the consciousness of Jesus, while
wholly sublating the conceptions of c God '-Being as Father and
Son, finds it impossible to do the same with that of ' Spirit '
(except when assumed to be merely ' personal '), because
* Spirit,' unlike them, is realised non-objectively in our experi-
ence as same-being with Space-Being, or with What-we-are.
But, simultaneously, in the same process of conceptual subla-
tion, Jesus transcends That-which-appears, or " Heaven and
Earth," and finally transcends all process itself in wide-open,
limitless conception, which is identical with His consciousness
of Space-Being, or What-He-Is. But He nowhere says " Space,"
any more than He ever says " Nature," for to Him these terms
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 465
bore suggestions of the Unreal and the Untrue, as the human
mind had conceived them. But what they stand for, in our con-
sciousness, was the same to Him, and from his loftier plane of
interpretation He named them "God-Spirit" and "Father";
giving both terms finally their absolute and unchangeable
status of wholeness in His experiential " I AM."
He thus stands simply in the absolute consciousness of the
unrelated * I,' determining nothing save by the space-conscious-
ness ' I Am,' which determines all. As such, He seems to be
a veritable space - self, or philosophical ' nothing,' an ' empty '
space-being : whereas all He has transcended is fulfilled in
What-He-is. We cannot grasp Him, i.e., in conceptual thought
by any quality, quantity, or relation, except by what the
relational-less space-consciousness yields. But He still finds
Himself to be identical-being with all being ' below ' Him-
self in the existential world, even as He is identical-being
with all-being ' above ' it. He is the Child. He is The Father.
He is the Father on earth, for He says He gives life, not merely
to particular individuals, but to the whole world (John, vi. 51).
He is also the Father in heaven, being ' one ' with the ' Lord of
heaven and earth.' He Himself is not from the earth. He is
in heaven ; comes down from heaven ; and ascends up where
He was before. He has a consciousness of coming in the
clouds of heaven, and sitting on the right hand of Power. His
personality as ' Jesus ' or ' Christ ' or ' Son of man ' vanishes
away in His higher realisation of Himself as 'The Father.'
His conception of Being, that is, widens ever upward and
outward until, as we have said, even conception itself becomes
identical with a full-open consciousness of Space-Being in which
all objectivity is sublated.
353. For, as we have seen, He ascends above this conscious-
ness of Father-Being to His 'God' and our 'God.' But as we
now seek to enter upon His consciousness of Absolute Perfection,
we take up here His conception of Father-Being as embracing
to the full that Relationship of Man to Man, and of Man to the
Cosmos, which appears to us to be the most fitting plane of
consciousness in Him on which to base our treatment of
Relationship. It will form a starting-point, at least, from
ground well-trodden and familiar, whence we may finally reach,
2 G
466 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
in His consciousness of Absolute- or Whole-Beatitude of Being,
that transcendence of all relationship, as it is ethically regarded,
to which His Doctrine ultimately leads us. For just as Jesus
transcends all personal and impersonal Being, so He transcends
likewise all relationship of Being, and reveals Being as Whole.
But in order to transcend it, He must necessarily begin with it,
as it inheres in the common thoughts of men.
On the conscious plane of Father-Being, then, Jesus may be
said, in philosophical phrase, to lose Himself in the Other, the
Not-Self, the All, or Pan-Being. And so far, the philosophers
are right in their discernment of this great fact. But the basis
on which He stands in this process is far from being the same
as theirs. The chasm of ' difference ' between Himself and Not-
Self is not bridged by Jesus in * thinking them together ' con-
tactually in a being-less thought-void. For Him there is really
no chasm to be bridged. The nexus is itself Space-Being, and
both are existentially space-being. When Jesus is conscious of
being really personal, that is, when all of His ' personality ' which
is known to man becomes * nothing,' it is then that He realises
Himself as most truly space-personal, if we may be allowed the
expression ; and as such, homoousious or homoensive with
Man, the World, and the Cosmos Father-Being. He takes
Space-Being with Him in His consciousness of All-Being, and
interprets all from that Absolute standpoint.
In modern phraseology, Jesus recognises the 'Cosmic
Process' in all its vastitude of motions summed up in His
words " Heaven and Earth," and identifies His Father-Being
with it, but He also in the symbolism of the cloud and His
enthronement upon it, views Himself, the Man, as transcending
it, and still being What-He-Is when the Cosmos has passed
away (Mark, xiii. 31). Cosmic Process is sublated in His
consciousness of What-He-is.
354. And as it is through His consciousness of What-He-is
that He reaches this high summation of thought for Himself,
He necessarily finds personality, or What-He-Is, in all the
realm of "heaven and earth." And it is so, clearly, because
His consciousness of personality is identical with His conscious-
ness of Space- Being. He therefore discerns What-He-Is in
everything, and thereby finds personal response where such
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 467
response has been held by men to be impossible. The vast
limitless sphere of the Universe, and Space as its absolute
Being, He identifies as Same being with What-He-Is and
we-are.
The Four Gospels abound with concrete instances of this
consciousness in Him of responsive personality in all things.
Take such a puzzle-narrative, as representative of others, in the
case of the "Legion" (Mark, vi. 20; Luke, viii. 26-39). He
accepts the ' disease ' as conceived separate from the man, and
we are given the strange experience of hearing the 'impersonal'
disease speak, reason, and entreat, with a preference strongly
expressed to abide in the realm of related things rather than
go out into the Abyss of space-absolute. " And they entreated
Him that He would not command them to depart into the
abyss " (Luke, viii. 31). The man is seen to be personal. Jesus
is personal. The disease is personal. It is even strictly many
personalities. It is Legion-Personality. The swine are also as
responsive to the presence of the Legion-Personality as the
latter are to Jesus. And we know from an incident in Mark,
i y - 39> preceding this one, that the Sea can be addressed as
personal, in which Legion and swine find a watery grave.
" He rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still."
And wind and sea obey. Indeed, in reading the life of Jesus
we cease to marvel at this assumption on His part of person-
ality for everything. The fig-tree knew His reproof; He tells
His disciples that the mountains and trees will obey them if
they have the smallest faith. He spoke to the very corpses as
to those who were listening to Him. He prayed on the Mount
as to the Open or universal Being. He converses with Moses
and Elijah though long dead. The cloud also speaks, and
instructs the Three Disciples as a ' Father. 1
355. The consciousness of Space-Being alone solves the
wonderful and perplexing phenomena thus presented to us.
For the ' Thing ' we are conscious of being is just as absurdly
'impersonal' as is the sea, the corpse, the wind, or the tree.
There are no relations or qualities at our command by which
we can conceive it to be ' personal.' It is a consciousness only
of Being whose idiom is space. And upon an absolute basis of
our consciousness of What-we-are, we have no more reason to
468 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
predicate personality of ourselves than we have to predicate
impersonality of these objects. Fundamentally ', we have the
same consciousness of what they are as we have of ourselves,
viz., Space-Being.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that now and then we should
find our conscious instincts transcending our logical conclusions,
and that we should be prompted by the same disposition to
address the impersonal in the same personal manner as Jesus
did. It is only commoner for men to live on the level of their
logical life, and to leave the deeper motions of what-we-are to
the poets and mystics, and to regard their conversations with
the 'impersonalities' as gentle hallucinations! In veritable
fact, however, it is impossible to put any being on a lower
plane of being than we put ourselves, seeing that each gives
for itself a consciousness of Is, and we give no more. Jesus
was simply giving them their true place when He assumed for
them the same being which He enjoyed for Himself. It is
we who err in creating conceptual c differences ' and absolute
discreteness for * objects ' and ' persons.'
356. It is for the same reason that childhood, which moves
more to the deeper consciousness of Being than to logical
thought, is nearer pure truth of Being than manhood. Jesus is
always consistent in insisting for childlikeness in any return to
Reality. The childhood of peoples and the childhood of the
world seem to verify in their literatures this same tendency to
personify everything in heaven and earth. When the free spirit
of man is not hampered by thoughts which demand truth
verified in the prints of the dead nails and side wounds, this
tendency is always felt by all to be in profoundest harmony
with what is best and holiest in man. And as soon as we speak
to the Absolute Being instead of to the Related ; as soon as we
widen our conception of Being to be identical with our con-
sciousness of it ; that is, as soon as we/raj, we find no absurdity
at all in addressing the Impersonal as Personal. Yet, at first
sight, we ought to have greater difficulty in realising a possible
response from Absolute- than from Relative-Being. For if
anything can be impersonal to us, it ought to be the Thing for
which we have no categories in our minds by which to think or
conceive it Personal. Whatever it may be that we address in
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 469
Prayer, there is not in it the remotest quality or quantity or
relation by which we can grasp it in conceptual thought. How,
then, can we assume it to be either one thing or another? Yet
we have the deepest consciousness of personal response from
this ' Impersonality.' And it is a universal consciousness. For
everything may be said to pray. Everything has a conscious
want, and whenever there is such a consciousness, there is
prayer. The cry of Prayer is not, indeed, determined by our
conviction of Personality in the Being prayed to, but in the con-
sciousness of ability to supply the need. And this conviction
again implies the deeper consciousness of possession of common
being, as of Child and Mother. Need, moreover, goes much
deeper into experience than personality, and just because that
all we have said of this Impersonality, to whom we pray, can be
said of what-we-are, is it as impossible to withhold personality
from this Impersonality as it is to withhold that category from
ourselves.
357. The more profoundly we drop the plumb-line into our
own consciousness of what-we-are, the more difficult does it
become to find in any being a difference of being from what-we-
are ourselves. And when man is unhampered by the ' wise and
understanding' tendencies, nor 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought,' it is as natural for him to personify everything in
heaven and earth as it was for Jesus. The difference between
Him and us in this respect lies in His conviction of the absolute
truth of that which we regard as amiable illusion. We never
attain His firm grasp of the wholeness of all being with our
own, but persist in postulating ' distinctions/ contradictories, and
' opposites,' or these patched-up into ' unities,' and shrink from
predicating the same being of everything that we select for the
personalities of ourselves and our * God.' We assume without
the least demur that our conception of personality, as an
absolute * isolation,' must be indisputably correct ! And no
doubt we are so far correct in such an assumption, for when we
do not bring the space-consciousness into our data of judgments
upon Being, all the swarm of ' isolated ' things in heaven and
earth is the only conclusion we can reach. It is the conscious-
ness of Space-being for what-we-are that explains the conscious-
ness of attributing to all that Is, the same being with ourselves.
470 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
This yielded to Jesus a consciousness of identical being with all
being, and rendered everything in heaven and on earth as con-
sciously responsive, intelligent, alive, and as capable of willing,
and as ' God '-acknowledging as He found Himself to be. That
is, personality and impersonality were abolished for Him in a
common consciousness of Being which refused to be character-
ised by any quality, quantity, or relativity. As space-being He
transcended these categories, and found Being for Himself
Whole, and not a myriad-riven multitude of precariously con-
nected 'isolations.'
358. This being His attitude towards Being, as Absolutely
True only in His consciousness of it as Space-Being, and not
merely as Personal or Impersonal, we shall now endeavour to
show that His consciousness of Perfection of Being rests on the
same basis. His consciousness of VJ\\&\.-Ought is identical with
His consciousness of What-/?. But, for obvious reasons, we can
give the subject only the same meagre outline of treatment
which we have meted out to the foregoing chapters. This book
is but a sketch.
359. In a previous chapter we referred to the ancient and
modern conceptions of Being as that which is in Flow, or under
Process, and pointed out the superiority of the modern appre-
hension of Order in this Process ( 349). The modern mind
views this Cosmic Process, or all that is included under the term
1 Nature,' as moving under Purpose, the All that is flowing,
evolving, and developing as it flows. The chief characteristic of
this vast procedure has been named "Struggle for Existence,"
with the result of the " survival of the fittest." Everything is
seen to assert itself with all its energies in order to secure its
own advantage, apparently indifferent to the interests, vital or
otherwise, of all other creatures. Nature is beheld as a wild
vista of war, in which the fittest survive and the unfit are
obliterated from the Cosmos!
Prof. Huxley led the way in pointing out that this view of
Existence was not consistent with the highest ideals of man.
Man's ideal of perfect existence is not found in ' self-assertion '
but in 'self-denial.' "In place of ruthless self-assertion, it
demands self-restraint ; in place of thrusting aside, or treading
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 471
down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not
merely respect but shall help his fellows. ... It repudiates the
gladiatorial theory of existence" (Evolution and Ethics, p. 33).
According, then, to this view, what must be admitted seems
to be, as he said, that " the Ethical process is in opposition to
the principle of the Cosmic process": and with the data given
by science, and the facts of human nature, so far as conceived,
the statement cannot be controverted. But Science has never
included the Space-Being of our human consciousness, as a fact,
in her conclusions, and it is this lack which creates the differ-
ence of the two ideals of Existential purpose, i.e., of the Cosmos
on the one hand, and of Man on the other.
360. Science never gets beyond limited conceptions of
Motion, or Process. The Space-Being outside of that is
ignored. Hence, there is never anything found in scientific
c Nature,' or the Cosmos, which affirms itself as self-determined.
Neither has it produced anything in heaven or earth to which
man can assent as being absolutely and permanently Perfect-
Being. Everything has instability and imperfection stamped
deeply upon it. It points ever away from itself to some other
source for this Perfect-Being. " It is not in us," is the
universal cry.
361. But this again asserts, directly, a consciousness of this
absolutely perfect-being in man, who looks on at this vast
scene of universal evolution and does not find in any part or
item of it that treasure which he seeks. He has a standard of
perfect-being within himself by which he judges that what he
seeks is not present in the grand cosmic processes. And the
question arises, How has Man come by this consciousness
of perfect-being when he himself, as Herbert Spencer said, is
a product of this cosmic process ? He himself is not in the
least separated from Nature. He has not been created else-
where and then brought into the realm of cosmic being. He
is being of her being, and it is the very consciousness of this
common-being which renders the apparent divergence of ideals
at work in Nature and man so perplexing.
But the facts are undeniable. This ideal of perfect-being
which man holds, has not been attained by him through the
472 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
processes of the Cosmos, else the same ideal would have been
found plainly in these processes still, and undoubtedly the
self-assertion of Nature is, so far, in dire opposition to the self-
denial and self-negation which his ideal of perfect-being insists
upon. As they stand, they cannot be reconciled. Plainly,
the Cosmic process seems to assume that it is good to further
one's own existence, to live, grow, and propagate and perfect,
and evil to fail in doing so. It is good to be strong and fit,
and evil to be weak, unfit, and imperfect. The Ethical Process
seems to contradict this assumption by affirming all nobility to
lie in ' laying down ' that life which Nature has taken millions
of years to consummate, and to lay it down not for self, but
for the Other.
362. The chief mistake made by Theology, Science, and
Philosophy, in discussing this problem, seems to us to lie in
the gratuitous assumption that process is absolutely necessary to
the perfection of Being. For man, it is assumed that he cannot
reach a consciousness of himself as being perfect without under-
going this self-negating process. Neither, it is assumed, could
Nature attain to her high purposes of Being without this
process of self-assertion. Hence it comes to be calmly asserted
that Process of itself creates, adds, makes, and finishes what
without it would remain partially created, lacking finish, and
not quite wholly itself! The consciousness of Whole-Per-
manence becomes a nullity in this view of What-Is. Process ;
evolution ; is set up as Absolute Being, notwithstanding that
not a fact of consciousness can be adduced to support it. It
is all due to the agonising straights of over-burdened Reason
when she is debarred from the inclusion of the space-conscious-
ness in her data of the explication of Existence. Now, we have
to try to grasp the fact that Being is in no need of any process to
make it more perfect than it is already, and that no process can
ever lead to a deeper consciousness of perfection in man than that
which, existentially , if not conceptually, he already enjoys. In
his consciousness of Space-Being, as fundamental for both
'Nature' and what-he-is, Being is absolutely and permanently
perfect-being, and the processes of the Cosmos and in Man are
simply mediatory to him in realising to conceptuality that
conscious perfection through his experience. No process of
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 473
self-negation in man ever actually does more than realise in
some feeble measure that Absolute Perfect-Being which he
already Is. What-we-are is Space-Whole- 1 deal : process can
but realise it. Nevertheless, what-we-are is better known
to us when all process is absolved, and only our Space-
Consciousness remains. And it is this great fact which Jesus
alone has taught in His doctrine of Man, God, and the
Cosmos. And He has shown that the more absolute the
self-negation, the more absolute is the realisation of Perfect-
Being, or, the more fully we realise ourselves as Space-' nothing '
the fuller we realise our Wholeness with Perfect-Being. In
this sense alone is self-negation necessary to perfection.
363. It is the actual consciousness of Perfect- Being resident
in Man's ultimate convictions which has led him in all ages
to formulate some kind of conception of evil, imperfection,
wrong -doing, or sin. The Light within casts the shadow
without. But for the existence of this consciousness of Perfect-
Being no conception of imperfection had been possible. Hence,
dimly certain that Man had once been perfect, men of old
sought to account for the tremendous disparity between this
ideal and human practice, by saying that Man had sinned
and so fallen from this high condition. We have seen in
our account of the Cherubim that this assumption was the
principal feature and falsity in the consciousness of the Hebrew
People. More or less, it is assumed in all the fundamentals of
every religion. In the consciousness of Jesus alone it does not
exist. Man, to Him, in What-he-is, is as perfect-being as ever
he can be, but he has not so realised What-he-Is in his human
experience. Jesus says of the meanest and miserablest, "Ye
are the light of the world " : " Ye are the salt of the earth," a
height of worth He Himself never sought to surpass. But in
all probability no one of His hearers believed His statements.
Yet Jesus called for the fulfilment of the highest ideals of
perfect life without the slightest fear that human nature would
break down under the strain. He knew man. (John, ii. 25.)
364. The divergence which Prof. Huxley discerned between
the Cosmic and Ethical processes was, we must affirm, due to
the omission, on his part, of the fact of space-being from his
474 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
conception of Nature ', or the Cosmos. He divorced his 'process'
from space-being, practically assuming it to be self-directive,
and consequently could not realise that all apparent 'self-
assertion ' of Nature is not a terminal, but a mediatory purpose
of That-which-does-not- Appear. It is the space-being, That
which does not appear in any motion or 'process,' cosmic or
ethical, which is ceaselessly asserting itself, both in Nature and
in Man, with a persistence and force, compared to which the
so-called ' self-assertion ' of the Cosmic Process is a negligible
quantity. As soon as we bring-in the datum of space-being
into the problem, the same perfect-being is found in Nature as
in Man, as a consciousness. Without this fact, all the glory and
goodness of Nature, so sung and said by wrapt souls, would be
most anomalous. But when we include in our problem the
fact that Space is Being, and, beyond all doubt, Being Absolutely
Perfect, then we also realise that the vastitude of Nature, as we
cognize it, is Being which is given, sacrificed, laid down,
surrendered ; and that this is the Fountainhead of all the
'self-denial' and self-negation in Man and Nature of which
man is conscious as noble and holy, in his space-consciousness
of Nature and of What-he-is. We can also thus discern Nature
and Man to have fundamentally the same Absolute Purpose in
all that Flows or proceeds of Being, and that Man's self-
negation and self-effacement is not in opposition to Nature
conceived as Space-Being, but only transcendent of that
process which scientists imperfectly apprehend as being an
ultimate one. All apparent Kenosis is actual Pleroma.
365. We should understand the matter better, no doubt, if we
were to remember that our cognition of the so-called motions of
Being is necessarily in regressive order of their happenings ; what
is first in Being coming last in our cognitions. Both for conscious-
ness and conception, the cosmic process must be traced back-
wards along its historical progress ; and when we do so, we
cannot come to a determination of the origin of such Process
until we place it whole in our ultimate consciousness of What-
Is ; Space-Being. It is then that the same consciousness of
process is given us for Nature in this absolute sense as is given
for What-we-are, and our own ' self-negation ' of being is seen
to be whole-conform to the Whole-Giving-Forth of Space-Being
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 475
in All that Is. Man's 'self-negation ' is but the highest attempt
of * Nature ' to realise, in cosmic experience, that principle of
Whole-Giving for which our consciousness of Space-Being is
the greatest voucher. And as the Whole-Origin of All, Space-
Being is beheld to be the summation of all Goodness, all
Perfection, and all Value, and man's conception of Perfect-
Being as a mere approximation to that which he is already
in What-he-Is as whole-with-space.
366. And it is in the consciousness of Jesus that this truth
is first revealed. But He never assumes that Man, in what-he-
is, is separated from the Cosmos, or Nature, or that he requires
to imagine something not in Nature a spirit^ for example
to explain What-he-Is. His language for Man and Nature
is the same, and Supreme Being is not just One-Being but
Whole-Being. Being, also, to Jesus, is not to be made perfect
by any process whatever, but is only more and more, in ever-
widening conceptions, to be realised in its inherent perfection
through that process in which, from eternity, Space-Perfect-
Being has revealed itself. It is not because Jesus or anyone
else lived and died that man esteems self-denial, self-negation,
or the ' emptying ' of self to be the glory of human being.
Neither is it because that this self-sacrifice is done on behalf of
the Other that we possess a consciousness of human being as
being glorified thereby. It is the reverse of this. These
processes only reveal the perfection that already is inherent in all
Being, and the process to us is only conceptually consummative
of perfection because, in the fundamentals of All- or Whole-
Being, no other has been sanctioned. If we might venture the
expression, it is the native motion of Space-Being. Most High
Being has always done this continually (speaking in terms of
time for expository reasons), and will do so forever. And it
is the process which annuls all difference between cosmic
' good ' and cosmic ' evil,' or the good of * surviving ' and the
evil of failing to survive, for the cosmic process is itself, as we
are able to conceptualise it, only part of that grand motion of
Space-Being (supposing that we can conceive it in motion)
which gives all forth freely and fully so that all may realise
the same space-being, in the same cosmic-being, surrendered
unto the fulness of its own being of space.
476 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
It was from this vantage ground, as we shall try to show,
that Jesus affirmed Death, all Death, to be not evil but good ;
and perfect self-negation or self-emptying to be the path that
inevitably leads us into the presence of What-we-are, space-
perfect-being ( 488). His teaching is that, when the Cosmos
itself has passed away, when heaven and earth have vanished,
What-we-are shall not be improved or made perfect by having
been involved in its processes, either self-assertive or self-
denying, but only that these processes will have mediated to our
experience a knowledge, ever enlarging, of what-we-are,
always and ever, as space-being. To know ourselves, as
affirmed in a common consciousness with Space-Being, is
to attain more and more to a knowledge of Whole-Being-
Perfection perfection which is not created for What-we-are
by any mere process. And, at bottom, Process comes thus to
be not actual motion of Absolute Being divorced from all
permanence, but an ever-changing conception of impermanent
Thought which cannot for long be consistent with itself, seeing
that our ultimate consciousness is never disposed to accept
process as really interpretive of What-Is absolutely.
367. It is this tantalising feature of change, in apparently
permanent fundamentals, which has proved, in the experience
of the Church, so confusing in the making and unmaking of
creeds. Necessarily, the method of Jesus is one that had to
take His Time, His Age, the circumstances of His generation,
and the capabilities of the human mind, into account ; and we
must expect therefore to find His teaching formed and coloured
deeply with the peculiar material with which He was compelled
to work. Many of His affirmations are consequently tran-
scended by others which found wider scope for the statement of
a larger inspiration. His system, if we may be allowed the
term, is pyramidal, and the highest point of His teaching is
far from being so evident in bulk and impressive grandeur as
that which appears to be more important to the general sense
and understanding. We have to try to read His inmost
consciousness as we scan a vast landscape, not permitting
the vaster planular areas to obscure the higher and perhaps
mist-shrouded mountain peaks. These highest peaks are dim,
but they only appear to be dim because of their being " dark
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 477
with excessive bright." When seen in their sublime Truth
they are discovered to be the illuminative sources of that light
by which all the lower levels are made objective to our vision.
Hence the foundation of His ethical system has been
sometimes characterised by Christian writers as Law ; and
again, not Law but Love; and again, not Love but Life.
But Life with Jesus is no more an ultimate than either
Law or Love. It is relative to Death, and is always tran-
scended in His consciousness of Being. His appeal-in-excelsis
is never to some thing or some one apart ; to some motion
or aspect or process of some other thing ; or to what man is
conscious of possessing as a ' quality ' of What-he-is ; but fixedly
to What-he-w. The perfection man craves to realise is what-
he-z>. Action, processes, strivings, or what man sums up in a
life-existence, can only realise that which he already Is. There
is no conception of perfection, therefore, which may not be used
to attain this ultimate perfection for his objective experience.
Jesus draws every standard of perfection which is within the
knowledge of man into the field of His ethical material, only
to make them medials and not finals in the realisation of man's
perfection. For example, a Code; a Creed; a "Thus saith the
Lord," or a Prophet's message ; or " Moses and the Prophets,"
" the traditions of the Elders," current conceptions of " the
Messiah," and such like ; each and all are absorbed, fulfilled,
and transcended in His own conscious superiority expressed by
' Come unto me,' * Follow me,' ' Abide in me,' ' Without me ye
can do nothing,' and many other injunctions. But notwith-
standing the high standard given in Himself, He never makes
Himself His absolute ideal of perfection. His own phrase,
" Perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," surpasses it.
For He Himself only professes to lead all men to the Father.
' I go to the Father,' is the typical tendency of His whole
existence. ' I do nothing of myself,' He assures us, ' as I hear,
I judge; and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.' But even
this high Father-standard is relative in that it is involved in
sex-connotations and cosmic processes, and is, moreover,
objective to man himself. It is not existential with his own
being, although based on Life, for Life is itself under processes
of Change.
478 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
368. From which it is evident that the Ethic of Jesus, in
its vast wholeness, includes and absorbs in it every mediatory
standard of perfection which has governed men's lives in the
Past, and also those which He Himself gave, and which the
world has scarcely yet attempted to realise either in Home or
State ; in the individual or in society. But He never asserts
Himself as moving on a plane of being and action which is
beyond the capacity of other men to attain. He boldly asks
men to love one another as He has loved them (John, xv. 12).
And the loftiness of this command is at once manifest when
He says, " Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved
you " (John, xv. 9). For this means that in the consciousness
of Jesus men have the capacity to love one another to the
full of the Father's love for Jesus. There are common
capacities of Love- Motions in all Three Beings. Hence such
statements as, " If a man love me, he will keep my word, and
my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make
our abode with him " (John, xiv. 23). Jesus assumes that there
is an Existential Communion transcending the Relative Com-
munion, and that the former is realised through the latter. And
in this way He unfolds that Identity of Being in Man, Himself,
and the Father which, when apprehended by man, becomes for
him the highest basis of Perfect Being relative to all others
known to the world. It is for this reason also, we presume to
think, that the distinction between Church and World must
slowly vanish consecutively as the World adopts the Ethos, not
of the Church but of Jesus, and realises that His Ethos is not
limited to any external or internal order of being, ecclesiastic,
earthly, or cosmic, but is identical with Space-Being ; What-Is.
369. There are consequently degrees of excellence according
to the conception of Being which is accepted as supreme. Jesus
is constantly noting the relativity of such degrees, and as
constantly placing a higher excellence before us in the place of
a lower one subsumed in it. To His disciples He Himself was
the highest standard of excellence. They declared that He
knew all things (John, xvi. 30), and to Thomas, at least, He
was Lord and God (John, xx. 18), but He declared "the Father
is greater than I." And as for His own wondrous works,
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 479
works that I do shall he do also, and greater than these shall
he do, because I go to the Father." Yet, again, even this does
not define the ultimate perfection which they are to realise.
The devils are to be subject to them, and in a vivid flash of
prophetic vision He beholds the end of all evil on the earth
and in heaven by the fall of Satan as lightning therefrom. In
this ' Satan ' term He so sums up the aggregated impersonation
of evil which He gives in more detail by the assurances that
they would tread on scorpions, serpents, and have authority
over all " the enemy " ; nothing, no nothing in any wise being
able to hurt them. " Howbeit, in this rejoice not," He adds,
" that the spirits are subject unto you," a height of power to
which men had not hitherto aspired ; " but rejoice that your
names are written in heaven " (Luke, x. 17-20). Which seems
to be a metaphorical method of declaring that no relative
excellence, however overwhelming in scope and might, could
transcend, in worth or value, that possession of a nature
which was capable of being named with all that heaven held
of good.
370. Similarly, in His consciousness of Excellence, the tran-
scendence of Individual Excellence in Cosmic Excellence is also
a feature. " The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He
seeth the Father doing." The Father is thus seen to be at
work, and He also hears the words from the Father which He
delivers to His disciples. His own works are also the Father's
works. But this Father is the Power which directs the sun and
rain upon the good and evil, upon the just and the unjust ;
which clothes the grass and the lilies ; which feeds the sparrows
and the ravens ; and which robes itself in the Clouds. It is the
Power which reveals to Peter " the son of the living God " ;
which hears the secret prayer ; sees the hidden deed of love ;
and speaks through the trembling disciple who stands on his
trial before the synagogue. This Power is behind all that Jesus
says and does. But it is truly a natural and not a super-natural
Power. It is Nature and Father as One. The real content of
this consciousness is no other than our " Nature " named as
" Father," and its processes are Cosmic.
Ideal Excellence is not merely on earth. It is in heaven ;
and the standard Father's will in heaven is to be done on earth
480 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
as it is done in heaven. The consciousness of Jesus widens
upward until it embraces heaven and earth, or what we des-
ignate "Nature" in its extent, and as He sees the universal
standard of perfection to be common for heaven and earth,
and excellent to the highest value of what-man-is, that is, the
value of Life, He sees it to be personal excellence, or the per-
fection of Fatherhood.
371. The appeal of Jesus to the standard-conduct of "The
Father," is therefore an appeal to man to realise for himself all
that he already is as Life- Excellence, to the full of the perfection
which, in His Being, the Father is. There is within all men
that which is capable of being realised in conscious human
existence as perfectly as it is in The Father in heaven, just
because fundamentally they are not divided, but common
Being. Being ; Is ; is ever the basis of the Excellence, or the
Ought-to-Be, of conduct. What-man-is yields the true impera-
tive of the Ought, if we always understand that the 'Ought' is
simply another expression for the realisation of What-man-A
372. But the transcendence of this "Father" personality
marks also a transcendence in the consciousness of Jesus of
all relative Perfection, however sublime it may seem in our
conception of it, and His consciousness still widens upward
until all conception of Perfection, as based in Relative Being,
gives way before the unbounded consciousness of Whole-
Perfection, identical with His consciousness of Whole -Being,
that is, Being of which man has consciousness as What-He-Is ;
Space-Being. And it is this consciousness which He states
in His well-known Beatitudes (Matt. v. 1-12), and confirms so
frequently throughout the Fourth Gospel, in his great ' I AM '
utterances.
In the Beatitudes, which have been justly characterised as
" Sublime " (Prof. A. B. Bruce), this consciousness of Whole-
Perfection, as identical with Whole-Being, predominates over
all else. It is the highest plane of ethical guidance which Jesus
touched, and the world of man has nothing further to apprehend
concerning Man-Perfection. He there exhausts all conscious-
ness of Perfection in the consciousness of Whole-Being sans
Relativity absolutely. Ought and Is are consciously whole,
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 481
and transcend our conceptions of perfection and imperfection
in our consciousness of Absolute Beatitude.
373. Jesus in the Beatitudes is revealed as having entered
the What-Is of Man, and as depicting its treasures. Out of it
He sees the great Ultimates of human desire unfold themselves,
viz., " the Kingdom of Heaven " ; possession of the " earth " ;
repletion of" righteousness " ; " seeing God," " comfort," " mercy,"
" peace." It is not the region of " Laws " and " Commands " ; it
is the sphere of Being. He looks upon What-Is. He speaks
from the height of the I Am consciousness. All relativity is
absent in the highest consciousness presented there. What-
man-is, is by itself; yet not as isolated being, but whole with
all that " heaven " has ever connoted in the thoughts of .men.
Man has come to himself.
374. In its fundamental characteristics, therefore, the Ethical
System of Jesus is not one of reciprocal action between two
persons or as between the Self and Not-Self. Perfection of the
Self is self-affirmed in a self-contained realisation of the Self,
by itself, on the basis of what-we-are, independent of either
* Man ' or ' God ' considered as * Others.' Neither the Cosmos
nor all it holds or connotes is essential to a man's perfection.
These shall pass. Man is more than they. The Perfection of
man as he realises it through the Other, whatever or whoever that
Other may be, is perfection of a transient and evanescent character.
It is ' finite ' perfection, and is not ' forever.' It is based upon
Commands from ' without ' what-man-is, and by which he never
truly realises What-He-Is, but just what the ' Other,' Man or
God, conceives he ought to be. // is Perfection which is limited
to the measure of that concept. It is never actually to man the
Absolute Beatitude. And, consequently, man never has been
long contented with that realisation of his Being. Just as every
external aid and directive instruction to the seed, as it grows,
is inferior to the innate guidance it possesses in itself, as What-
it-Is, so Jesus shows that every "commandment " or " Law" is
necessarily subordinate and subsidiary to the directions which
are whole with what-man-is in himself. Hence it is that the
progress of the ages is the progress of realisation of what is in
man, or what man is, absolutely.
2 H
482 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
375. There is, no doubt, a phase of perfection which is
realised in this relative way. The " New Commandment " is proof
of it. Jesus makes concessions to human need of progressive
advancements. The ' Golden Rule ' which is much inferior to the
" New Commandment," He also placed among the ' commands '
which, by the help of such varying concepts or "standards,"
slowly elevate human consciousness to the full 'Blessedness'
of the realisation of What-Man-Is. He embraces also the " Ten
Commandments " which perhaps are on a lower plane than even
the ' Golden Rule ' ; but neither of these standards of perfect
conduct, seeing they involve relativity, is the highest which
Jesus has taught for His ideal of Absolute Perfection. This is
given alone in the leading beatitudes, and perhaps only in
complete wholeness in the first. There, however, it is given
unmistakably.
376. And with reference to these temporary conceptions of
the Ought-to-be, we may point out that the " Ten Command-
ments " assume no higher consciousness of Being than strict
separation between ' Man ' and ' God.' This was, of course,
countered as an inferior conception of what-man-was when-
ever Jesus said, " I and my Father are One-Being." Also, the
' God ' of the * Ten Words ' was not a related being to man
through common Life. He was not therefore Father of the
Child whom He ' commanded ' to obey Him. He was a
Being apart not only in space but in nature. There could not
therefore be true Existential Communion between man and this
' God.' The only communion was mere Communication. The
basis of communication was also one of relationship through
negations. " Thou shalt not."
377. But the ' Golden Rule ' is no more of Jesus than is
the ' Moral Law.' Yet no item of good in the world has been
expelled by Him from the uses of Man. He realises that all
good is the property of man. The ' Golden Rule ' (Matt. vii. 12)
He asserts, however, to be of a higher type of Ethic than the
moral law, and far wider in its scope, for He assures us that
" this (the said Rule) is the Law and the Prophets." He does
so also, although the conception of Deity is not recognised in
it. Its highest reference is not to ' God ' but to " Men." This,
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 483
however, constitutes its greater value, for man is now following
a guide who is known to himself and known as of the same
nature, and undergoing the same experiences of Being.
But we shall be better prepared to ask the reader to
compare these standards of human guidance as superior or
inferior when we have considered somewhat the Beatitudes
themselves. By the higher light we shall observe better the
discriminating shadows on the others. Meanwhile, let it suffice
that we do not regard it of the slightest consequence whether
we take this 'Rule' affirmatively or negatively. It is itself of
no importance in estimating the true Ethos of Jesus. Whether
it was followed in China negatively, or in Palestine affirmatively,
gives it no ultimate status as an expression of the Ultimate
consciousness of our Lord. It is indeed far below such an
expression. And therefore we are at a loss to understand on what
grounds Dr Alfred Plummer (S/ Matthew, p. 113) can say,
" In the Golden Rule the Sermon (on the Mount) reaches its
climax : it is the capstone of the whole discourse." As a
matter of fact, the Beatitudes transcend it, as Ideals of
Perfection, as the heavens transcend the earth. We should
not think of including it in His Ethos at all, were it not for
His own example in incorporating it among the councils which
He deemed worthy of man's contemplation. For He never acted
upon its principle Himself, and thus never consecrated it as He
did the Beatitudes and the * New Commandment.' He never
did anything because He desired that others should do the
same to Himself, but " as the Father gave me commandment,
even so I do." All His actions were based on the Will of the
Father only.
378. We then place the principal ethical content of the
consciousness of Jesus, roughly divided, in order of superiority
as follows :
I. The Beatitudes.
II. The New Commandment.
III. The Golden Rule.
We say " roughly divided," because clearly these three
divisions are like circles that cut into each other in manifold
ways. The division is not to be taken as absolute, but one of
484 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
expedience, and for our better apprehension of that authority
which each should wield over us, and of the authority which
each possesses in virtue of the expression it gives to our
consciousness of What-Is. Our aim is to show that although
the Ethic of Jesus embraces all that we mean by the Relative,
it is at the same time an absolutely exhaustive Ethic as Whole-
Ethos. It cannot be furthered, and its wholeness consists in
the fact that, unlike all other Rules of Life, Jesus transcended
Life itself and all its relativities ; represented as these are by
the terms ' Father' and 'Son'; and affirmed Supreme or
Absolute Good, Whole-Beatitude, through His simple con-
sciousness of What-He-Was. This we hold is the consciousness
that commands His Beatitudes. His 'Blessing' falls upon a
state of being, and not upon any process or action necessary,
or done to reach that state, in order to create it or to enjoy it.
This state of Being is already existentially in man, in what-he-
is ; and Ethical Process, as it is usually defined, and understood,
is the realisation of this state in conception, action, character,
and experience. Concept, action, character, and experience are
based upon it, and are called into existence because of it, and
not vice versa. It is the ever-present consciousness of it in
man that makes it impossible for him to rest satisfied in any
objective realisation of perfection until such perfection, as
judged by him, is judged simultaneously with his highest
judgment, * I am.' For in this ' I am' judgment, Being and its
character are simultaneously defined in identical terms. And
consequently, as Being cannot be defined on a higher plane of
consciousness than the ' I am ' consciousness, so also in the
same terms in which we realise What-we-are, we simultaneously
realise our highest consciousness of Perfect-Being, that is,
absolute being beatific.
The Beatitudes.
379. (i.) Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven (Matt. v. 3).
Before this state of being could be affirmed, it had first to
be. It is. It is unnegatable judgment, for it Is. It is the
judgment of What-Is in man, whole and by itself, with all
relativity sublated. There is no consciousness of Other, of
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 485
Father, Son, Man, or 'God. 1 It is the 'spirit' in its true
wholeness. The consciousness is affirmative of What-Is as No
Thing. The motion of judgment is not in such form as might
imply that What-Is is 'good' or 'evil,' holy or sinful, living or
loving, perfect or imperfect, or subject to relative quality, or
relation in any sense. 'Poor in spirit' is the simple conscious-
ness of Being which is unpossessed of all, and has no relativity
or quality of possessing. The word 'poor' is TTTCDX^ 'utterly
destitute ' in spirit. And being so characterised as ' poor in
spirit} no predicates of personality, substance, matter, form, or
process can be made concerning it. The consciousness is equal
to, " I am nothing." It is more than connotive of possessing
nothing. It is a true consciousness of being nothing. It is the
uncontrovertibly conscious affirmation of Space-Being, the Is
consciousness in man. It is the highest revelation of Man to
himself. This is where he is conscious of coming to himself,
and of knowing himself.
The terms ' are ' and ' theirs ' seem at first sight to imply
other. So also do the terms ' I ' and ' Father ' in the statement
" I and my Father are One." The otherness of course lies in
the conceptions ' I ' and ' Father ' which are both transcended
in the consciousness ' One.' But it is necessary to state the
conceptions in order to transcend them in the consciousness of
Unity. The relativity must be affirmed before it can be
negated. The relativity was indeed true to Jesus' hearers ;
absolutely true ; but, to Himself, spirit, as not possible of
being conceptualised, and therefore inconceivably any thing,
and ' utterly lacking ' to any thought of it, was the only truth.
His consciousness of ' spirit ' was His consciousness of space.
They could not be thought differently. Moreover, His con-
sciousness of the common state of the poor and poor in spirit,
as ^//VvV-being,' in which no personality or relativity is
conceivable, and their common state of blessedness as ' heaven,'
shows that His ultimate consciousness was of Whole-Being.
Relativity of Personality and Possession was transcended.
There is also no reference whatever in His consciousness to
piety, morality, or religion, as these terms are usually interpreted
with regard to the conditions of perfection or imperfection in
the ' soul.' It is a consciousness that rises beyond these and
all other qualitative categories. It is, first and last, the deepest
486 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
and truest conscious experience which any * spirit ' can have of
itself. But it is all-important as datum for an exhaustive
appreciation of the fundamental Ethos of Jesus. No other
gives such a certain and essential grasp of Reality, or of What-
we-are, and consequently, it is the highest consciousness of
Absolute Excellence or Beatitude, and is subordinately definable
as the ' kingdom of heaven.' Being and Beatitude, Whole and
Indivisible, are identical. For Space-Being expresses Is, and
Is transcends every possible perfection of relative being. All
conceivable ' good ' falls into position after this realisation. For
the riches of 'coming to Jesus,' to ' The Father,' or to ' God,' are
only possible and practicable after coming to ourselves, but not
sooner. To * know thyself,' is absolute beatitude.
And no process of becoming ' poor ' makes the spirit perfect,
but only reveals and realises its perfection in our cosmic experi-
ence. This consciousness of 'spirit' as ( nothing] or space-being,
is fundamental with Jesus throughout His teaching ; and
processes of self-assertion or self-denial, as means of self-realisa-
tion by conception, life, and character, are constantly compared
with it and judged by it. But Being, to Him, is perfect in
itself, and is not existentially improvable by any conceivable
process either on earth or in heaven. On the contrary, as we
tried to point out, it is the Is, or Space-Being of our conscious-
ness, which regulates and substantiates our every conception of
Good both for ourselves and the Universe.
380. (ii.) Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be
comforted.
Process now enters. For mourning leads to a realisation of
the space-being we are. And it is notable how many thinkers,
Goethe and Carlyle principally perhaps, have found such a
realisation to identify itself with sorrow. But we should not
suppose this ' mourning ' as that ordinary consciousness of grief
as when relatives or earthly possessions are lost, or when self-
respect flies, or when living is such as to cause us to curse our
day, and lament our existence. In the Jesus-Consciousness
there is as yet no Other to lose. * Comfort ' in such a case
could not be conceived as sympathy from the other, receiving
back the lost, or hope of lost restored. Grief of this relative
nature implies an assumption of claim upon what has been lost
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 487
or taken. On the contrary, when we ' come to ourselves ' it is
then we are certain that we have no claim upon anything: that
we are really ' nothing' : that all we mourn was not ours. This
* mourning' of the beatitude is the fundamental negation of
all self-assumption, self-assertion, or being-for-self. It is the
' spirit ' brooding over the Deep of itself, conscious of Whole-
Being. It was here where the writer of Genesis, i. 1,2, found
his data of ' Chaos/ and first felt the mourning consciousness
of ' nothingness ' in his own spirit.
This beatitude has a strict relation to the first. Primarily,
it is the origination of Thought out of Consciousness : the
form of Consciousness restricting itself under conceptuality.
The spirit broods or hovers over its * empty ' being. Its motion
is its mourning ; relativity in the creation of separation. It is
the incidence of that shadow on the spirit which through the
ages has broadened far and been termed ' Woe,' ' eternal woe,'
' hell/ as its development has advanced. Jesus, however, finds
in it the " comfort " that sleeps in the bosom of every " woe."
The ' spirit ' through such conscious ' nothingness ' will tran-
scend all grief. He Himself found The Father in the face of
Judas, and heard the joy-cries of the living wheat-grain on the
other side of death. All such mourning ministers to Absolute
Beatitude.
Pessimism and Optimism ; ' kingdom of hell/ and ' kingdom
of heaven ' ; Satan, God ; all such possible relativities arise out
of this Deep of What-we-are. Existence is felt as awful
under the power of its own potentialities. All reflecting souls
have abundant experience of this * mourning/ brooding over the
space-deep of the ' I am ' ; and we are not surprised that Jesus
should place it in the near front of His absolute utterances. It
throbs through every great epoch of History; it gives its
peculiar tender wistfulness to all Philosophy ; all grand work
of genius is steeped in it ; all the altars of religion are draped
with it ; the Spirit of Christendom still wears it like a mantle.
It is the shroud of the Past and the dark veil over the face of
the Future, and the Cosmos itself is often terrible under its
gloom. " Eh, it is a sad sicht," said Carlyle, as he gazed
upwards into the starry sky. It is the atmosphere of all the
Sacred Books of the world, and the chief weird and enchant-
ment of the Grand Drama and the highest productions of the
488 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
poets. All art, and especially Musical art, speaks from its
recesses, as voices from their shell. Pathos deep as buried
Time, this spirit of ' mourning ' it was that lay dark on the
hearts of the ancient generations when they declared that the
Eternal One had ' repented that He made man ' ; that inter-
preted every catastrophe and disaster as due to His bitter
disappointments and wrath ; and which has likewise in our
days rent our ears with blasphemous indictments and ful-
minations against the "cruelties of Nature and of God," and
the unsubduable " domination of Evil." It has carved the
darkest doctrines in the Creeds ; has shed lurid halos around
the most awful crimes in Time, and is yet, to many, the
principal category in their conception of ' God.' In its deepest
deep, " All is Vanity " is its cry.
In passionate and joyful reality, it is truly the " child crying
in the night"; and is our surest proof of the certainty of the
Mother-Presence in the Space-Being. It is also a clear mark
of the unique consciousness that transcended it. 4I They shall
be comforted," is His vision, beyond every imagination of
mourning. It also affirms the assurance of consciousness that
communion is on a basis of Whole-Being, as of leaf and tree,
and not relative-communion, as of two things existentially
severed, and sadly conjoined together by thinking them.
381. (iii.) Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth.
Out of the Deep the earth consciousness ascends. First,
conscious 'nothingness'; second, the consciousness of Feeling
in its forms of joy and sorrow, light and darkness ; and
third, Thought alone and the motions of Will (i.) ' I am
nothing,' (ii.) ' I have nothing,' (iii.) ' I shall be nothing.' Meek-
ness is a policy. It is a way of action resolved upon, and is the
native process of our being. For although all cosmic process
appears aggressive and self-assertive, yet in the profounder
Nature of space-being, beyond these processes, all is steeped in
meekness absolute. The " Temptation in the wilderness " is
true in its teaching that man is wiser, in his conscious * nothing-
ness/ to rest completely in that space-being, claiming neither
' bread ' nor the kingdoms of the earth, not yet the angelic
hands of heaven to aid him. Claim Nothing from self: Nothing
from earth : Nothing from heaven. In what-he-is, he is far
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 489
more than either. And so 'emptying himself he follows the
great and amazing meekness of Whole-Being, or that which
seems to hide itself in space-presence, while That which appears
receives in all its objects of heaven and earth the homage and
worship of Man. Man shall heir the earth when he heirs this
spirit of boundless space-meekness, which in its motions of All
that exists, surrenders its throne to the unworthier ' things that
do appear.' All shall then be added unto him. The earth
unclaimed by all ; all shall then possess it.
Every revelational-form of God which Jesus has portrayed
discloses this meekness. " Hear Htm" the Father is heard
saying, not, " Hear me" Jesus plainly confessed, ' I can do
nothing of myself.' I am nothing, I have nothing, all I am and
have, I am and have from my Father. Look to the Father.
He also represented the Holy Spirit as taking the things of
Jesus, and not the things of Himself and showing them unto
men. From the Beginning, the Spirit, the highest conscious
form of Deity, becomes ' nothing,' or Space-Being, in order that
the Cosmos, The Father, might ' appear.' The Father is again
represented as becoming ' nothing' in giving up all He is in the
Son. The Son likewise becomes 'nothing' that the world may
have all, the earth, the heavens, and " eternal life." This is
meekness absolute ; the deepest conception of process in Space-
Whole-Being. The Cosmic Process is only an arc in its motions
as it first appears as Heaven and Earth, and again ' passes
away' in realising its more fundamental Space- Reality. The
( self-assertion ' is in the Appearance only ; the self-negation is
deeper in that which does not Appear, viz., Space-Being. It is
the self-negation which effects heirship of Whole-Being, and
self-assertion is not shown to effect anything ultimately. In
reality, the Cosmic process which we see as ' self-assertion ' is
the process of ' self-negation ' of Space-Being in order to
Appear. And in this process itself the Space-Spirit is most
manifested, for nothing that appears in the Cosmos, however
grand and wonderful in worth, power, and beauty, but points
away from itself everlastingly in utter meekness, to the Space-
Being ; Whole-Cause.
382. (iv.) Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right-
eousness : for they shall be filled.
490 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Feeling, and Thought, and Conation, are now all bent
towards one Ideal. The meek shall inherit the earth, and self-
negation, the * law ' of Space-Being, shall not become a compulsion
but a passion of all desire. Hunger and thirst rise out of the
nature of our being, so likewise to negate, deny, and repress
what-we-are shall be the deepest desire of men, they themselves
being conscious only of righteousness when this self-denial even
unto death is accomplished. Nothing seems more astonishing
to superficial reasoning than that Being, which has taken long
centuries to evolve and ' develop,' should find its highest ideal of
perfection in negating such Being into space- or ' nothing-being.'
The negation is assumed to be evil instead of further good.
The self-negation of Whole-Space-Being explains it. This
process transcends the Cosmic Process, or What-Appears.
Nothing had appeared at all without this process of Whole-
Being-Negation. It is therefore the fundamental passion in all
that Is. Fundamentally, also, it explains why everything
expects that everything should give up itself on demand-
Universal * hunger and thirst,' or Existential Communion of
Being, is quite truly expressed by Jesus in the verse, " Except
ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have
not life in yourselves." ^4//that Is, is for eating and drinking;
for there is absolute satisfaction for all that Is. "They shall be
filled." The crescendo of intensity in the Beatitudes increases.
<* Poor in spirit," ' mourning,' ' meekness,' ' hunger and thirst.'
The process of Space-Being deepens in its vibrations, as it draws
out from the Unseen into the Seen. And there may be said to
be historical visibility in the hunger and thirst after righteous-
ness. Out of this consciousness all Religions take shape and
direction. And every system of Philosophy has sought to be
filled through reason and thought as much as Theology through
Faith. Their identity of Being is found in their possessing the
same hunger and thirst. Moreover, apart from either, the
experience of the noblest and the best, the wisest and truest,
has unfailingly realised such righteousness, or satisfaction for
the spirit-hungers, through the space-consciousness of What-
we-are. Jesus seems to say Become * nothing ' to yourselves.
Cast out What-Appears. Die to live. Negate thyself if thou
wouldest realise thyself. He that loveth his life shall lose it,
and he that loseth his life (soul) for my sake shall find it. Does
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 491
your ' enemy ' appear ? Love him. The ' enemy ' will be no
more enemy : he will vanish in this space-being. Empty thy-
self of everything you have conceived to be objective between
thy being and his. Realise space-being alone as the true nexus
between you both. Empty thyself. "Sell all": "Give all":
" Leave all." For this is the righteousness that transcends all
lower righteousness found in cosmic processes, viz., the satisfac-
tion of Whole-Being in a ceaseless emptying to the utmost
realisation of Space-Being in order that the Universe might be.
Absolute Kenosis is absolute Pleroma. Lacking all, "they
shall be filled."
These leading four Beatitudes contain no consciousness of
the Personal Other. Being is moving in its own sufficiency,
not even bounded by heaven and earth ; comforted, filled ;
conscious of Being which is more than heaven and earth ;
absolute 'blessedness' characterising Whole-Being. The 'spirit '
in its ' poorness ' has not gone forth from itself to be objectively
One among Others. There is only ' a helpless sense of wings,'
or, as in the ' grain of wheat/ a conscious potentiality of fruit-
bearing. The Ethos of Jesus is yet in its passive state.
383. (v.) Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy.
Objectivity is entered upon, and we have now Relation-
ship. Now, the reality of the Objective and the Related is
always truly affirmed if it be affirmed as not absolute, or Whole-
Reality. It is the absolutising of conceptual Objectivity and
Relationship, apart from and independent of the Space-Being,
that creates untrue philosophy. There are many uses for
considering the sun to ' rise ' and ' set,' for an * east ' and ' west,'
and such like, but there are no uses for asserting these concepts
as absolute truths. Objectivity and Relationship are therefore
good categorical crutches to thought-concepts, but we need not
delude ourselves by affirming them to be absolute, or Whole-
Truth.
The Master assumed such conceptual uses of Objectivity
and Relationship, as all have done, and do, and also the entire
realm of Objectivities and Relations which Literature, Art, and
Religion spread before our eyes; but He never dreamed of
asserting ' east ' to be absolutely apart from ' west,' nor one
' person ' to be absolutely severed from the Other ' person,' or
492 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Man as isolated Being from 'God.' In His Beatitudes, He
first showed the basis of Being in its Whole-Reality ; absolutely
sufficient to itself ; and independent of all processes for What-
Is, and then showed the space-perceptual begripped by the
thought-conceptual in which Whole-Space-Being contracts into
Unit-personalities, and man views himself as one, and the
cosmos as the other one, with law acting between them as
nexus-being.
Relationship is based originally on the passion of ' mercy.'
The 'spirit' goes forth in its 'nothingness' to give of itself.
For the ' merciful ' are, first, the c pitiful ' (e\er}fULovei), There is no
implication of guilt in this Other, or need of forgiveness of sin.
It is the heart revealed in its native sympathies with all. This
'mercy' covers Nature as well as man. Fundamentally it is
Love, the pure motion of the Space-Goodness as it comes into
our concept-judgment of Life.
Upon this passion all Life, at its profoundest, is based.
Without this ' pity,' one for the Other, no life had been long
upon the earth. It is the widest form of reciprocity of Being,
for all giving is getting. In pitying we obtain pity. But so
obsessed is the religious mind with the conceptions of Guilt,
and Justice, and Ransom, in connection with this 'mercy' that
it is difficult to realise its grandeur in the thought of Jesus.
Justice, Rights, Guilt and redemption by ransom are all con-
cepts created on behalf of Self-interest They are all products
of a later state of existence which has drawn the lines of
personality much firmer and more exclusive of the Other than
is implied here. So great is the strength of such concepts,
however, that it is indeed hard for the religious mind to under-
stand that Jesus never based any teaching on Justice. He never
said " Be just." Sacrifice is His principle. And there is no
sacrifice in Justice. It holds an even balance between two
opposing forces, the 'Mine' and the 'Thine.' But such con-
ceptions, as of Rights, do not exist in His Ethics. ' All that is
mine is. thine.' ' Freely ye have received, freely give.' He
aims at 'Goodness,' which is a far higher principle than even
Righteousness. We cannot, e.g., make the Other righteous, for
we cannot obey for him. Righteousness is therefore only good-
ness for one's self, but * the kingdom of God and His righteous-
ness' implies good given to the other. It is pity, mercy,
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 493
sacrifice of self, laying down life, * emptying ' what-we-are to its
space-being, even as Whole-Being is constantly doing for the
All of the Universe. It is &?ing Good, apart from all connota-
tions of Law. This is the ( mercy ' that transcends the sphere
of Law and Justice. It knows nothing of them. It is Being
which reveals itself open-hearted, bare-bosomed, full-handed, as
mother-pity giving all to the child.
384. (vi.) Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see
God.
This is absolute vision. Jesus begins first with con-
sciousness of I am without Other : then includes Thought
restricting itself out of consciousness by form of conception.
Feeling, willing, and conation are then discerned in full action ;
the Heart representing Life in its plenitude of Light and
Vision. The divine realises the divine. The Invisible radiates
into vision. We realise ' God ' as What-we-are. ' God ' is seen
as we see Space. Thought-concepts of Deity, and Sense-Forms
of the same which are reared in the fancy, yield up their limited
content to the unlimited consciousness of Being which we see
as we see What-we-are. For the same space-consciousness
which is necessary to see one's self is the same requisite to see
* God/ Open, whole-open, clear, free, is how we are to inter-
pret the word * pure.' It is the same consciousness as of the
* terrible crystal ' which is always associated in the Old Testa-
ment with the vision of ' God ' and the vision of the Soul. It is
' Emptiness,' transparent clearness of heart ; nothingness ; as of
seeing through space. To see God there must be absolutely no
obstruction of vision. For this ' seeing ' does not imply an
Object which might be described conceptually as great,
majestic, throned, terrible, etc. It is the open-heart, what-we-
are, and not the thought or the eye, that so sees. The heart in
its purity becomes whole with the purity of Space-Being, and
then the heart cannot but see 'God.' There is nothing else to
see. All objects are transcended in such vision. Is, is the sole
predicate that then can be used.
Then it is that with this wide-open vision of Whole-Being
we realise Highest Good, the Best, the Holiest. It is the
" whole-blessedness " which Jesus has uttered in each beatitude.
It sublates all Good with Is. Or, Being becomes synonymous
494 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
with Happiness. It is 'blessedness' absolute. And even
should we come below this consciousness of ' God ' to realise
4 God ' in a thought-concept of personality and limitation ;
should we see Him as a Person, a Father, or a Father incarnate,
the vision of Him should ever be as of One who sees us not in
wrath, cloud-darkened, objective, but through purity of heart,
a space-clear-heart, in which there is nothing against man.
Jesus assumes that we can see ' God ' as He sees us, with a pure
heart, as space-being seeing space-being, and thereby commun-
ing in ' blessedness.' But from the fact that Jesus allows no
Other into His loftiest Ethos, we should learn that every limita-
tion given to Being, personal or otherwise, falls short of His
vision of Perfect Being. Every Unit-God-Being so qualified,
related, numbered, or personalised, should be sublated in our
wide-open consciousness of Whole-Being, the only realisation
of ' God ' in truth absolute, Is, equal with our consciousness of
What-we-are.
385. We do not dwell further on the beatitudes which
follow. They give us but special illustrations of the principles
laid down in those we have now tried to interpret. Our point
is gained when we have shown, however imperfectly, that the
affirmation of Space-Being for Man-Being and all Being,
Cosmic or otherwise, is the only basis for a true rationalisation
of the Jesus' consciousness of Absolute Beatitude or Perfection.
He Himself clearly places the utmost importance upon His
beatific statements. Nowhere does He give such solemnity
and dignity to any other deliverance. No such overflowing
sense of worth is ever attached by Him to any other utterance.
The wide region of His teaching which is marked by His
serious " verily," " I say unto you," His appeals, remonstrances,
refutations, rejoicings, counsels, prayers, is a sphere which is far
transcended in that sublime ecstacy which glows in His
repeated, exultant, and untiring " Blessed." In its atmosphere
we behold the old world rising from the dead ; all old things
passed away ; and all things become new. No human thought
had ever before soared to the height of the Is-consciousness.
It marked the ascent of human consciousness to the true limit-
less judgment upon Being ; the orbitless consciousness through
which all Good is moving from space-being unto space-being
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 495
(if we may be allowed the statement) ; a consciousness which
connotes the Cosmos as but an emotion throbbing through the
bosom of Space-Being, and Man and his history but an expand-
ing thought ; a consciousness, nevertheless, which forever made
it imperative and reasonable that Man should also be named
" Godr
386. The "poor in spirit" is Ethos, but it is Ethos which is
also Experience, for it was Jesus' own experience ; and so, by
* Spirit,' He idiomizes Being. It is also Life, for it was His own
Life, and therefore " the kingdom of heaven." It is a conscious-
ness which ascends to heaven without leaving the earth, and
finds in Man every elemental material out of which man has
hitherto created his ' God.' This consciousness of Jesus, there-
fore, is blank of all Otherness or Relativity, and is solely of
Whole-Being, a consciousness which has taken up into itself
every concept of limitation and sublated it in itself.
387. All Process is, consequently, realising this conscious-
ness, for in 'coming to himself/ all process ends (i) for man,
and (2) for his consciousness of the Cosmos, in a common judgment
of space-being. It is a consciousness which affirms Being and
Beatitude in identical realisation.
388. Process ends, we say, (i) For man. For the ethos of
Jesus is summed up in His great call, "Repent." It is the
primal word of His ministry to the world. The command
" Love one another as I have loved you," necessarily follows it,
and is dependent upon it, for all gifts to men are subordinate
to the gift of themselves. And repentance, or coming to one's self,
is the process of the true realisation of what-we-are.
And in this we note the higher meaning which Jesus put
into John Baptist's word. In its highest meaning Jesus does
not connote or connect His call to repent with sin. He
identifies it with the * kingdom of heaven ' and with the Gospel
(Mark, i. 15). The kingdom of heaven is at hand; is near; is
within men. ' Repent' Realise what-you-are. The disciples,
as they go forth, calling to repentance, are not to denounce sin,
or punishment for sin, upon men. They are more than prophets :
they carry gifts. As they enter a house they are to say " Peace
496 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
be to this house." The disciples are to go forth in their
' poorness,' clothed even visibly with the ' nothingness ' which
embodied the principle of " the Kingdom/'
Neither was it to tell men of Jesus that they were sent. He
gives them no such commandment. No person need have
known from either themselves or their message that such a
man as Jesus of Nazareth existed. His message to Mankind
was wider far and deeper than all that was conceptualised in
the "personality" of Jesus of Nazareth. He ever regarded such
' personality ' as mediatory of still higher conceptions of Being :
of Father-Being and God-Being. His message transcended all
personality, His own included. His call to men was far more
profound. It was to a realisation of What-they-were. The
Great Father-Being had given to all men this ' kingdom.' It
was His good pleasure to do so. But until men emptied them-
selves, and were not only in their consciousness, ' poor ' in body,
mind, or estate, but ' poor in spirit' the fulness of the beatitude
of the 'kingdom ' could not be realised through their own life
and experience. This also is the meaning underlying His call
to de-create the man to become a little child, if man would enter the
' kingdom of heaven.' And it is the same teaching which is so
forcibly revealed in the repentance of the prodigal son. He
simply " came to himself." And he was conscious that he -w as
' nothing.' It is the true ' God '-consciousness. No * God ' is
possible to a man except as realised on this basis. For in
finding himself, he realises * I Am,' and knows Absolute Value.
And in this realisation of what-we-are, it is evident that
Jesus also teaches the grand principle of Sacrifice. In the
realisation of Himself as ' poor in spirit" ' nothing,' space-being,
man has to sacrifice all conceptuality or all he knows. It is an
experience in which he consents to part with everything that
he has counted anything. He is no longer a ' man ' but a
' child,' and again he is no longer a ' son ' but a servant ; but he
becomes less than servant in becoming ' poor in spirit! He is
known to himself as 'nothing.' But then he has "come to
himself," and through realising this, all else comes to him.
Process then ceases and is sublated. The space-consciousness
commands all.
389. (2) For the Cosmos, Jesus proves the same truth of
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 497
cessation of all process in His teaching of The Grain of Wheat.
His typical statement is, perhaps, " Except a grain of wheat
fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone, but if it
die, it beareth much fruit" (John, xii. 24).
Being is here, and the motions of Being, life and death.
The Master so rings round the sphere of conceptualisation in
man. Science, Philosophy, and Religion have always found
their outer edges of Being bounded by these concepts. And
He proceeds to transcend these concepts. The being of the
grain of wheat holds in itself the possibilities of life and death.
Being, and process of Being are, so far, concepts of knowledge.
The Cosmos and its processes of change are identically
realised in a common consciousness of Being with the grain of
wheat. Indeed, the grain of wheat may be taken as the
Cosmos epitomized. Were Life not in the grain of wheat, in
this representative aspect, we should not be able to realise Life
to be in the Cosmos, for man might suppose Life to be some-
thing which the Cosmos had not given himself, and which
vanished from the Cosmos when he * died.' But Man finds his
life dependent upon the life of the grain of wheat, and thus
realises a common consciousness of common being. But we
should never have had a consciousness of the process of
Death, but for our antecedent consciousness of Life. And, on
the other hand, there is not in our consciousness of Life
sufficient material to account for our full consciousness of
What-we-are, or for What the grain of wheat is. Jesus does
not see the wheat-grain as absolutely and finally Itself and all
it Is, in either life or death. Its being is realised as finally
independent of these processes. For its Life is negated unto
Death, if it fall into the ground. Life then enters our conscious-
ness as 'nothing,' or space-being. More correctly, Jesus shows
that the concept of Life fails to meet our deeper consciousness of
what the grain Is. The concept Life is by Him transcended,
and it follows that so also is the concept of Death.
390. But this consciousness does not cause the grain to
* cease to be,' either in Jesus' consciousness or ours. Quite
the contrary. But we realise the grain now, as pure space-
being, and this consciousness harmonises perfectly with our
consciousness of the transcendence of the Life and Death
2 I
498 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
concepts. For in our consciousness of Space, although we still
have a true consciousness of Being, we have no consciousness
of either Life or Death. Space neither lives nor dies. But it
Is. And it is to this conscious level, beyond all conceptually, that
Jesus brings the grain of wheat. From a consciousness of its
unceasing process of change through life and death, He draws
it back into the reality of Being which, for itself, the earth, the
Cosmos, and Himself, is a consciousness of common Whole-
Being, above and beyond all change. But with Life sublated
under Death, and the wheat-grain not under Death in any wise,
seeing it is when death can do no more, we cannot possibly
conceive the grain to have relativity. In order to accomplish
this concept, Jesus has to reintroduce once more the concept
of Life, Life beyond Death, in the affirmation of bearing more
fruit.
391. The same facts hold good for every process of change
in the earth or in the Cosmos as Jesus maintains for the life-
and-death process in the grain or in all that lives and dies.
Every concept or conception of process, motion, or change, is
transcended in our space-consciousness. And it is this con-
sciousness of Being, in which all process of change is sublated,
that neither Science takes account of for the Cosmic process,
nor Philosophy for conscious process of feeling, thought, and
conation, nor Theology for the processes which she denominates
moral and spiritual.
It is also manifest that Jesus in transcending all processes
for the being of the grain, at the same time transcends its
Unit-Being which we maintain so firmly in our concepts. It is
no longer One being, but enters our consciousness as Whole-
Being. And in this consciousness, Jesus follows the same course
of thought by which He transcends the unit-beings of person-
ality, the earth, and heaven, and cosmos.
We speak of all process ending, but, actually, this process is
never shown to begin or to end. It is a true space-conscious-
ness, above cognition or its conceptualties. All process of
change rises out of Space-Being and again enters the same,
entering our consciousness of motion in a concept which depends
for its existence on the space-spread capabilities of our minds,
passing out of our consciousness again when this capability of
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 499
the space-spread of our minds is no longer able to be-grip the
absolute Being save in a wide-open consciousness of space-
being ( 89).
We indeed cannot conceive the wheat-grain to die and yet
live after death until we bring-in the mediatory space-con-
sciousness as the Sub-Being through which transition is effected
from one life-state to the other. Space-Being then becomes,
for our consciousness, the true Substance desiderated by
Spinoza, but which, unlike his, is not abstract- nor Unit-Being,
but the most concrete of concretes in our consciousness of
Being, seeing it is also the consciousness of what-we-are.
392. Jesus, moreover, shows that what holds true for the
wheat-grain in its ' materiality ' holds just as true for the change
from death to new life in the ' spirituality ' of the New Birth
of the ( soul.' Nicodemus is told that he must be born * from
above,' ' anew,' ' again ' ; and only the substantiation of Being
beyond this process of negation and affirmation renders the
words ultimately rational. Our consciousness affirms this
substantiation, but it is an affirmation of space-being in
Nicodemus as in the Cosmos. And it is to this unnegatable
affirmation of Being which Jesus makes steadfast reference.
For the wheat-grain, as for the human soul, the law is the
same, " Whosoever would save his life (soul) shall lose it,
whosoever shall lose his life (soul) shall save it." And both, as
being, are above the process which they command. Proto-
plasmic life, plant-life, child-life, and spirit-life, every motion
of life is substantiated in Space-Being which our consciousness
constantly affirms as Is. The * Life ' of which we speak so
affirmatively in scientific, philosophical, and theological state-
ments, cannot indeed be itself conceived except as Space-Being.
For all of life which is conceptual to us, is only a generalisation
of its processes merely, and all the three great branches of
human thought must postulate a fiction regarding the being of
Life, when they do not accept the space-being testimony of
consciousness regarding it as true knowledge.
393. Now, it is scientific to say that no Life originates or
determines itself. But it is a far higher science that asserts
" I am the resurrection and the Life." For this is self-determined
500 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Life. And every man's consciousness of what-he-is confirms
this fact. For no man's consciousness or knowledge ever
supports the assumption that his being was caused, began,
or was originated. Man has no such consciousness ( 8).
He Is. That is the ultimate statement of his consciousness,
and no scientific fact is sustained with half the strength of
the testimony which upholds it. " I am . . . the Life," is
the truth which goes back to Space-Being for its affirmations,
and asserts its being to be independent of either process of
life or death. Neither the ' Life ' of the wheat-grain nor the
'spirit' of the human being can be affirmed factually except
as we affirm space-being. And this affirmation must always
be made on the basis of our consciousness, and not upon the
basis of judgment, or of a scientific concept. But as Science
accepts Life as a fact, as much as Theology accepts * Soul '
or 'spirit' as real, it is clear that each must do so on a basis
of Being for which our Space-consciousness is alone the ultimate
substantiary.
"But if it die, it beareth much fruit." "Ye must be born
again." " He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal." These statements affirm the same Process.
' Death ' is for the grain of wheat, a deprivation of every
category by which we can conceptualise it to be anything.
It is only space-being to our consciousness. " Born anew,"
implies the same death preceding life, and so also is " Losing
life." The space-consciousness is absolutely essential to this
truth of Being.
394. The Ethos of Jesus is thus founded upon the perduring
facts of consciousness. And it is evident that if we choose to
ignore this consciousness of Space-Being, as affirmed for both
Cosmos- and Human-Being, we likewise deprive ourselves of
the only means of rationalising both the cosmic process of the
wheat-grain's passage from death to life, and the passage of the
' soul ' from life-lost to life-eternal. We do more. For we also
deprive ourselves of the sole basis of rationalising the process
of the wheat-grain, as the One, to the Many it becomes in its
fruit-bearing, and that of the soul's ascending process from
Evil to Good in being ' born again.' We also deprive ourselves
of the basis upon which these two processes can be rationalised
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 501
as fundamentally the same process, that is, Whole-Being
Process.
395. Finally, without the space-consciousness we have not
the slightest guarantee that the Life that goes down to death,
be it cosmic-life or human-life, is the identical life that again
appears beyond death, bearing its life-fruit. But for the
consciousness in Jesus that Space-Being is, for all Life, the
guarantee of Absolute Reality, no such statement concerning
the wheat-grain could have been possible. There could have
been no nexus for the two cognitions of grain-being, before
and after death, in either His or our consciousness or Thought.
396. The cosmic process is thus as much self-negation as it
is self-assertion. Laying down life to take it again is constantly
seen in the self-negations of the parent-source ; tree, plant, or
man ; for before the seed can assert itself to be, it must be
negated by parent-being from itself; process of life and death
following perpetually. We are accustomed to regard death as
only final incapacity to lay down life; but this stage of laying
down life is simply one where Being enters Space-Being,
beyond such process of life and death. Heaven and earth
then ' pass away ' for us.
397. We can now see more clearly, we think, why so
profound a consciousness as the 'Immortality of the Sour
has persisted in the convictions of mankind. It is the natural
conviction of any being, seeing it is confirmed by our deepest
consciousness of Being. No form of death has ever been able
to uproot this conviction in man, and seeing that all nature
' without ' and all nature ' within ' confirms it, it is not likely to
be uprooted. Nothing * dies ' absolutely, or can so die. This
is the truth of the wheat-grain. The God of the grain of wheat
is not the God of the dead but of the living. Jesus reveals the
fact that, when He Himself is called upon to take the place of
the wheat-grain, and fall into the ground and die, the Father-
God delights in His death. "Therefore doth my Father love
me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again."
He upbraids His disciples for their grief at His "going away."
" If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I go to the Father,"
502 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
398. The negation of life by death is simply the negation
unto that Poorness of Spirit which is absolute Beatitude. All
blessing is wrapt up in its accomplishment. The Cosmos,
the Father-Being, the Source of all Life, as we know it
conceptually, so laid down Life. Otherwise, no Life had been
so known. And again, the process of laying down life by
all, leads back to the Source of all life. All Life returns to
The Father-Source, or the Cosmos-Source. But behind and
beyond such Father-, or Cosmic-Source, as we conceive it, there
is the Space-Being in which all such Process of living and dying
ceases. Relativity itself is annulled absolutely in an affirmation
of Whole-Being wherein there is no consciousness of either
life or death. Absolute Beatitude and Absolute Being become
Whole-Experience.
399. We can now, with greater freedom perhaps, show how
far the New Commandment falls below this Ethos. // has only to
do with the sphere of acknowledged Relativity of Being. But Man
must first come to himself before he can come to any one. To
be ' nothing ' is the antecedent step to loving the Other. And
this is always where Jesus begins with Himself. " I can do
nothing of myself." " Thy will be done." ' Deny thyself.' He
that would be greatest, let him become the least. The Space-
Being hath so given up Being to the humblest germ in the vast
Cosmos. Love moves with Life, and Life laid down. But
Space-Being commands all. There is relative beatitude in
"loving one another" as Jesus loved, but absolute beatitude
rests on a higher basis than our consciousness of either Love
or Life.
400. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, is far inferior to
the New Commandment in the scale of absolute ethics. It is
undoubtedly great and valuable, as all that guides life is, but
it was no more to Jesus than "the Law and the Prophets"
(Matt. vii. 12). He did not place the Hebraic Ethos higher
than that of China, although He stated it in affirmative form.
(See Confucius* Analects, v. xi., Legge's Trans.) It only
summed up what was ethically best in the conceptualisation
of the ancient Hebrew consciousness. And in this light, it
is unquestionably superior to the grosser laws, " Eye for an
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 503
eye," and "Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his
blood be shed." These laws, no doubt, mark necessary stages
of the world's ascent to His own Absolute Beatitude ; but they
do not leave the sphere of Justice behind them, the sphere of
the " Law and the Prophets," the " Way of Yahweh God," the
" Way of justice 1 and judgment." And the highest Ethos has no
consciousness of justice in it.
The Golden Rule might indeed be carried out faithfully
enough without any other than selfish considerations, and
certainly without anything like love for the Other. The love for
self is assumed to be the supreme controlling principle ; the
desire to receive benefit for Self. It is this that prompts us to
do to others what we desire others to do to us. Now, Absolute
Beatitude is based on the process of Whole-Space-Being. On
the other hand, the centrality of the New Commandment is
based only in Jesus as Son of Man, and relates only to Man.
It has nothing to do with the Cosmos. But the Golden Rule is
based in the selfish heart of each man. He is assumed to love
himself best and desire his own advantage. But as highest
advantage comes through Man to any man, he will see to it for
his own best well-being that, as he would receive, so he must
give. It is Ethos based on commerce of interests.
401. Jesus passed high above all such Ethos, and in His
Sermon on the Mount laid down in His Beatitudes the highest
summit of Perfection attainable or conceivable. But He
assured them that He had come to destroy nothing. He had
come to fill-up all that was left imperfect in the realisation of
Being, as it lay deep in every human consciousness. Nothing
of good but received His approval. But He make*s it clear
that with the advent of His own " Laws," all others pass away.
He taught the truths that made the Cosmos itself obsolescent.
Neither did He teach without highest reference. He referred
to What-they-were themselves. He taught nothing that was
not verifiable in their own consciousness of what-they-were.
And as no consciousness in us verifies higher Being, He could
boldly say, " Ye are the salt of the earth," " Ye are the light of
the world." In reality, the world, the Cosmos, held nothing
better in it than what was given in each man, attested by
his own consciousness of what-he-was. As already pointed
504 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
out, if Jesus declared Himself to be "the Light of the World,"
we can see that it was because He had the common right of
every man to say so. And He therefore says it of every man.
Where He differs from all men is in His realisation of this
consciousness in His own actual experience. But all the same
possibilities of its realisation lie in every one. " That they may
be one, even as we are one " is His prayer for this realisation.
402. In general terms then we may venture to say that
what is usually defined as Self-Denial, Self-Renunciation, and
Self-Negation, is a process which is not possible of absolute
rationalisation unless our consciousness of Space-Being is
assumed for its basis. For it is not enough that denial of
self should be imperative upon us because someone else did
so, or because the common judgment of the world inclines to
regard that line of conduct as worthiest, or because the com-
mandment of ' God ' is so formulated. The reason, as Kant
saw, must lie in man himself. The compulsion " I ought " can
have no higher source than man himself, for there is no higher
affirmation to any truth than that which is given by his own
consciousness. Kant, as a consequence, was forced to look
upon man as related to himself, and to conceive that Man, as
noumenon, gave the Law, while Man, as phenomenon, received
and obeyed it. This was his principle of the autonomy of the
will, and is the famous "Categorical Imperative." Within man
* Ought ' had its origin and seat ; within man obedience to
it was rendered. The ' Law ' man obeyed was his own law-
creation. Kant had to invent a dual relationship between a
man and the man himself. Kant's highest conception of Ethos
had only relative and not absolute affirmation.
403. Few would accept his explanation as an adequate one.
The foundations of the Ought-Power in man must transcend
relationship. For Life is seen to be merely the instrument of
service, and the 'imperative' must lie above and beyond life
and all its conscious experiences. For denial and negation of
self are most frequently in the very teeth of all the instincts of
life as we know it. How strenuous the combat can be, between
these instincts and the ' Imperative' which dictates their
negation, is fully exemplified in the scene in the Garden of
SPACE AS WHOLE-ETHOS 505
Gethsemane. Jesus was called upon, as we all are in death,
to lay down all relationship for Himself, and be Whole with
Cosmic-Being. Current of will met current of will, highest
purpose of man met the highest purpose of the Cosmos, the
' Father,' and but for the basis of Being in man which is deeper
than Life and Death, or any other * Imperative,' Jesus could not
have found the rock upon which His Being triumphed over Life
negated to ' nothingness ' through death. The Imperative that
directs all Life is the same Power which directs the Cosmos-
Being, or The 'Father-Being'; and which finally causes that
Father-Being should be likewise transcended, or that " heaven
and earth" should pass away. And it is this consciousness
which speaks in all Existence, even as it speaks in Man. It is
the Absolute or Whole-Imperative which has no shadow of
relative imperative in it. It is therefore above all change.
The Imperative in man as ' noumenon ' obeyed by the man
as ( phenomenon ' would be constantly under Change, and
Difference, and consequently no Absolute Authority could be
possible in our consciousness for it. But Kant's instincts were
nevertheless true in that he was led to see that Being must be
the identity of Ought, that the one must be the other in our
consciousness.
404. Therefore, in the Space- or Nothing-consciousness
Jesus found the true imperative of Being. And His Ethic
steadfastly trends without fail or faltering towards this Space-
consciousness. " Poor, or utterly destitute, in Spirit." Let man
become "as a little child." "Repent." "Sell all." "Follow
me." "Take up the cross." Die to live. "Be born anew."
Each and all of these precepts imply a depletion and an
exhaustion of all the qualities and relations of Personality
until Personality can only be held in our consciousness as
Space- Being, the affirmed consciousness which we always have
of What-we-are. This it is to be Truth. This is, to the full, to
be Way, Truth, and Life. It is more. It is to return to the
unrelated ' I Am.'
405. Self-Denial, Self-Renunciation, Negation of Self, is,
therefore, the consciousness of Ought-to-be in man which is
identical with his consciousness of What-he-Is. To come back
506 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to this consciousness of Self- Nothingness is to come back to
the unnegatable affirmation of What-we-are ; all, even person-
ality, surrendered and laid down as nothing of ours, absolutely.
' Not my will.' And with such a consciousness we enter also
Whole-Freedom. For knowing the Truth increasingly, the
Truth increasingly makes us free, till with " I Am " Truth we
also enter " I Am " Freedom. Was it not this fact connecting
knowledge of Self and Absolute Truth which haunted the
consciousness of the Ancients ? To have full knowledge of
Self was felt to possess also freedom to the full. And
knowledge of what-we are as space-being abolishes all relativity
for what-we-are, and Freedom then is the sole consciousness
possible. In reality, no consciousness of Freedom Absolute is
possible in any other way ( 171). For Freedom then is
affirmed to the absolute fulness of Whole-Being, seeing that
it affirms our space-being, and this also is a consciousness which
identifies conscious knowledge and conscious experience as
Whole-Experience.
CHAPTER XV
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS
406. In discussing the Ethos of Jesus as Whole, it is essential
to remember that we are not primarily concerned with the
subsidiary questions of Good and Evil, Righteousness and Sin.
We are dealing with His consciousness of Being in which these
relative conceptions are sublated, and transcended. For
ostensibly these concepts are based on judgments which
themselves rise out of the relation of man to man, of man to
law, and of man to * God.' They are limited, conceptual judg-
ments which are merely founded in the unwarranted assumption
that man-self is isolated-self; that each personality is existenti-
ally distinct from all other being. The absolute Ethos of
Jesus, though it takes up all relative ethics into itself, primarily
transcends all relativity in the consciousness which realises
itself as space-being, whole with all that Is. Primarily, it is
solely the ' I Am ' judgment ; unrelated ; because whole with
space-being.
Now, Repentance, or the return through self-negation of all
that, conceptually, we have assumed and affirmed ourselves to
be, to that fundamental consciousness of What we really are, is
that process of * dying/ or * laying down life/ which ultimately
identifies our consciousness of Absolute Beatitude with our
consciousness of What-we-are. We hold all we are to be given
up ; negating ourselves unto Space-being. And this final
consciousness of new birth, new life, is identified as ' the
kingdom of heaven.' We cannot then think differently of
Being and Beatitude ( 388).
407. 'Falling into the ground and dying' shows the same
process of returning to the Space-Being consciousness for the
507
508 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
wheat-grain. The wheat-grain, like the heavens and the earth,
and all objectivity absolutely, passes away, but only that it may
bear * much fruit.' In man, in the wheat-grain, and in the
Cosmos, there is discernible the same consent to give up all in
order that Whole-Will, or Being-Will, may be done. All pass
out of relativity into whole-space-being, and all find that
instead of the ' process ' being one leading to disaster it is the
only process that can possibly lead to a realisation of Whole-
Beatitude, or Whole-Bliss, in the simultaneous realisation of
What-All-Is. True realisation of Being is not, consequently,
to be found in cosmic process, or in the ' self-assertion ' of all
that Appears; or in the forms of Body, Substance, and
Matter ; but in the final sublation of that process which
ascends above its conceptual self into such self-negation, and
realises its Reality in realising itself as Space-Being. But, on
the other hand, Jesus does not convey to us that this process
gives merely a Nirvana-consciousness of Being. It is from the
space-being that He discerns all Reappearing again, beyond
the ' dying ' and the self-negation ; new-born, and bearing
' much fruit ' ; a vision which He interprets in such terms as
* entering into life,' * kingdom of heaven,' or ' kingdom of God.'
Nothing dies, or ' passes away ' absolutely. The ' Life ' and
' Death ' of our relative concepts are transcended, and space-
being is alone affirmed, and unnegatably affirmed as also
Beatitude which is Whole, without any possible consciousness
of difference in it. And it is in His teaching alone that we
find all such self-assertion and self-negation rationalised in
harmony with our profoundest consciousness of Being. The
heavens and the earth that 'pass away,' are themselves not
conceivable as annulled everlastingly, as in a Nirvana-Being,
but moving, similar to the new-born ' soul ' and the wheat-grain,
through Space-Being to new re-appearing Existence; a repeti-
tive process, whose vista recedes into the limitless infinity of
Space-Being itself. That which doth not appear Appears, and
is real in all it Appears, because it is Space-Being ; and by its
own consent, or Will, again becomes what appeareth not, yet
again re-appearing as new heaven and new earth, conceivable
as endlessly ' blessed.' And then Space ; Is ; Being ; What-we-
are; Good; Bliss; Kingdom of heaven ; become synonymous
terms.
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 509
408. But man, as we have often to say, has never
realised Space to be Being. He has judged only That-which-
appears to be. Hence all that passed into the space-
consciousness, and ' died,' or was negated to ' nothing,' he
judged to be lost ; to be something fateful and awful ; some-
thing evil to be mourned. To Appear ; to have Form,
Substance, Matter ; to assert one's self cosmically ; this> man
judged to be Good. To die; to suffer; to be nothing; to
be no longer relative to the All of heaven and earth,
this i was Evil. And it is this imperfect judgment, universally
held, which Jesus sought, and yet seeks, to transcend. It was
this purpose that lay in His consciousness when He shewed
the unholy and unclean publicans and harlots going into this
' kingdom of heaven ' before those who had thrust them out.
The publicans and harlots had de-created every conceptual
judgment of their own worth to space-being level, to poverty
of spirit, and consequently were to themselves ' nothing.' It was
the same decreation of self that was the basis of His approval of
him who cried ' God be merciful to me a sinner.' So also with the
Woman in Simon the Pharisee's house (Luke, vii. 36-50).
Her decreation of the concept-judgment of herself knew no
limits. She was ' nothing.' It is the same consciousness which
underlies His many exhortations to seek out the lowest places
at feasts, to do alms secretly, etc. Let all judge themselves
as ' nothing,' and all they do as * nothing.' Then reality will
be realised. " For every one that exalteth himself shall be
humbled ; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."
To exalt, to objectify, to qualify the Self: to intensify and
differentiate the Ego from all other Egos : to determine the
isolated personality by clear-cut limitations of particularity
all this was the false, the unreal, the appearing, and the way
of error and humiliation. But to decreate every judgment
of differentiation of the ' Self to the absolute Space-
consciousness : to be * utterly destitute in Spirit this was
to realise the True, the Real, and to walk the upward way
of Absolute Bliss.
So likewise it was with all His references to Himself.
Every negation that brought the 'self partially or completely
to the space-being consciousness of ' self,' brought also a
corresponding 'blessedness.' He symbolises this teaching to
510 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the full in His institution of the Supper. He there reveals
Himself as true Space-Being, with all personality given up to
Mankind which appeared as Form, Matter, Will, Self. The
Unseen Life is given away, negated, laid 'down, in the giving
of the wine representing His Blood: and His Body, the
Appearing-Thing of Form and Substance, is given away and
negated in the breaking of the Bread. He leaves no possible
concept by which He can be conceived or qualified as Jesus
of Nazareth after that symbolic decreation of His personality.
He is only, in our consciousness, Space-Being. But then He
is all the more Real. And He is also All-Blessed in this
Space-Being. For He realises absolute Good. He realises
Absolute Love; and the world yet testifies that from that
space-being-consciousness He has risen bearing * much fruit.'
409. It is, moreover, the space-consciousness as underlying
and directive of all His actions that explains His deep aversion
to having Himself proclaimed as the cause of His miracles.
For example, we read that the eyes of the blind " were opened "
(Matt. ix. 27-31). And Jesus strictly charged them, saying,
" See that no man know it." Now this is not an ordinary modest
deprecation of having done anything worth mentioning. The
expression would be better phrased, " He threatened them," or
as M'Lellan has it, " He vehemently threatened them." The
R.V. gives " sternly " as an alternative reading. It was His
general habit in such circumstances. And being so, it is
wholly inexplicable if He had not the profoundest reasons
behind it. For it runs counter to some of the worthiest traits
of human nature. Fame has been considered a blessing when
it set a loftier ideal of life and character before the world.
But Jesus sternly forbids His deeds to be repeated under His
name. His conduct seems strange, but it is really based in
the deepest truth. In the convictions of Jesus, having the
consciousness of Being from which all His actions sprang, it
would have been an untruth to say, or to have it said, " Jesus
of Nazareth opened mine eyes." Jesus is, to Himself, simply
'nothing' where Cause is attributed. It is only relatively true
that He opened the eyes of the blind. He will have it, rather,
that men take the Cause home to the Power that does not
Appear, but Is. To the demoniac He commands, " Return
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 511
to thy house, and declare how great things God hath done for
thee." The man, however, disobeys, and publishes over the
city " how great things Jesus had done for him " (Luke, viii. 39).
Cause was differently based in the consciousness of each. We
find His expressly stated prohibition given in the cases of the
Leper (Mark, viii. 4), the raising of Jairus's daughter (Mark, v. 43),
and at the Transfiguration (Mark, ix. 9) ; and the like self-
effacement is implied and practised on other occasions. For
example, when Peter confesses his belief that Jesus is " the Son
of the living God" (Matt. xvi. 16), that is, Son of The Father,
Jesus tacitly repudiates having had anything to do with the
formation of this conviction in Peter. He puts aside every
relative cause of such Faith, as pointing to Himself, and asserts
that ' flesh and blood ' had not revealed such truth to Peter.
Only ' My Father.' The same self-denial is at the foundation
of His repudiation of begetting faith in men as in healing them.
He Himself is * Nothing.' Jesus of Nazareth ; all that Appears ;
is absolutely not the Cause of His works or His words. And
until we discern that Objectivity cannot be predicated of such
a Power as He wields, or which any one wields for that matter,
we shall remain blind to the Space-Being in Whom He sublates
Himself. And here again we have the same principle which
is fundamental in His Ethos, for to negate Himself is that
paramount Ethos, and is not only Absolute Ethos but
Absolute Truth, or Reality.
410. This testimony of the Synoptists is in perfect accord
with the Fourth Gospel. " The Father abiding in me doeth
His works " (xiv. 10). " The Son can do nothing of himself, but
what he seeth the Father doing" (v. 19). He does not claim
that His healing the sick, the diseased, the palsied, the maimed,
etc., are His own works. They are the Father's works. The
flesh, the form, is not truth cf Being. " The flesh profiteth
nothing, the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and
are life." Cause, in the consciousness of Jesus, cannot be attributed
to anything which appears. And so He eagerly seeks to remove
every category from the human mind by which His actions can
be assigned to Himself as Jesus of Nazareth. But this is
simply to state His Space-consciousness of Being. He negates
all that is 'Jesus' to affirm Himself That-which-does-not- Appear.
512 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
He assigns Cause to Space-Being, * God/ for the consciousness
of the one term is identical with the consciousness of the other.
And it is not unworthy of notice that when His works concern
the Body, the health, the healing of limbs, palsied or otherwise,
He assigns the Cause to the Father, because this term connotes
Life, and the Cosmos, or What-Appears ; but when He casts
out 'demons,' He traces the Cause to the Spirit of God, or
simply, 'God.' "If I by the spirit of God cast out demons."
Body ; Appearance ; the Jesus-Man, is sublated in The Father,
or Cosmic-Being; and the Life-Being, the Father, is in turn
sublated in the Spirit-Being, ' God.' But, in every case, to state
Cause, we must state Space-Being, and having realised Space-
Being as true and only Cause, absolutely, we also realise absolute
Beatitude ; Whole-Good ; in which there is no consciousness
of relative evil.
411. Good and Evil, which we now consider in their
relativity, came up constantly before Jesus. Such concepts
were fundamental in the working life of His generation, even
as they are yet among men. And we must try to show that
Jesus in the interest of His consciousness of Reality, transcends
all such relativities. In doing so, however, it will be necessary
to restate points which have already been set forth, as without
them the discussion would lose its force, and we crave patience
in this respect. We do not profess to lead the reader in the
most perfect manner, but only as we are able, trusting to a large
discount of failings. Perhaps the reader should also remember
that if it is at all times difficult to convince others even when
there is an objective thought, idea, impression, judgment, or
conceptive conclusion as the goal of reasoning, it is consider-
ably more difficult to convince one when the objectless, idea-less,
inconceptive space-consciousness swallows up Thought itself,
logical forms and all. For every time that the reader's thought
is led up to this consciousness, it is shrunk from as ' nothing]
and of no value whatever. The expectation is always to close
finally upon a conception ; a thought ; whereas our every con-
clusion must be a consciousness which is devoid of any save
limitless and undefined conception. Sometimes the reader may
be tempted to say "Tell us what space is, and settle the
matter," forgetful that no one in the world knows what any-
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 513
thing is but only what it seems, or appears, to be. But we
cannot say of Space, any more than of What-we-are, that it
seems to be. Neither Space nor What-we-are appears (using
dual terms for convenience), and yet, alone of all things, both
aver, * I Am.' And thus the reader can only know space as he
knows himself, and himself as he knows space, through that
consciousness in him which for both maintains their indivisible
identity or Wholeness.
412. The question of GOOD and EVIL, resting as it does
upon a judgment, resolves itself into a question of the validity of
such a judgment. Is this judgment merely relative in its truth,
or is it unnegatably and absolutely true? Have we the same
affirmative consciousness of the truth of Good and Evil as we
have for the truth of ourselves? Or is it merely relative to
such a self-consciousness, and subsumed under it ? Is what is
judged to be Good, unchangeably Good, and what is judged to
be Evil, unchangeably Evil? If such judgments have the
identical validity of ourselves, they must have this unchange-
able validity.
Self-judgment is the secret of all judgment. Judgment is
the primal motion of Thought. For example, if we say, " I am,"
we judge. But what content of consciousness does this imply?
It implies an inherent power in man to predicate Being of
himself. And, so far, it is clear that he is able to make an
Object of himself, to think himself, to judge that he Is, even
though this Object of his conception may be the merest point-
and-spread Object to his thought ; a mere space-defined
determination of his thought ; with no other content of Being
in it than this point-and-spread space (see 89).
Now this very fact proves his space-Being. For an object
could never be so objectified unless it were capable of being
beheld in, and conditioned by, space. Man is therefore able to
judge regarding his universe, his earth, his body, his thoughts,
his c self,' this space-defined determination of his consciousness,
and even consciousness itself, as Motion of What-he-Is, just
because he is whole-space-being, and can have no final judg-
ment upon either them or himself, except that each Is: the
judgment which space most truly gives. But as this whole-
space-being, he cannot objectify What-he-is, for he is then not
2 K
514 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
relative to anything, being judged as space is judged, without
any predicate save Is. And whenever he attains to this con-
sciousness of space-being, he is conscious also that he cannot
possibly judge of either Good or Evil, Right or Wrong, or of
any relativity, quality, or relation. But all below this conscious-
ness can be so judged.
413. (i.) Therefore, as has been pointed out above, the con-
sciousness " I am," implies a judgment, which may have two
contents ( 70). On the one hand, " I am " is commonly filled
with the content of judgment, " I am man" " I am this particular-
person and no other." In this consciousness we have the " I "
as an object. This is the " original synthetical unity of
apperception," the w//-being, the " I think "-Thing of Kant ;
the "Ego" of Fichte ; the "Self" of modern philosophy, etc.
And even when this " I " is determined as Ego, Notion,
Thought, Soul, Spirit, and such like, the " I " is still no more in
content than an Object-Subject. We are never able to say of
this Ego, Notion, Thought, Soul, Spirit, " Thou art I," " I am
no more and no other than thou." Therefore, until we have
such a consciousness of identity with the content of what we
judge ourselves to be, as * I,' we never can have the entire
absence of Objectivity in the consciousness of this " I." It will
always be in some degree objective, thought-framed ; thought-
filled ; space-defined ; a ' thing ' with which we who think it,
never can have a consciousness of absolute identity.
(ii.) It is different with the highest content of the " I "-judg-
ment. As soon as we realise that all these * self '-objects are
capable of being judged, just because they are conceptual, and
as soon as we give What -judges them, as objects, the content of
whole-space-being, indivisible from our consciousness of Space,
then all possible objectivity becomes impossible for our con-
sciousness of What-we-are, and we have only the consciousness
of Whole-Being, impossible of parts, or units; in which both
'subject' and ' object,' and all their 'qualities,' are subsumed.
The consciousness of the " I," as having only a concrete
content of space, gives in that content but the absolute
judgment, Is, I, and it gives no other. It therefore sublates or
removes all other judgments, de-creates them, and transcends
the consciousness of Relativity. It, however, gives the basis for
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 515
all other judgments ; that is, it gives foing to either subject or
object ; for Is must be postulated both for the one and for the
other, as well as for the assumed 'difference' which exists
between them. It is moreover, the only judgment which cannot
be reversed, and is the sole judgment which is unnegatably
affirmative, self-predicative, and indivisible from our conscious-
ness of the affirmation of Reality, or Being.
414. Therefore we cannot say of the judgment of Sin,
Righteousness, Good, Evil, or of any personal relativity, that it
is absolutely as valid in Truth as we are conscious of being
ourselves, for all such judgments fall below the I-judgment.
And we see that before a judgment of Sin, Righteousness, Good,
Evil, and such like, can be assumed to be absolutely valid in
truth, it must first be assumed that the Object so judged
possesses absolute validity of existence. It must be as self-
affirmative as is the Space-Being-" I."
Now this is the fallacy that creeps into all such judgments
of Good and Evil. These qualities are assumed to spring from
judgment which has an absolutely self-affirmative basis in Being,
and therefore to be irreducible. The characterisation of the
Object is also affirmed to be absolutely Real. This system of
judgment may, of course, be convenient for many appreciable
purposes in ordinary life. And no doubt in a general way, a
man assumes, or judges that the object he sees and thinks it
may be a house, tree, father, friend, sun, moon, earth, sky is
absolute in its complete detachment of being from himself. He
judges fearlessly that there are at least two beings in existence,
Himself and Other. He is convinced that the 'differences'
between these Two are absolute. The one, he says, can never
be the other, or in the other. This judgment again he carries
into every consciousness and form of thought which he possesses.
It does not matter that, in absolute Reality, as testified by his
deepest consciousness, no such absolute reality exists for such
* differences,' and that the Two are mere Appearances, as of
wave-forms in an identical sea, as of hydrogen and oxygen in
an identical water-drop, or as of vibrations in identical Ether.
Such Truth of being is not of course made the basis of the
judgments of common life. On the contrary, it is assumed
rather that the Relative is itself absolute in its Relativity.
516 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Hence objective relationship between ' self and ' other ' is judged
to be absolutely and eternally permanent. This relationship is,
in turn, judged by the * self to have certain unalterable qualities.
It is judged, for instance, as self-exclusive of the Other. This
quality, again, being judged as inherent in the Self, the Self can
say, as with all the universe to support its truth, " I am myself.'
" I am no other than myself." " I am othered for and by myself."
And this is judged to be absolutely true ! This consciousness
thence passes into one of assumed self-possession. One can
say, " I am all my own." " I possess myself," and when this
judgment is reached, all 'right' is then assumed over self, and
as being invested in and for Self. Even ' God ' becomes then a
mere co-inhabitant of the universe, and is not conceived as
Whole-Being.
415. This Relativity of Being becomes, accordingly, the
assumed permanent basis for all conceptions or judgments of
being. For as soon as the self extends over itself the absolute
right to itself, it Claims itself absolutely. Conversely, the
Other is assumed to have the same possession and the same
claim. The conception of What-is-Due to Self, and due to the
Other, then springs up out of this consciousness, and the
conception, or judgment, of Justice as between Two, finds a
realm of being and a sphere of jurisdiction. The exact What-
is-due to the self and the Other, Man or God, comes then in
time to take definition, and what is so defined is designed as
Law. When this ' Law ' is conceived to be the basis of relation-
ship between Man and God, this Law without fail asserts
itself as having been ' broken ' by Man. For the Universe is
very awful in its grandeur and might, and man invariably
deems himself by comparison as a ' Moth ' beside it, and he is
not able to comprehend how he can possibly be Whole-Being
with this Being. Moreover, when pain and death, and the
struggle for retention of the 'Self extorts his utmost powers,
he instinctively feels that he must have done something wrong,
or failed to meet his just fulfilment of the Law, and then under
a deep sense of his weakness before such awful Might he seeks
every means of propitiating the Other, who must be offended
with him. He realises himself, that is, as a ' Sinner/ and the
Almighty Other as an " Angry God." The Relativity inevitably
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 517
ends for both in anguish and " eternal woe." Related-Being is
judged to be "everlasting" for Life, and "everlasting" for
death, and so eternally permanent (Matt. xxv. 46).
416. Now, the sum of this series of judgments, is based in
totality upon the primal judgment that the Object, house, tree,
father, friend, self, etc., is absolute in its Relativity. On the
contrary, it is a judgment which has no other origin than the
human judgment, " I am Man" which is never the final I-
judgment, and, consequently, has no absolute validity in
permanent Being. Its variability through all ages is also
indicative of its failure to satisfy the deepest consciousness of
men. Religion on the one hand, and Philosophy on the other,
have always at bottom distrusted such a solution of Being, and
hence the incessant endeavours by the former to sublate all
moral 'differences' of Good and Evil, and by the latter to
extinguish the duality of ' subject ' and ' object.' Both have
failed. Jesus alone has succeeded in that He has based His
Ultimate Judgment of Himself, ' God ' and Man, on that
Space -Whole -Being which affirms itself in each as Reality
Absolute.
From what has been said above regarding the Absolute
Beatitude and all that flows from it downwards through the
relative ethical standards of the ' New Commandment,' the
' Golden Rule,' and others less superior, it will be apparent
that the Absolute Perfection of which Jesus is conscious is not
defined by His statement, "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as
your heavenly Father is perfect " (Matt. v. 48). For Being, in
His consciousness as Whole, transcends Sex-relationship, or
indeed any relationship which is based on connotations of Life
and Death. Therefore all connotations of perfection of an
absolute status must also transcend these relational limitations.
Relative excellence, that is, can only be predicated of relative
beings. It is impossible that perfection should be conceived as
transcending the subject of which it is predicated. What Is
must necessarily define what Ought to be. Is must be the
Ought. Consequently, if we hold unyieldingly to the concep-
tion of * God ' as bounded absolutely by the Sex-terms, Father
and Son, we must necessarily hold also the relative status of
perfection which such terms can only afford. But the very fact
518 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
that Jesus defines perfection by the Father term, shows at once
that the perfection so denoted is not absolute but relative, for
in the nature of things an Absolute or Whole Perfection cannot
be defined in any way. It can only be indicated as Absolute
or Whole Perfection which sublates both ' perfection ' and
'imperfection' in itself. Now the consciousness of Is, 'I,'
yields also a consciousness of Absolute Beatitude, in which
such relativities as Good and Evil lose their relativity
absolutely.
417. The method of Jesus in resolving all relative qualities
of Being into the Ultimate Excellence which we have called
Whole-Beatitude, or Absolute Beatitude, is the same as that
by which He sublates all relative Being into Whole-Being, viz.,
through the alembic of the Space- or I-consciousness. He has
Himself a strong consciousness of possessing all the strength
and all the weakness of a man, He has the same passions,
temptations, hungers, thirsts, and common lacks of a man, yet
He is conscious of possessing more than all that men judge
they possess. He defines Himself by the relativities of meat
and drink, by knowledge and ignorance, by the higher qualities
of Sonship, and again by the still higher categories of Father-
hood. Yet He is conscious of Being which transcends these
Relativities and Qualities, and which yet has no category of
Being save its own category, Is : I. Similarly, He is so
conscious of being without Sin that He defies men to convict
Him of it, assumes Himself to have possessed the glory of the
Father-God before the world began, and yet boldly declares
that He is not Good, any more than any other man, and that
there is none Good save One, God (Mark, x. 18). And in such
a maelstrom of a Man, whose Being and Quality of Being
appear to have no intelligible foundation or finish, centre or
circumference, and which deprive the human mind of every
difference, opposition, contradictory, relation and quality, by
which either His Being or the Characteristics of that Being
can be thought, we are compelled to throw away every method
of explaining either the one or the other with which both
Theology and Philosophy have accustomed us, and simply
take Himself and that consciousness which He embodies in
His doctrine, as our sole Way of Light.
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 519
418. Before doing so, however, it may be convenient first to
place before ourselves a general outline of what we usually
understand by the ethical concepts Good and Evil, Righteous-
ness and Sin.
The connotations of these pairs of Relativities are far from
being ethically identical. An apple is good, for example, but
it is not righteous; it may be rotten but not sinful. And, in
general, the terms Good and Evil have a Cosmical reference,
whereas Righteousness and Sin refer to the Individual. The
former trace themselves ultimately to * Natural ' Law, and the
latter to c Moral ' Law. Good seems to be often independent
of personality, growing out of our place on the earth, the
advantages of climate, personal endowment, state of bodily
constitution, family inheritances of different kinds, social
surroundings, friends, government, and such like. Righteous-
ness and Sin, on the other hand, point straight to the Individual
man. They touch the inmost core of his well-being, and affect
those interests which nothing in the world can finally influence.
Good and Evil relate us to what appears to be impersonally
good and impersonally evil, whereas Righteousness and Sin
bring us into Personal relations with One like unto ourselves.
And in the broadest view, Good and Evil are traceable to our
judgments of Value, or to what is conceived Worthful, and
Righteousness and Sin to our judgments of what is Lawful.
Now the thinking world has been content to allow these
pairs of Relativities to remain absolutely apart from each other,
although spasmodic efforts have now and then been made to
find ' the unity beyond their difference.' The failure to find
the Good which we find everywhere in Nature, in the same
well of excellence where we find the righteousness of Man, has
of course been due to the fixed conviction that Nature is
Mechanical, Dead, and Impersonal; and the same fact explains
the failure to connect Evil with Sin existentially. Personal
Being is sundered from Impersonal Being, it has been said,
and, consequently, Man is different from the Cosmos, and his
Qualities are also different.
419. It is to Jesus that we owe the sublation of both in one
category of Being and in one category of Quality of Being.
He everywhere found Righteousness in the best men surpassed
520 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
by the Good of the Cosmos. Sun and Rain, which are essential
to all living things upon the earth, He perceived to be sent
upon ' good ' and ' evil ' alike, upon ' just ' and ' unjust.' He saw
the sparrow sustained in life, and divinely guided in its fall to
the ground, the raven fed, the lily glorified, the grass clothed,
by Cosmic Processes. But in all this vision of Good He never
saw ' Nature ' nor the ' Cosmos,' but only The Father. And
this Good Father was also ' Righteous,' and was so personal
that He heard the prayer of Jesus His Son. Yet so ignorant
had been the world of this Father that Jesus found it absolutely
true to say, " O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but
I knew thee" (John, xvii. 25). ' Nature has no love' cry men,
yet Jesus was conscious that He could not surpass in His love
for Jerusalem that love which a hen has for her chickens (Luke,
xiii. 34). Man has no instance, in the long roll of his historically
good ones, of a love for men like that of the Son of Man ; yet
the Patriot, the Brother, the Saviour, in voicing His love for
His fellow-countrymen, found the fittest parallel to His weeping
affection in the lowly love of the mother hen. " As a hen doth
gather her chickens under her wings," was the measure which
He took for His own Goodness. The Good in man, in short,
as it stood uniquely revealed in his practical life, was everywhere
surpassed by the Good in Nature. The most righteous of men
was not so ' righteous ' as the Father. And it is to this Natural
or Father-Goodness, rather than to any righteousness to be
found in man through obedience to any known Laws, that
Jesus constantly directs the eyes of the world for a Standard-
Good. The standard of perfection to be found in any known
laws, He saw to be subordinate and relative to the higher Good
which was the Order of Excellence followed by ' Nature.'
Hence, to Jesus, the Father-Good is The Good. And this
content of goodness is the one He always sets before Himself
to follow, in doing the Father's work. He never calls Himself
' righteous.' He has no desire for such limited excellence.
But He is 'the Good Shepherd.' And ''good' not 'righteous'
is His constant term for His ideal of human perfection.
420 The reason is clear. One is only ' righteous ' for one's
self, but good for others. Man obeys Moral Laws in order
to have himself secured in 'salvation.' He cannot obey for
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 521
others, and so make them righteous like himself. Such
righteousness must be confined to himself, and he can never
share his righteousness with any one. To " count for righteous-
ness " is a fiction of priests and lawyers. But to be good is to
give to others, to sacrifice one's self for others, to be like
Nature, who gives to all liberally, upbraiding not. Nature
lays down her Life in the new life that comes into the world,
and so the seed is good when it lays down life in the * more
fruit,' and also Man is more than righteous, and is Good
when he lays down his life in the ' sheep ' and in his
' friends.' To be righteous is to retain ; to be good is to
give. Hence " scarcely for a righteous man will one die, for
peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to
die" (Rom. v. 7). Goodness lies in the highest, in giving one's
self even unto space-being ; giving all to the other to the utmost
of What-we-are.
421. This Father -Son -Good is, moreover, but ultimate
objective Good. It is not Absolute Good. The Common
Excellence which Jesus finds for What-He is, for What-Nature-
Is, and for What-the-Father-Is, is His standard for Absolute
Excellence. Being as an Ultimate consciousness ; Space-
Being; Being emptied of itself in gift of itself; this is His
standard of Absolute Beatitude, Resultant Goodness. And,
per contra^ Evil and Sin, as correlatives, are resultant con-
tradictories and opposites of Ultimate Good which subsumes
all Righteousness within itself. And such Ultimate Good, so
long as it is relative to a resultant Evil, could never have been
subsumed under a common consciousness of Absolute Good,
wherein no consciousness of Evil had been possible, had not
Jesus, man's highest category of Human Good, classed Himself
as not Good, and thereby made it impossible for man to define
Him as being either Good or Evil. Jesus thereby abolished
all relativity of good or evil as qualities of His Being, and
negated them in an affirmation of I-Am-Being, in which no
relativity is predicable absolutely.
422. We have then to show that just as He subsumed all
consciousness of the so-called relativity of Being and Non-
Being in His ' I Am,' or Spirit-Space-Being, so in the same
522 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
consciousness He revealed every Quality of Being, whether
characterised as good or evil, as finally abolished, with only
Space-, or Is- or Whole-Quality remaining. This means that
in such a consciousness Good may just as well be defined as
Evil, and Evil as Good ; Perfection be styled Imperfection and
Imperfection Perfection. Relativity resting upon concepts
ceases. We have only His consciousness of Whole-Beatitude,
Whole-Goodness, remaining in which no relativity of Good or
Evil can be found or is conceivable. He Himself states it as
follows :
In Luke, xiv. 25-27, we read, " Now there went with him
great multitudes : and he turned, and said unto them,
" If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
"Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after
me, cannot be my disciple."
In stating this Ideal of Good for mankind, even though in
negative language, Jesus has at the same time negated all
other forms of Good known to men. In other words, what men
universally have held to be Good is here cast into a shadow of Evil '
which they are to hate. The ethical world seems to be inverted
and the basis of every judgment of Good rendered impossible.
Madness seems to have transpired. So it would be, if man's
conceptive basis of ethical judgments were absolutely and per-
manently true. But this is just the question, and the difference
between man's, or the world's ideal of Good and His, is the
difference between the Relative and the Whole. The difference
is profound, and marks the distinction between the Z^-Basis
of ethical judgments and the 5/^^-Basis, or our consciousness
of Father-Being and Whole-Being. To man, to us, and to all
the World, Life and all it connotes of Father, Mother, Sisters,
Brothers, Wife, and Child, is, in general, the highest basis of
all our ethical judgments. We so account it absolute andfinat.
To Jesus it was far from this high standard. It was merely a
relative basis. To negate this consciousness down to the basis
of the absolute, or whole Is-consciousness, that is, the Space-
consciousness, was, for Him, the only possible one for judgment
of Good. All other bases of Good were impossible, save as
they were relative and impermanent.
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 523
423. At this juncture, in interpreting the above verses,
every one desires to introduce some qualifying interpretation
regarding this word " Hate," in order to break its force and
harshness, and 'unnaturalness.' We are so confident that to love
life and kindred is the highest standard of ethical judgments
and hating them to be sinful. And, therefore, it is looked upon
as just a large and hyperbolic way of saying, " Deny thyself." It
is assumed that Jesus could never run counter to these deep
instincts of Life and Love which appear to all as the very
pillars of our well-being, and without which the earth would
seem perdition, and that, consequently, He is only using forcible
language to convey a much milder meaning. "Surely," it is
hinted, " it is better rendered in St Matthew's account, where
we have," " He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not
worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me " (Matt. x. 37). This certainly seems to
give a softer touch to the deliverance. But its mildness is all
taken away by the statement, two verses before this one, where
St Matthew gives the same doctrine found in St Luke, although
he puts it into different words. It is said " Think not that I
came to send peace on the earth. I came not to send peace,
but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-
in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes shall be
they of his own household."
We cannot make any mistakes here as to the meaning of
Jesus. If His purpose and action are to be judged Good, then
His basis of that judgment must be sought for deeper than
Home, Home-ties, and that Life which is common to all its
members. A man's foes are to be of his own household, and
this is just the same statement, " Hate his father," in different
terminology. Moreover, the weight of authority seems to incline
more to the side of Luke than to that of Matthew. Dr E. A.
Abbott, for example, in referring to the ' double tradition ' of
these two Gospels, Luke and Matthew, says, " Luke appears to
have the older version when he retains (Luke, xiv. 26) ' hate his
father' " (Encyc. Bib. " Gospels," 19). There seems to be little
possible doubt that Jesus did use the term, which can only be
translated "hate." It is indeed but a variant of the same
deliberate renunciation demanded by Jesus, and which is set
524 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
out in all its severity by all the Synoptists as well as by St John.
" If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his own cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever
would save his life (soul) shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose
his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (Matt. xvi. 24, 25 ;
Mark, viii. 34, 35 ; Luke, ix. 23, 26; John, xii. 25).
424. What, then, does this mean ? How does Jesus under-
stand it, and how is it possible for us to grasp it? In His con-
sciousness, its net worth appears to be that the Good which
men will obtain by following Him is so great and absolutely
Good, that all other conceivable things which the world in
its judgments holds to be Good, life itself not excepted, are
only fit to be completely abandoned and even 'hated' for
its sake. Behind His deliverance, and fundamentally, is the
great consciousness in Him of a far higher Imperative of action
than the one which they, and all the world, knew and followed,
and which becomes the basis for His negation of their loves
of Home and dearer loved ones. There is for Him an
absolute Imperative which above and behind all Life and
Life-Relativities, asserts its sway, and compels a reversal of
that judgment in man by which he conceives 'good' and
'evil.' In its presence, all home and kindred relationships,
the tenderest bonds of human heart with human heart, were
not to be counted ' good ' at all, but mere evanescent relations
to be hated if needs must; and this means that while from
the standard of popular judgment these were ' Good,' from
the standard of His judgment they were ' Evils.' If their judg-
ment had been based on an absolute and unnegatable conscious-
ness, this reversal of judgment could not have been possible, of
course, and the appeal of Jesus would have fallen dead to
the world. On the contrary, the world has proved its own
inmost consciousness to be in harmony with His, in that
it has endorsed His judgment as the higher one ; and this
judgment may be considered the highest which is known to
men at the present hour, and the one which perhaps men
are striving most to realise in practical, daily life.
425. We must remember that Jesus is facing the ideal of
His auditors, viz., " Love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy "
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 525
(Matt v. 43). Their common life was dominated by it. He
surpassed it by His injunction, " Love your enemies, and pray
for them that persecute you." They were to do this to be like
their Father in heaven. He made no difference between just
and unjust, evil and good ; for, His basis of judgment being
Life, and not Nationality, He rose above the difference of
1 neighbour ' and ' enemy,' in order to regard every one as ' sons
of their Father in heaven/ and every one as Good in that they
possessed His own Life. Their judgments of 'evil' and 'good,'
'just' and 'unjust' were not binding upon Him, and he had no
such endorsement of such judgments in His treatment of
either, and He proved thereby that nothing that man conceives,
judges, or decides to be 'good' or 'evil' need be considered an
absolutely true judgment. And in this, so far, the Father
ignored human judgment, and, in truth, did not judge at
all. Such human judgments were reduced to space-clearness in
Him, for whereas they saw Evil He saw Good. And to reduce
all such relative judgments of 'good' and 'evil,' 'just' and
' unjust,' to their space-nothingness was to become " sons of
their Father in heaven."
It is, then, but a higher application of the same space-
consciousness which He seeks for their judgments concerning
Father, Mother, Sisters, and Brothers, Wife, Children, and Life.
He naturally assumes that the people will judge Him to a more
inferior place than these in their affections. He assumes that
they will place Him second, at least, to such relationships, and
plead to first bury the father, and to take farewell of those at
home before following Him (Luke, ix. 57-62). This must not
be. Such relations and relatives must actually have no
existence between them and Himself. They are really to
hate them out of existence. They are to be reduced to zero,
to space-clearness, and instead of being judged as 'good,' to
be judged as ' evils/
426. This is a long way towards the abolition of relationship
in attaining the Absolute Good. Still it is only a further step,
and not complete negation. A man may negate every one of
these relationships and yet place his own life before the
Master's demand. He might place his life as the dividing
' difference ' between himself and Jesus. Jesus asks, therefore,
526 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
that man shall negate even this standard of * good ' for himself,
and regard even Life as evil by comparison. He asks man
voluntarily to take up his cross daily and follow Him. Now
this is the root of the matter. For it implies the judgment by
Jesus, "Life is not the Absolute Good." They are to come
under a process of Death. But this, again, is to say that Death
itself is a ' Good.' It is to directly negate the judgment of the
world, which has judged Death as ' evil.' Jesus tears up the
standard of this decision, and cleans away that relationship
between Life and Death which has been held through all time
by the judgment of Man. He Himself rises above this
relationship, and affirms absolutely that it is Good to 'lay
down ' life. So vastly in harmony is the " Father in heaven "
with this negation of such relativity, that He loves Jesus
for so negating His life. And of course it is upon the basis
of this judgment that He names Himself Good. " I am the
Good Shepherd, the good shepherd giveth, or layeth down his
life for the sheep." The world said it was wrong to sacrifice
such life for such lives. It was believed that the one life was
more valuable than the other. Relationship in this matter was
not to be overturned. It was absolute ! Jesus rather sees
the true value to lie in the laying down of life, however valuable,
for the well-being of others, and in not retaining it for one's
self. Such life is given to be given as the Father has given.
And giving the Life to all, He also gave the ' least ' His own
highest gift-value.
427. For Jesus disclaims originating this conception of
Good. In all the relativities of Life and Death, He professes
to follow the Father. It is the Cosmic Process which He finds
as the Example to Himself in laying down His life, and in
doing so He has no sense of losing Life. He is rather taking
Life again. Death is therefore a Good. For all Nature is seen
to give up all of itself, life and all, to man, to animal, to plant, to
the world ; for human good, for animal good, for plant good, for
universal good ; and this higher process must be the true course
of well-being for man, and for all, to follow. And, clearly,
except the grain of wheat fell into the ground and died, it
could not bring forth fruit. Its death is the preceding ' good '
to the fruit-good. Therefore if we have received all freely laid
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 527
down, we must give all freely. Life has been laid down in us
in order that we should Be. But Life itself is not the absolute
Good. It is What or Who lays it down. And being a Way of
Life, the Imperative that asks all to follow must be a Father.
How else could we have such Life-Being ? Death, therefore, or
1 laying down life/ is not merely expiring. It is where relative
World-Life rises into Cosmic-Life, abolishing the relativity
that divides them, and Man-life is seen to be One with Father-
Life, or the Life-Source which is universal. Jesus thus asks
the world to follow Him, not upon the mere basis of His own
arbitrary command, but on the basis of What-He-Is, as that
which has been laid down in What-He-Is by The Father-Source.
Not He Himself is the Highest Good, but the Father. Men
are asked to follow Himself in order that thereby they may
follow the Father. "This commandment received I from my
Father" (John, x. 17, 18).
428. And it is here where Jesus unites the Good and the
Righteous, for the Cosmic- Good is also ^dAhzr-Righteousness,
and in obeying the moral ' command ' of the Father He is at
the same time obedient to cosmic Natural Law. And there
can be no doubt that His consciousness of His own personal
Goodness was one identical with the goodness of the Universe.
His own personal excellence equates itself in His conscious-
ness with the Excellence of Nature, and, consequently, it
is fitting that He should express it in , terms of Nature.
Every other connotation would have falsified its truth. There-
for He says, " I am the Bread of Life," where ' bread ' and
' life ' far transcend all individual, or * personal ' limits, and
connote a Good which, both in material and vital significance,
applies universally. This is proved in the fact that He forbids
our limiting His consciousness to the Earth only, for He
repeats it in more general terms still, " I am the Bread which
came down out of Heaven" And still further to link up both
' bread ' and ' life ' in an identity, He affirms, " I am the living
Bread which came down out of heaven " ; and finally, to leave
no doubt that His own personality equates with this Universal
or cosmic Good, He asserts, " Except ye eat the flesh and drink
the blood of the son of man, ye have not life in yourselves."
Yet they had life ! But He means that what they conceive or
528 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
judge as Life, is an imperfect judgment. It is also important
to observe that He affirms the same capacity for this Good
in every man as in Himself, for " He that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him," where both
'personalities' are united in one Life. He then completes His
conception of Cosmical Good, by including Father, Son, and
Man in its fulness ; or Heaven and Earth. For " As the
living Father sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that
eateth me, he also shall live because of me" (John, vi. 57).
Father, Son, Man ; or, Heaven and Earth, are united on a
basis of common Life, the highest conception of Cosmical Good.
429. His consciousness of being one in Excellence with all
that is conceivably Good in heaven and on earth is one that
is rampant in Jesus, and we have it expressed in terms of
natural Good again and again. " I am the Light of the World."
" I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." " I am the Resur-
rection and the Life." " I am the Vine," where the terms of
excellence are all general, and representative of what is Good
in heaven and earth. And it is clear that it is because the
term Father is the only possible one which could embrace and
comprehend in its connotations all that this heavenly and
earthly Good contains for Man, that it is selected by Jesus to
concrete Personal and Impersonal excellence in Earth and
Heaven in one identical Being. It is the same Cosmic Good
which is given in the Synoptists, in most of the parables, and
implied in His 'Works/ although the identity of Jesus and
Nature on a common basis of Life as the highest definition of
this Good is not so clearly marked. It is undoubtedly given
in such a sentence as, " For whosoever shall be ashamed of me
and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the
Son of Man also shall be ashamed of him, when He cometh in
the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mark, viii. 38).
All that is judged best in heaven and earth is likewise stated
in the sentence, " Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of
God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein''
(Mark, x. 15). And the unity of such Cosmic Good is expressed
in the unity of Cosmic Being implied in the words, " Whosoever
shall receive one of such little children in my name, receiveth
me, and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me, but Him
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 529
that sent me " (Mark, ix. 37) ; which is just John's " I and the
Father are One," given in fuller detail and gradation of conscious
Unity of Being. It is this consciousness of immeasurable
Goodness in Jesus which underlies Peter's cry, " Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord " ; and Thomas's, " My Lord
and my God "; the Centurion's, " Lord, trouble not thyself: for
I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof," and
many similar instances. The Cosmic consciousness of His own
Good was shared by all that knew Him. It was the veritableness
of such a consciousness, indeed, which rendered it possible for
Him to say, and for His disciples to believe, that He and the
Father were identical in being, and that when He was seen the
Father was also seen.
430. This matter being clear to us, we have now to remember
that all that man, any man, realises of himself through his experi-
ence, either as good or evil, just or unjust, is but a realisation
of that potentiality which he Is, and that all that he so realises
of himself is, and can only be, the basis of all he realises ' God/
or Highest Good, to be. It is this consciousness in Jesus
which evokes from Him the judgment, " O righteous Father,
the world knew thee not, but I knew thee." Looking back
over the great past of the world, He saw no conscious
expression in the history of mankind of a knowledge of God
commensurate with that consciousness of Good which He had
realised in His own experience of Himself. A realisation of
God there had been undoubtedly made in the past, but as it
was an inadequate judgment of Being based upon an insuffi-
cient interpretation of the Potentiality man was, the 'know-
ledge ' of such * God ' was as imperfect as man's knowledge
of himself. Man was only conscious of himself as possessing
power, wisdom, goodness, and such like, in limited degree, and
he invested his ' God ' with the same qualities under a limitless
aspect. He also endowed his ' God ' with life like himself, and
named ' God ' the " Living God," but he did not identify the
Life of God with his own life. It was not God's life which ran
in his own veins ; and God as thus born in man, a man, God-
Man, Father-Child, he did not realise. God and man to him
were distinct and isolated beings, and related, and far from
being One. Law, therefore, was the tie between them, and not
2 L
530 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Life. Therefore, Jesus rightly declared that the world had never
known God, or rather, had never known the Father-God, but
only a God-Being which held a lower relation to mankind than
the child to its father. And advancing beyond this imperfect
conception, He built His God-Being on the basis of Father-
Being, a true natural relationship ; and thereby realised through
His consciousness of the Life-Potentialities of man, the " God-
Father" who must be identical with Man-Being on such a
basis of Life-Potentiality. Jesus bound heaven and earth in
one with the chord of Life. He thereby also confirmed them
in an identical potentiality of Good. All connotations of
excellence were thenceforth sublated in this consciousness
of Universal or Cosmic Good, and, consequently, the Father
was ' righteous,' His name was ' hallowed,' and he was to be
worshipped 'in spirit and truth.'
431. But we have seen that the consciousness of Father-Being,
even when including "heaven and earth," does not exhaust
in Jesus His Ultimate consciousness of Being. He has a higher
consciousness in the experience of Himself than can be fulfilled
by the Life-basis of the Cosmos. This consciousness of What-
He-Is transcends all the connotations of Life, and Life-giving,
or Universal Fatherhood. It, consequently, also transcends all
connotations of Father- or Cosmic- Good. For no consciousness
that man possesses of the Universe-Being ever interprets to
himself his consciousness of Whole-Being, and never interprets
to himself, therefore, his consciousness of Whole- Good, that is to
say, the Good which has no possible hint in it of a possible 'evil '
or * sin.' Jesus required His " I am," or Space-Consciousness,
to concrete this consciousness. And when this consciousness
is present He then realises that Cosmic-, or Father -Good,
is transcended even as is Father-^zV/gv and then also He
expresses Himself as Not-Good.
This consciousness is given in the following passage
(Mark, x. 17-22):
" And as he was going forth into the way, there ran one to
him, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto
him, Why callest thou me good ? none is good save one, God."
Jesus here places Himself, good beyond all words though
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 531
He is, merely in relation to ' God/ who alone is Good. He desires
plainly not to be characterised as Good. He reproves this rich
young man for designating Him as Good. He strictly judges
that only One is Good. The words are actually believed to
have been, " Call thou me not Good."
What then are we to understand by this position? The
judgment of all times has set this Man at the head of all
things which have been conceived to be Good. He is the
standard Good One for all men. The noblest, the holiest,
confess themselves unworthy to be named with Him. His
example of Good is the despair of the most ideally good lives.
The highest characters, either in common life or in the Great
Literatures, are comparative daubs of perfection when brought
into His presence. And this being the case, one naturally
expects that He, at least, will be true to that consciousness of
Cosmic-Good which He evinces so strongly, and thus accept
conscientiously as a true judgment the designation of l Good
Master.' How can we even think Good, or how shall we
imagine what is Good, if He be not Good? Yet His words
cannot be put aside. "There is none good save One, God."
This means then that all the judged conceptions of Good
which the world has known are not based on an absolute
standard, and may be, relatively, as truly 'evils' as 'goods.'
We have just seen how Jesus Himself asks men to hate those
things which the world has from the beginning judged to be
its grandest treasures of Good. But the whole world itself,
He declared, is not good in comparison with the 'soul,' or
'life' of man. Still, one expects that when, in preference
to all that is nearest and dearest, and the whole world itself,
He asks us to follow Himself, He Himself, at least, should
profess to be that absolute standard of Good which He
abolished everywhere else. Yet here He makes Himself only
a relative Good, like all the rest ; nay, as not deserving to be
called Good at all ; affirming that there is only One Good,
' God.'
432. In actual fact, the consciousness of ' God ' here is a
realisation of Jesus Himself in His consciousness of Spirit- Being ;
and His consciousness of being not good is likewise a true
realisation of that absence of any consciousness of goodness
532 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
in His and our conception of Spirit-Being. * God ' as Spirit
has no relativity absolutely, and we cannot predicate of such
Being either quality of Good or Evil. Our consciousness of
such Being is swept clean of all predicates save Is. And this
Is is the highest equivalent of 'good' in His definition of
'God.' If we affirm any predicates of such Spirit-Being, it
can only be * good,' but not as correlative to some Other who
is Evil, for this Spirit-Being is Whole-Being. The term is
solely equivalent to Is : Space-Being, of which, as we repeat,
we cannot predicate either Good or Evil.
What we really have in the facts as Jesus states them, is
His consciousness of His own and of God-being. It is an
' I am ' consciousness. And of God alone is Good predicated.
But if we take His meaning to be that God and He are
absolutely isolated in Being, we are also compelled to accept
that God alone being Good, Jesus Himself is Evil, and that
all men are Evil, and that heaven and earth are Evil. When
God is postulated as absolutely separated from each being, and
the sole Being who is good, we cannot find Him to be identical
being with any being', and like Kant with the * soul,' we are
forced to regard God as a ' Thing-in-Himself,' and all other
things as * things-in-themselves,' and all things as Evil, judg-
ments which clearly run false to our Consciousness of What-we-
are, Space-Being.
433. The consciousness of Jesus here is .therefore His* I am'
consciousness, in its double content of * Man-person ' to the rich
young man, and " I-Being " to Himself. To the youth He is
a related being, and Good beyond all words. To Himself, He
is unrelated, and is neither good nor evil. As the ' Man-person,'
He is so "poor in spirit" that He realises Himself as Space.
He is nothing of such Good. He is Whole-Being in God-
Being ; He Is; but He is not 'Good,' because neither Good
nor Evil can be predicated of Himself. The true conception
of ' God,' moreover, can only be of Space-Being, if we are to
escape from the inevitable ' Thing-in-Itself.' And Space-Being
is the sole basis in us for any judgment of Whole-Good, for good
cannot be predicated absolutely of anything except what- Is, and
only the Is-consciousness is given in our consciousness of Space.
All that Is comes back to the Space-Consciousness for absolute
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 533
assurance of its Being. Therefore, when Jesus implies that He is
not Good, He negates the young man's assumed relative Jesus-
person. He is as such so " poor in spirit " as to be nothing; but in
being Nothing He is Space-Being, and is Whole-Being in * God.'
So long as He refers Himself to the * Man,' to Life, to the World,
and to The Father, He accepts relationship and its correspond-
ing ' good ' and * evil ' ; but when absolutely termed ' Good ' He
denies the relativity and stands in His " I Am " consciousness,
as above all Relationship, and therefore beyond all relative
qualities of Being. He really ascends in His " I Am " conscious-
ness above the sphere of Life and Death, Good and Evil, Love
or Hate, Man and the Father, Sex-Being and Person-Being;
and with Him we stand in that Presence of which we have no
consciousness save that of Space, Is, or * God ' ; and as this is
the consciousness of What-we-are, we are conscious with Him
of Whole -Being, and Whole-Good, in which no possible con-
sciousness of evil can enter. Jesus, therefore, in maintaining
that only Is-Being, or * God/ is Good, also sustained the world-
old judgment that there is " Good in everything," seeing that
Everything Is. All of the limited - Goodness which He
predicates concerning Himself in His relation to The Father,
or Heaven and Earth, is transcended also ; and Goodness
sublimed, or Absolute Beatitude, is our remaining conscious-
ness of Him.
434. We seem now to have a more connected view of the ever-
widening process by which Jesus arrives at His conception of
absolute Good, absolute Beatitude, or that poorness of spirit, that
1 Nothingness,' which is equated with all-blessedness, or ' the
kingdom of heaven.' Under the sublime consciousness of
Whole-Reality, His grand purpose is clearly to teach Being, as
Whole-Truth, to Men who have yet no other conception of
Being, in their consciousness of themselves, than as being
separate fragments or parts of Reality. He then accepts the
common judgment of men as to relative values, though not their
judgment of absolute and final permanence of such, and proceeds
to transcend them by a judgment higher and higher, until He
equates Being with Blessedness. For example, He negates the
sparrow-value in substantiating the Human value (Matt x. 31).
Nay, He negates everything in the world, and the "whole
534 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
world " itself, to establish that of the human ' soul ' or life
(Mark, viii. 36). But the world holds higher values than those
based on sparrow levels. There are fathers, mothers, sisters,
brothers, children, wives, friends, and these He negates by the
higher value of following Himself. And, again, He is "The
Father," or Good, cosmically, being the Light of the world ;
Bread coming down from heaven ; Life-Giver ; the Good
Shepherd that gives His Life for the sheep. But even this
vast personal " Good " is relative and not absolute, for, finally,
He empties Himself as a ' Good ' in order to affirm that not He
but ' God ' alone is Good. All else, Himself included, is con-
sequently relatively Evil. But * God ' is ' Spirit,' and can only
be conceived under the space-consciousness. Therefore, what
Jesus does is to leave the human mind no category by which
Absolute, or Whole-Good^ can be conceived save as Space- Being.
He abolishes all particular good, even when it embraces earth
and heaven, to affirm Whole-Good. Beyond every ' difference '
of Good and Evil, in heaven and earth, He still finds a broader
and more comprehensive basis of Blessedness, or Good, till, as
Whole, this quality is sublated in Is, * Spirit-Person,' i.e. Space-
Being, or ' God.' And, finally, this Space-Being is affirmed
absolutely in His, ours, and every consciousness as Same-
Being with What-we-are, or all that has content in our " I am"
In this consciousness the judgment of ' Good ' is seen to rise,
and, passing through all conceptual Relativity, again sets in it.
And as in the course of its rise this judgment creates the
corresponding quality of * Evil,' so with its sublation in a con-
sciousness of Whole-Being, Evil also becomes an impossible
predicate in Being. And thus by showing that every human
judgment or concept of either Good or Evil was capable of
being transcended, Jesus proved the falsity of the assumed
absolute basis for such judgments, and in the Space-Judgment,
I, Is, 'God,' found all such relative judgments negated by
an unnegatable affirmation of Whole-Good.
435. The 'I am' consciousness is thus the true solvent of
every judgment of relative Good and Evil. It is upon the
primary basis of the " I am Man " consciousness that all such
judgments are reared, and it is the " I am " consciousness
which decreates them as qualities, in the consciousness of
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 535
Being which declares itself independently of all qualities.
The Is-consciousness of the Space-' self knows of no such
relativities. It is impossible to find either a conscious-
ness of * Good ' or of ' Evil ' in our consciousness of Space,
whether that consciousness yields a conceptive ' God ' or
' Self.' And as this consciousness of Space, as ultimate for
both ' God ' and * Self,' gives the most concrete undeniable
affirmative of both 'God' and 'Self as Whole-Being, all
assertions cease and determine which bear that the qualities
of Good and Evil are absolute in their relativity, and never
to be annulled under any circumstances, in any consciousness,
here or Hereafter.
436. The same process by which Jesus transcends all forms
of relative ' personal-Being ' is that by which He also transcends
all relativity of * personal ' qualities. Our ' Good ' and ' Evil ' are
creations of the human judgment, and cannot be shown to be
based elsewhere than in the human judgment. Jesus therefore
correctly lays His finger upon the Origin of Evil when He says,
"That which proceedeth out of the man; that defileth the man.
For from within, out of the hearts of men, evil thoughts proceed,
fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickednesses,
deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness.
All these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man "
(Mark, vii. 20-23).
These are representative evils, but absoluteness of being is
not predicated of them. They arise out of human judgments,
relative to what another has done, and no such judgment is
absolute. Evil has no absolute reference, as a consequence, and,
therefore, the judgment of Jesus, given in the following words,
reiterates once more the final decision with regard to His
consciousness as to the Origin of Evil. He asks particular
attention to His statement, to which He seems to attach great
importance. " Hear me, all of you," He says, " and understand.
There is nothing from without the man, that going into him can
defile him, but the things which proceed out of the man, are
those that defile him" (Mark, vii. 15). He again emphasises
that " the Heart " is the precise focal centre of this defilement.
" Whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile
him, because it goeth not into his heart." " For from within,
536 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
out of the heart," etc. "All these evil things proceed from
within? etc.
Jesus seems to have placed the weightiest emphasis upon
this teaching, for He not only calls attention to it by a solemn
injunction "Hear me," but in three statements (Mark, vii. 15,
1 8, 19-21) the same fact is insisted upon. He upbraids His
disciples for not understanding it (v. 18). 'Good' and 'evil'
proceed from the human heart, or as Luke puts it, "The good
man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that
which is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth
forth that which is evil: for out of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaketh " (Luke, vi. 45). Good and evil are not seen
by Jesus beyond the "treasures," or the things laid up in the
heart of man. They are products of imperfect and limited
judgment. They are conceptual creations, and have no absol-
ute validity, nor any reference to Absolute Being. Neither
Good nor Evil, as man has conceived them, has absolute Reality.
The experience of Jesus Himself under judgment is perhaps
the best proof of these statements. He was judged to be so
evil as to be the Absolute Evil : the Prince of Evil. Did this
judgment rest upon Absolute Reality? Had it any validity
in Absolute Reality? What was its highest reference? Had
it any other origin save the ' heart ' of Man, taking ' heart ' to
be representative of all a man counts to be ? It simply arose
in the finite judgment of man, and the judgment of man could
sublate it in a contrary judgment of Good. But we have just
seen that Jesus no more accepted the judgment of absolute
Good for Himself than He accepted that of absolute Evil.
Neither the one judgment nor the other rose above Relativity,
and therefore had no reference to Absolute Reality. His con-
sciousness of What- He- was transcended all such Relativity,
and in the altitude of such an * I am ' consciousness no quality
had place or validity as absolutely real. The judgment of
man could then no longer other Him, as apart, so as to judge
Him in any way by a standard of Being without Him. For
the * I am ' judgment knows no relativity and is purely one of
Space- Whole-Being. And it could be shown that every judg-
ment of good and evil which history records has no better basis
of reality than that which declared Jesus to be Beelzebub, the
Prince of the Devils.
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 537
437. He is therefore entirely consistent in referring the Last
Judgment of "all the nations" to human, and only human
judgment. In His Vision of Judgment, with all nations
gathered before Him, no other than the Human Presence
is there (Matt. xxv. 31). 'God' is not present. 'God' does
not judge. And the judgment of Jesus is confined to merely
''separating' the 'sheep' from the 'goats.' He does not really
judge each to be a sheep or a goat on certain evidence. He
decides nothing as to what they are. He finds them already
so judged, and He but judges the Place of each. They come
before Him sheep and goats, having lived as such in their
own judgments. They are sheep or goats, wheat or tares,
not according to His decision, but because they are so to
themselves. In other words, true character is referred back
to its source in the consciousness of men; and the conscious
" I am " in each man judges what he himself is, beyond all
outside judgment absolutely. And therefore He assigns them
places relative to Himself, the ' Man,' on His right and left
hands, but with no reference to absolute Being, or ' God! Or,
generally, judgment upon Good and Evil, Jesus sees to ' proceed '
out of Man, and He sees it to end in him. It is purely relative
judgment, and far below the level of the * I AM ' judgment in
which it is subsumed and de-created. It is never possible, for
example, to say absolutely ' I am this} or ' I am that? but only
' I am? which has no connotations of even ' I am man! A
consciousness of Being, Is, I, exhausts such conscious content.
And similarly with regard to our judgment of 'God.' His
Nature, His Attributes, His Actions, and such like, are
judgments in us ; but these judgments have been in perpetual
flux and change through all ages, and controversies like to
that out of which the Nicene Creed was evolved, show
that every judgment as to who or what 'God' is, never pro-
ceeds above the Is-consciousness that man has of himself.
For every predicate that assigns a Quality to His Being,
such as ' substance,' good, great, wise, etc., relates Him
down to a lower level than man is conscious of for himself,
seeing that He must be related to what is not substance,
not great, not good, and not wise, that is, to Being which He
is not. But such a Being could not be ' God ' to man. He
would be a limited Being. And so it stands with reference
538 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
to the " Last Judgment." Its basis is no higher than the First
Judgment.
Neither our judgment of What-we-are nor of What-God-Is
depends upon predicates which the flux of thought can take
away. Our consciousness of Being is the firms of all judgment-
thought, and controls every judgment beneath itself. But itself
changeth not.
438. Now, the judgment of Righteousness and Sin shows
itself to be as changing and reducible as that of Good and Evil.
Jesus boldly corrected the world's judgment upon both. He
negated the sin-judgments which were based upon Old Testa-
ment Laws, and set up His own instead. The ninth chapter of
St John may be said to be devoted to correcting the false
conceptions of Sin which were entertained by His generation.
The Sermon on the Mount contained several examples. The
people had heard it said of old time, and they had walked
accordingly, but He puts all that beneath His own " But / say
unto you." " Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he
was born blind " ? was a sin-judgment. Jesus said, " Neither."
Instead of Sin you must see God manifesting His works in this
blindness" (John, ix. 2, 3). "God heareth not sinners," was
another judgment of His age. The whole teaching of Jesus
was directly contrary to it The prodigals, the publicans, and
the worst, were all heard of God. But it could be shown that
Christendom has taken over from the Old Testament its
conception of Sin, and it follows, as a consequence, that no
statement of Sin in the Creeds of Christendom coincides with the
fundamental consciousness of the Master.
439. The Hebrews and Christendom have persistently
referred all Sin -Judgment to Most Holy Being, and have
affirmed that He judges. Jesus never does this. He pre-
serves the conception of 'God' and the judgment upon Sin
forever apart from each other, except, of course, where in His
words, the term * God ' means the Hebrew ' Yahweh-God.' In
such cases He is bound to receive the arguments of the Jews
on their own ground. But when He teaches the subject of
Sin straight from His own authority, He makes Himself only
the highest reference for all judgment upon Sin. "The
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 539
Father judgeth no man." " All judgment hath been given to the
Son" Sin has thus simply a relative and not an absolute
reference. And just as He showed that the so-called Sin of
the Jewish judgments was no Sin, but the Works "of God
being manifested " (John, ix. 2, 4), so He also showed that every
Sin-Judgment, absolutely, must come to Himself for final
disposal ; or, that all Sin - Judgment, both as concerns its
Origin or End, must ultimately be decided by What -He -Is.
He is the sole reference for Sin.
440. This means, therefore, that all sin-judgment, or judg-
ment that creates ' sin ' for man, and affirms sin-doing as his, is
thrown back, in its ultimate reference, upon the inmost
judgment of Jesus, and stands or falls finally by that con-
sciousness. This inmost consciousness is His " I am " conscious-
ness, and we have seen that it has (i) a content of relationship
equating with the content " I am man" " I am the light of the
world," " I am the Father" which last is its utmost content of
relatedness ; and also (2) a content which is simply and solely
the unrelated and unrelatable content " I," unrelatable because
of its consciousness of Whole-Being. Consequently, Jesus
affirms all sin to be created by a reference to Himself as
Relative-Being, Father-Being, Sex-Being, Man-Being, and,
again, decreated by a reference to His Unrelated- Being, I am,
Spirit-Space-Being, beyond all reference to the Father-and-Son
conceptions, and in which no judgment upon dual-being is
found, and, therefore, no judgment upon sin or righteousness.
441. It is from this standpoint that we can apprehend
properly the true value and extent of the teaching of the
"Last Judgment," as it has been styled; (Matt. xxv. 31-46).
This parable, or generalised vision of the end of all judgment
upon the earth, is simply an extension of the same judgment-
teaching which is given in Chapter xxiii. In the latter case,
Jesus sums up all judgment upon the 'House' of Israel,
represented by ' Jerusalem/ over which He laments ; but
at the same time He exhausts all judgment upon her, and
in the former case where "all nations" are gathered before
Him, He exhausts all possible judgment upon mankind.
Jesus places Himself upon the throne of judgment both for
540 SPACP: AND PERSONALITY
Israel and for * all nations.' He alone stands forth before the
world as the sole Arbiter of conduct. It is the same conscious-
ness which He expresses in His name ' MAN/ or ' Son of Man.'
For it is not according to Code, or Law, or Prophetic Word
that He judges, but by His own Personality. The Typical
Man only can judge all men. " When the son of man shall
come in his glory" (Matt. xxv. 31), fitly interprets this high
consciousness in Him. It is the greatness of His " I am MAN "
consciousness. His closing words of Judgment are almost the
same also in both cases. For the Jews, His words of Chapter
xxiii., " Behold your House is left unto you desolate," " Ye
shall not see me henceforth," correspond very closely to " Depart
from me, ye cursed," in the Last Judgment of Chapter xxv.
bearing upon " all the nations."
Fitly, also, Jesus, in both instances, associates with Himself
the Name of Being which is above Man. For the Jews, He
affirms, " Till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the
name of the Lord" ; and for the world, " Come ye blessed of
my Father" where all Being beyond Man is shown clean of
judgment, and associated solely with Blessedness and Blessing.
The scenic surroundings are also strongly earthly and
human for each judgment. " When the Son of Man shall
come" (Chapter xxv.) indicates Time. Neither heaven nor
earth has " passed away." The references in the Last Judg-
ment are all human, and include even the animal, while the
associations are strongly relative in eating and drinking,
friends and strangers, clothed and naked, sick and healthy,
free and in prison. It is, we suggest, wholly out of harmony
with the deeply human relativity of the scene, and its earthy
settings, to give to the Greek word aiwiov the meaning of
absoluteness in the rendering ' eternal,' which should be rela-
tive only in its force of " Age-long " duration. Jesus is
undoubtedly teaching the end of all judgment upon the earth,
in Himself as Man, but He is not even hinting the end of
human life in the world. There is nothing absolute. All is
relative, and human. " All the angels " are with Him, no
doubt, but angels have always been associated with the
earth. Persons and places, rewards and punishments, good
and bad, right hand and left hand, indicate a condition of
existence for man as impressively relative and as far from
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 541
unconditioned being as it can well be asserted in words. It
is the theological " eternal " which unnecessarily confuses
the whole teaching. The " eternalness " or absoluteness of
either "Life" or anything else is never based in the Greek
adjective " alwvios? but in that consciousness of our " 1 am "
Being in which Life itself is but a conscious motion, and which
affirms itself to be more than Life. The l 1 am ' consciousness
is the sole fountain of our conception of " Eternity" or Timeless
Being, and only the consciousness ' I am Man ' is present in this
account of the Last Judgment. Thus aiwvios is not Timeless.
442. Taking then the widest survey of the teaching of Jesus
on Judgment as it lies in the Four Gospels, it can be freely
said that it is bounded by Two Grand Facts, viz. :
I. That all Judgment on man is given finally from Himself
as Son of Man.
II. That all such Judgment is transcended in His own
person as Father.
Throughout His teaching these two facts are constantly
being brought alongside of each other, and as certain as the
Son-Being is subsumed in that of the Father, so surely all
judgment upon Man is subsumed likewise, and is the impossible.
The Father only ' blesses.'
443. There is a clear aim on the part of Jeszts to abolish the
absoluteness of Judgment as man has conceived it from the
beginning of the world. His great 'deliverances: "Judge Not
that ye be not judged " ; " Love one another as I have loved
you" ; " Resist not Evil" ; " Forgive unto seventy times seven " ;
" The Father himself loveth you " ; His view of the open gates
of the kingdom of heaven for the publican and harlot ; His
peace given to the ' sinner in the city ' ; His companioning the
crucified robber into 'paradise'; and, above all, His seeing
only the Father in the Judas-betrayal, and His return, without
upbraiding, to His disciples after crucifixion all trend in this
direction. Of all Moral teachers of mankind, He has never
said " Be just," or has mentioned Justice. He never bases any-
thing on justice : His Ethic never includes it. ' Good ' is His
ideal, and uncondemnation of man upon man. And the Father-
Being is the embodiment of this Ideal. " Love your enemies,"
542 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
do not judge them, " that ye may be sons of your Father which
is in heaven."
444. Now, in order to create this conviction in men, it
was necessary that Jesus should concentrate final power of
judgment in Himself, the Son, and thence, through Himself,
show its space-cleanness in Himself, as The Father. To gather
up every possible source of judgment into Himself, meant that
He should be, first, MAN among men ; the highest type of
Man ; and, second, reveal in Himself the Father, whose grand
natural function is not judgment but Life-Giving. Thereby
a Perfect-Being was set before the world who had only given
Life, and loved, but did not Judge. Jesus therefore continually
associates the Son with the Father. He is sent from this
Father. He knows whence He comes and whither He goes,
for He has both come from and goes to the Father. Only He
knows the Father : Only the Father knows the Son. Then,
He is the Father. One who sees the Son, sees the Father.
He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. All things in
heaven and on earth have been delivered to Him by the Father,
even all judgment, which is a plain affirmation that the Father
judges no one.
What then becomes of the Last Judgment ? Its true
meaning is, the last of judgment upon man by Man, seeing that
Highest Being judges no man. All around man in Creation has
process of being, but is under no judgment, as man has under-
stood that term. Nothmg there falls below Father-Being.
He, as Cosmos-Being, pours forth inexhaustible bounty and
beneficence. He sends His rain, His sunshine, His day and
night. He blesses all without exception : rock, earth, plant,
beast, man, and all, 'evil' and 'good, 5 'just and unjust.' But
He judges, He condemns, no being. "The Father Himself
loveth you." Jesus sees the sphere between earth and cloud,
between earth and sun, so long filled with the terrible Cherubim,
filled and fulfilled with loving Father-Being.
445. Placed in the balance with all that Jesus taught, the
abolition of 'justice and judgment' must be considered as
necessary to the full harmonisation of His Ethos. This was
a necessity, if His Ethos was to be level to His sublime vision
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 543
of a Perfected World. For how could a state of man in which
all should do to others as they wished others to do to them-
selves ; in which all should love one another as Jesus had loved
man, and as the Father had loved Him ; in which all should
forgive unto seventy times seven how could this condition
of human society consort with justice and judgment on earth,
and justice and judgment in heaven? Would there then be
any call for such instruments of correction and guidance ? If
all hearts and all homes were to seek the high path of Love,
and the whole earth were to be filled with the Father-Heart
which throbs far as to the Cloud and to the Sun, in what
possible condition of man, under such circumstances, could
justice and judgment find a place of action ? " For Love
thinketh no Evil," and thereby is opposed to justice and judg-
ment which do nothing else. We are convinced that as Jesus
set aside Yahweh-God for the Father-God, so likewise He tran-
scended the ' way of Yahweh,' " the way of justice and judgment,"
ever ascending above it to the Absolute Blessedness of Whole-
Being.
446. However, we are not blind to the great place which
'justice and judgment' have occupied in the history of man.
The ' eye for eye, and tooth for tooth ' is a law which yet has
its force in human judicial affairs. Men yet appeal to brute
force, and shed man's blood because of blood shed. We are
not discussing expediencies. We are trying to discern what in
the vast future of the world must * pass away ' and what must
remain absolutely, and essentially as Whole-Being. And we
cannot find that the authority of Jesus stands behind Justice and
Judgment as essential permanencies of Whole-Being. They pass
with all that is in the ' Flow.'
447. For Jesus undoubtedly aims at whole-perfection for the
world, conform to His consciousness of His own 'I am' per-
fection. And it is from this exalted height that He foresees
all the world ascending far above the ethical compulsions of
1 eye for eye ' the plane of all the decisions of our judicial
systems to the loftier level of the Golden Rule, itself still far
in the distance before us ; and to the yet higher altitudes of
Loving one another as the Highest loves, till at last the whole
544 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
world, solidariously, should be " the kingdom of heaven," where
all should be 'poor in spirit' and as nothing to the Self; where
every mourner should be comforted ; where each should be
given the earth by the other as worthier to possess it ; where
highest hungers and thirsts after righteousness should be
satisfied ; and where every heart should be so space-pure as
to see God, and so find it impossible to see evil or to judge
it. Jesus sees this state of man as Absolute Beatitude, or
Blessedness. And the very fact that each man finds in his
own consciousness a consenting approval to this ideal state
shows that the ideal is in his being, and affirmed with it
permanently. It is simply an experiential realisation of
What-he-Is.
448. Hence although Evil or Sin is measured, nay created,
by the Presence of Jesus upon the earth, even as the shadow is
created by the light, it is only in so far as He is conceived as
relative Man to all men in the world. To the height of His
consciousness ' I am man} sin must arise for all men who find
in Him perfection, and themselves self-judged by that standard.
But only under this consciousness of relativity of Being. In
the Ultimate consciousness of Unrelated Being ; * I am ' ; theirs
and His ; sin and evil, and every creation of relative judgment,
becomes transcended and sublated, and space- cleanness of
judgment, i.e. Forgiveness, or rather, Uncondemnation, alone
has being. Through the Jesus-consciousness, * I am manl sin
must awaken for all men, and thus He is sole judge of all men ;
but on the higher plane of His unrelated ' I am' consciousness,
all judgment upon the Other is impossible, for He is then Whole
with All Being. All judgment is de-created. His conscious-
ness is clean. He then says, " The prince of this world cometh
and hath nothing in me." Sin and Evil, i.e., had no possible
predication in Jesus' consciousness of Himself. Nay, he extends
this impossibility to Heaven. He declares, " I beheld Satan
fallen as lightning from heaven." There ! in the very height
of Heaven, where men had always believed that a dark judg-
ment stood against them. This ' Satan ' was their awful vision
as they gazed upwards into the Infinite Being. But now, to
Jesus, this enthroned horror is de-created, and what was dark-
ness of darkness to men is the brightest of the lightning bright-
JUDGMENT AND THE SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS 545
ness. These two visions mark the difference of Truth, as judged
by Men, regarding Heaven debarred, and as judged by Jesus
regarding Heaven opened. Henceforth even Evil Personified
must be seen as Light, and light of the brightest : ' Satan ' seen
as * Lightning,' the nearest approach to Space-Clearness. The
dark Terror vanishes in Light Ineffable. That Jesus beheld it
' fallen ' is also symbolic, surely, of its ' passing away/ and
indicative of His intense consciousness of its impermanence.
At bottom, it is another instance of His method of negating
and transcending the infirm conceptions of Dual-Being as
differentiated by the relative judgments, Dark and Light, Hell
and Heaven, * Satan ' and ' God.'
2 M
CHAPTER XVI
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM
449. Some of the foregoing conclusions seem to be enforced
in the following words :
" If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
" He that hateth me, hateth my Father also.
" If I had not done among them the works which none other
did, they had not had sin.
" But now have they both seen and hated both me and my
Father" (John, xv. 22-24).
Here, the basis of Sin-Judgment upon man is Jesus Himself,
and so sure is the affirmation of Sin upon men, from this basis,
that He denies them any excuse, cloak, or palliation for it. He
had come ; He had spoken ; He had worked ; and created
thereby such a standard of perfect human life as eclipsed
all other standards. The more intense light casts the deeper
shadow, and sin, as compared by any other moral test, was
feeble in judgment contrasted with the power of condemnation
which a reference to Himself brought down upon mankind.
So great was the difference of power of judgment upon man, as
to his sin, that if Jesus had not come, spoken, and worked, man
would not have had sin. The only true sin-judgment that man
now knows upon his own life, is by a reference to Jesus. All
other standards of perfection by which man may test his
life are negligible. "Of Sin, because they believe not on me" is
the utmost reference (John, xvi. 9). It is the declaration of
Jesus' consciousness that sin has only a relative and not an
absolute validity. He refers it to Himself as coming into the
conceptions of men with His own personal coming and with His
own works. He does not refer it to any conception, or judgment
546
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 547
upon man, from ' God* He does not connect sin with His conscious-
ness of Highest Being.
Man as Sinless though Dying.
This power of judgment upon man is strictly within the
sphere of Relative-Being, i.e. Father-and-Son-Being. And in
both statements as to the field of sin-judgment, Jesus, while
affirming its unique power, is careful to limit that field by the
content of Father-, or Relative-Being. He makes a repeated
statement of the Sin-Judgment as referring to Himself and
through Himself to Father-Being, but He entirely limits the
possibilities of Sin-Judgment to that sphere of Related- Being. His
consciousness of Whole-Being is not involved. For example,
He declares " Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of
Man also shall be ashamed of him, when he cometh in
the glory of his Father with the holy angels " (Mark, viii. 38).
" Everyone therefore who shall confess me before men, him will
I also confess before my Father which is in heaven. But
whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny
before my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. x. 32-33). The
Limits of Being as governed by Sex-terms, Number, and
Relation are also the Limits of Sin-Judgment. Within the
sphere of Being, so conceived, judgment upon sin is rational,
and if such Being were to be regarded as eternally permanent
in its limitations, the judgment upon sin would be conceived as
eternal also. But in the sphere of Unrelated-Being, the " I "-
consciousness, He also shows that all sin-judgment is impossible ;
and that Man as related to ' God,' who is supposed to be isolated
existentially from him, is the unthinkable. All Sin is abolislied
in the fact of the extinction of all duality of Being as affirmed in
the " / am " consciousness of Whole-Being. And this conscious-
ness Jesus states in the following words :
" I go away, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sin."
" I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins,
for except ye believe THAT I AM, ye shall die in your sins "
(John, viii. 21-24).
Here we have sin referred to the / Am, or ultimate con-
sciousness of Being, instead of to a standard of relative
548 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Father-Son Being; a personal reference which is still higher
than the impersonal standard of Law. This fact is of the
utmost importance, and clearly reveals the expanding and
ascending process of sublation of sin - predication in the con-
sciousness of Jesus. The impersonal standard of Laiv is tran-
scended by the personal standard of the Son. The still higher
standard of relative personal perfection, conceived as Father-
Son Being, is again transcended by the ultimate consciousness,
I AM, where all relativity vanishes. And a reference to this
absolute judgment reveals all other relative judgments sub-
lated in it. With the unique result that, when men accept its
truth into their convictions, they attain to the consciousness of
dying sinless. It is the same consciousness which is given
in the first Beatitude (Matt. v. 3). Men judge themselves to be
'utterly destitute in spirit' and thereby realise "the kingdom
of heaven."
For in this consciousness no sin-judgment can exist. And
it is clearly rational in the fact that, as the I AM consciousness
alone gives the consciousness of space-being, it must also yield
the consciousness of sinlessness, seeing that space-being alone
yields us a true consciousness of Whole-Good without any
possibility of Evil or Sin entering into it as a relative Other
( 170). '
This is the only consciousness of Being from which Jesus
Himself could have drawn a consciousness of absolute sinless-
ness. He said, "The prince of this world cometh and hath
nothing in me." There could be no question of sin for Himself
where His consciousness affirmed indivisible Being ; whole
with All Being. And His teaching bears that men will find
the same experience for themselves, not by seeking Him as One
'gone away' apart and afar from themselves, but by entering
into the same consciousness regarding Him which He had for,
and of, Himself; ' That-I-Am!
It is undoubtedly a teaching which lifts the whole question
of Sin high above all references to Law, and renders nugatory
all sacrificial and expiatory theories which profess to rationalise
the forgiveness of sin. This was doubtless already done when
the sole reference of Sin was made to the ' Son of Man,' who,
as 'The Father/ found the basis of forgiveness in His own
Nature, rather than in satisfaction, given to an impersonal Law
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 549
apart from Himself, and who avowed that He judged no man.
He loved man, and in love there was no condemnation. But
the ' I Am ' consciousness transcends even this Relativity
where sin can be conceived as still existing and possible
between Child and Father. The ' I Am ' is here a relationless
consciousness and renders it impossible for man to have a
conception of Other-Being who might be judged sinful or
otherwise: We have here, in short, the true Absolute Ethos ;
Being and Ought as Whole; and also a realisation of Being
as pure, untainted, and impossible of taint ; Space- Being- Beati-
tude. It is a consciousness which gives wholeness to every
incomplete conception of Perfection in man, and strenuously
urges him to realise himself sinless although dying.
Jesus, of course, had often referred to the forgiveness or
' remission of sin/ but always on some basis of relativity.
" God be merciful to me a sinner," was the general expression
of this reference. God was conceived as one, and the sinner
was another one, and somehow, God came to relent in His
wrath when His ' sinner ' came humble and repentant before
Him. It is the voice of human pity that so speaks, the colours
of the loving human heart reflecting themselves on the face
of Deity. But on such a basis no man could ever realise a
true consciousness of sinlessness. He could only realise that
somehow his sins were blotted out, and forgiven. He could
never realise that, for What-Is, sin was, is, and must ever be,
an impossible judgment. Similarly, when the ' son of man '
is represented as forgiving sins upon the earth (Mark, ii. 10),
or when any one forgave his brother unto seventy times
seven (Matt, xviii. 21), or when sin was forgiven because of
much love (Luke, vii. 47), the true consciousness of sinlessness
could never be realised on such a basis of relativity. Sin was
still man's, he had done it, and he would die with it, and it
would be his forever, though there might be forgiveness
enough too. And on every imaginable basis of related Being,
the same lack of the sinless consciousness would be bound to
persist.
Now, clearly \ there is a desire in man to realise this sinless
consciousness. How otherwise has this consciousness of sinless-
ness arisen in him? For man has always realised sinlessness
as applying to the God-Being of his worship, though not to
550 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
himself. Man has this conception, * My God is sinless ' because
first he has the prior conception that 'God' has no peer, no
one above Him, and none that can accuse Him. He is Law
to Himself. It is the product of the consciousness in Man of
Absolute Being ; his ' I Am ' consciousness set forth for ' God.'
He says of his God, ' He Is.'
But it cannot be shown that man has found this con-
sciousness anywhere than in his own being. And he also
finds that when he says ' I am ' for himself as well as for his
' God,' with its connotations of unrelatedness full in view, the
same consciousness of sinlessness, i.e. ' the kingdom of heaven,'
is realised for himself. And if Man never had had this con-
sciousness of sinlessness, inherent in and for himself, he could
not by any possibility have realised it in the Being of his
' God.' It is because this consciousness of sinlessness maintains
itself in his own Being, that he can affirm it as a Quality of
any ' God'-Being. And it is in his I AM consciousness that
it comes to be rationalised and realised as the consummative
statement upon all Sin-Judgment, seeing that, in its simple
affirmation of Whole-Being, any sin-judgment is impossible.
It is not then a question of the existence of sin, a state
of difference between Two Persons, and the negation of such
difference by means of certain atoning and expiatory offices
undertaken by some one else, in order that the sin-stain may
be, at least, covered over and hidden, though it should never be
wiped out of the universe. The ' I AM ' consciousness of Being
renders all such sin as unthinkable, and as an impossible
conception for man or for God, in the ultimate resolution
which it gives of such personal conceptions into their real
Space-Being consciousness. For in the consciousness of Space-
Being, as we must constantly reiterate for the sake of
emphasis, no conception of Evil or Sin can be formed. And
on this ground, all men, as well as Jesus, can realise their
sinlessness though dying. Every conception of relativity is
wiped out absolutely, and every conceivable judgment upon the
Other is put beyond conceptuality. The penal and judicial
origin and function ascribed to Death are also annihilated.
And although in His reference to Sin in two of the ' I AM '
passages in the eighth chapter of St John (vv. 24, 28) Jesus
still leaves the relativity of Death while removing all human
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 551
consciousness of Sin from man, it could be easily shown that
the relativity of even Life and Death is negated by Him in this
consciousness also ( 92). The verse, " Before Abraham was,
I AM " (viii. 58), not only rises above the relativity of Life
and Death, but above and beyond all relativity of Time and
Eternity. And in such a consciousness as lies in the following
words, all relativity of Life and Death is abolished ; the
personal consciousness of " I AM " Being in Jesus sublating
both. " I AM . . . the resurrection, and the Life : he that
believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live : and whoso-
ever liveth and believeth on me shall never die" (John, xi. 25).
Both Life and Death are only rendered possible conceptions through
what we believe Man to be; Man qualifies himself by these
motions ; but, on the other hand, every conception of Life and
Death, as man has formed these conceptions concerning man, ale
again wholly negated and erased from our consciousness of
Being when we rise, like Jesus, into the I AM consciousness.
If we qualify man as dying or dead, we can also affirm of him
that he lives with even a higher efficiency of life. For in the
Space-consciousness neither Sin nor Death ha^ee any place
absolutely.
There can be no doubt that Jesus held in His consciousness
the certainty of a sinless earth as realisable in the future. His
words are, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Now, men have a conception, a conviction, a belief, that no sin
and no death exist in ' heaven.' And to the fullness of that
conception of * heaven,' He asks men to pray that the same
realisation may be given them for the earth. But Jesus had
this conception for Himself. He never asks the Father, or
' God,' to forgive His sins. He was conscious of sinlessness
through His I Am consciousness of Being. And in this con-
sciousness He was not alone, nor yet the first to realise it for
Man. Men had conceived such a sinless earth to have existed
before " The Fall," and Isaiah had portrayed a sinless earth yet
to come (chap. xi.). This consciousness of sinless mundane
existence was common to mankind, but only the few and most
sensitive of the race had grasped the fact and embodied it in
words. This confirms the view of the relativity of the sin-
judgment as originating purely in the human bosom, and as
bound to pass away even before the passing of heaven and
552 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
earth. Sin, in Jesus' consciousness and convictions, has arisen
solely in the imperfect judgments of mankind, based on the
prior erroneous judgment that one being was absolutely
isolated from another, and each from * God,' who judged each
as they judged each other. It is this conception of absolute
relatedness and divisiveness of Being which is the fountain-
head of the sin-consciousness in man. When this isolation of
Being from Being is shown to have no absolute affirmation in
either Jesus' consciousness or ours, all our judgments, as
absolutising sin and death, vanish also. The I Am conscious-
ness, as the consciousness of Space-Being, gives no affirmation
of either the one or the other. It follows, therefore, that the
conception of Sin as having entered the universe and the
earth, undesired by 'God,' and wholly fixed there beyond dis-
lodgment by Him, is a historically theological nightmare, and
the truth is maintained that as sin has come into the world
through imperfect human judgment alone, so also it will vanish
from the earth when the perfect ' I Am ' judgment is taken, by
all as by Jesus, to be the sole basis for all other lesser judgments
on Being.
The necessity to realise our Being through the I AM
consciousness is thus seen to be the most insistent we possess.
For without it the realisation of our deepest desires were
impossible. The foundations of the great things, whose voices
unceasingly speak from out of our being, would forever remain
unknown. Moreover unless, so to speak, we fill the I AM
consciousness with Space-Being, Existence is inexplicable. For
if we only find a consciousness of ' Self,' as an isolation, in us,
we remain cut off from all the Universe. Nothing can connect
us with anything else. For the assumption that Mind connects
with Mind has been shown to be as impossible as the connection
of Matter with Matter, Cause with Effect, or One with Many,
or God with Man, or Man with the Universe. Space-Being
as What-we-are, and as All that Is, and as Whole-Being, alone
solves every difficulty in the unveiling of Reality, and this
space-consciousness is undoubtedly the true and only content of
the consciousness we name when we say, '/ Am?
450. It is here also that we seem to discern how insignifi-
cantly little mere Historicity has to do with an Ultimate
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 553
Consciousness of Truth. For the consciousness which, in a
feeble and incomplete way, we have tried to interpret from
the Four Gospels, would be as absolutely true and rational
although no particular place, or person, or time, had been
associated with it. Whether Jesus, or John, or Peter, or James,
or Nondescript, had embodied it in writing for us, would have
mattered nothing at all. Its actual presence calls for decisions ',
and we bring it to the test of our own consciousness of What-we-
are ; and the testimony given from that highest of all Judgment
Seats is that the Jesus-Consciousness of the Four Gospels is whole
with our own. And in no other Writings, Speech, or expressed
Statements of Man upon the Earth, in any time, have we the
same testimony of indisputable Reality. Here we have most
certainly " The Light of the World," " The true Light, which
lighteth every man, coming into the World." It gives us also
far more than the naked and uns waddled Unity of Being so
earnestly sought for by the Ages. For in this great conscious-
ness of Whole-Being, I AM, all that Philosophy has sought is
set forth as Religion; and it is set forth on the profoundest
assured Fact which Science can know, viz., the Fact of Space-
Being. Wisdom, Worship, and Knowledge speak through one
voice this " I am " consciousness.
The above may be taken as a general statement of the scope
and importance of the * I Am ' consciousness of Jesus both for
Being and Ought-to-Be. But at the risk of wearying the reader,
we must further, very briefly, seek to show its application and
meaning in narrower details which touch upon the doctrines
of the Incarnation, the Divinity of Jesus, the sinless conscious-
ness which has persisted in Mankind, the deliverance of the
Nicene Council as to What-Being Father and Son were, the
absolute Test of Truth, the transcendence of Time, the Atone-
ment, the Gift of the Spirit, the remission of Sins by the
Church, and the attitude of the World- Mind towards the con-
ception of God in the present day. And in doing so, we
profess only to give our statements as suggestions rather than
as exhausting their several contents.
But lest the ' I Am ' statements of Jesus may not be accepted
as bearing the full philosophical content of Being which we
assert for them, we must endeavour to show that the funda-
mental principle of all philosophy is involved in them, viz., the
554 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
affirmation of Absolute Reality in Thought and Consciousness.
We have seen that without the actual terms ' I Am ' attached to
it, the First Beatitude gives the same consciousness which is
found in these two words, and the following authority may be
allowed to speak for the ' I Am ' of St John.
451. Bishop Westcott, in his Commentary on St John, and
with reference to the verse, " Except ye believe THAT I AM,
ye shall die in your sins," says, personating Jesus addressing
the Pharisees
" Not simply 'that I am the Messiah,' such as your imagina-
tion has drawn for you : but far more than this ; that I am ;
that in me is the spring of life and strength ; that I present
to you the invisible majesty of God ; that I unite in virtue of
my essential Being the seen and the unseen, the finite and the
infinite. The phrase ' I am ' (eyco efcO occurs three times in
this chapter (vv. 24, 28, 58 ; cf. xiii. 19), and on each occa-
sion, as it seems, with this pregnant meaning" On the third
'I am,' in verse 58, 'Before Abraham was, I am,' the bishop
says "The phrase marks a timeless existence. In this con-
nexion ' I was ' would have expressed simply priority. Thus
there is in the phrase the contrast between the created and the
uncreated, and the temporal and the eternal " (italics ours).
452. "Before Abraham was, I Am." C I Am' means far
more than ' I existed.' It is a consciousness of " timeless
existence." And, clearly, it takes us at once into the sphere
of Psychology and Philosophy. This is the great Polar position
towards which all Ancient and Modern students of the Mental
Sciences have directed their endeavours. We should timidly
hesitate. For it has long been a familiar assumption that the
Religion of Jesus in its theological presentment can go forward
without help from either of these great branches of study.
"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What
concord is there between the Academy and the Church?"
Tertullian wrote scornfully (De Prescriptione Hcereticorum,
chap. vii.). And theology has followed him rather than Origen
in this conviction. We humbly suggest that theologians
should be the very last to think so. Our conviction grows
more and more that no evidence of profound and completely
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 555
exhaustive psychological and philosophical meditation is to be
found richer or greater in any writer, ancient or modern, than
is apparent in the teaching of Jesus. Doubtless it is not
systematised Psychology and Philosophy that we find in His
doctrine. Ancient and modern systems find their limitations
within His limitless consciousness. His is the Whole-Being-
Consciousness of which theirs are systematised sections. All
His sayings, and all His acts, without exception, pre-suppose
the profoundest self-examination and careful reasoning. But
all this is put out of sight after His conclusions are reached,
and the TRUTH elucidated in the process is alone stated to
the world. It is through His " I am " consciousness that all
'revelation' is made to Him, and that His 'Father' speaks to
Him, when it is properly understood. If He had received His
TRUTH in any other way, man could not have understood it.
For what His consciousness gives forth our consciousness must
be able and fitted to receive and sanction. And the very fact
that this result is attained in all He says and does, and by
the fool as well as by the philosopher, proves that a common
consciousness underlies the TRUTH so given and so received,
and that behind both manifestations of consciousness, His and
ours, there stands common Being in Him and in us.
The Incarnation.
453. And this common consciousness of common Being as
revealed to Him as to all men, through the common form of the
" I am" consciousness in Him and in us, is the primary convic-
tion to be established in us if we would understand the teaching
of Jesus. We never interpret Jesus aright when we specialise
His being, and put Him in a 'class of One' by Himself. It is
of course done in devout reverence for His Great Individuality,
but it retards the advance of the conception of Whole-Being
which it was clearly His chief aim to promote in the world. It
is, for example, a grave deflection of judgment which affirms the
perfection of Jesus, and His admitted consciousness of sinless-
ness, to rest upon a Bodily Birth determined as unique, and as
isolated from the cosmic processes by which all such birth is con-
summated. Such a ' birth ' is only special pleading for a special
history which cannot be sustained by any fact of our common
556 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
consciousness as to What-man-Is. There can be no doubt that
it is true to say, * That which' was begotten in the womb of
Mary was only begotten of the ' Most High,' but it is not true
that this Holy Agency was limited to Mary's particular concep-
tion. This assumption does not follow. Where the conception
of ' God ' is involved there should be no limits either in thought
or consciousness. And particularisation is limitation. The
truth rather is that all physical conception of Life in all that
conceives, is so begotten by the Most High. Absolutely, as Jesus
declared, " It is the Spirit that QuiCKENETH." Wherever there
is quickening, there is God-Spirit. Wherever life is found, or
wherever life is conceived to be, there is the presence of the
Most High. " The Spirit " is alone Father of all Life.
To endeavour to specialise, or particularise the Being of
Jesus is therefore to run counter to the entire trend of His own
Doctrine. For He aims constantly at sublating all mere unit-
being, or Being affirmed as One, in an absolute affirmation of
Whole-Being. This was necessary, if the highest conception of
Being were to prevail. Hence Jesus constantly states a form
of Being in order to transcend it by another, which in
turn is again transcended. For example, His words, " Among
them that are born of women there is none greater than
John," might seem either to deny that He Himself had been
born of a woman, or to say that John Baptist was greater than
He Himself was ; but His qualifying sentence, " Yet he that is
but little in the kingdom of God is greater than he," proves how
little He Himself placed on the mere fleshly birth, either John's
or His own. ' Birth ' was not understood, according to Jesus, until
it was seen to be ' spirit '-birth. He does not feel it necessary,
therefore, to assert that He is Son of Woman, or of any
particular woman, although He does think it necessary to affirm
that He was * Son of Man,' yet of no particular man. He seems
to shun the restrictive bounds of special birth, or of special
Being. He is Son of Man, or, All that Man is. He is what
every man can say himself to BE, absolutely.
Jesus as ' Human ' and ' Divine'
454. But just as truly as He affirms Himself to be ' Son of
Man,' He just as truly subsumes that determination in the con-
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 557
ception * Son of God.' We are aware of the persistent efforts
on the part of some commentators to weaken that statement,
but His repeated and unmistakable assertions that He had
been sent from the Father, and had come forth from the * Father,'
leaves the human mind little choice between the terms ' Son of
the Father' and 'Son of God.' Neither term is absolute, as
He proves when He declares ' I and the Father are one.' And
in the clear affirmation that He was Same-Being with the
Father, we have an exhaustive transcendence of the conceptions of
Son-Being as these are asserted in the names, Son of Man, Son
of the Father, Son of God. That is to say, He, being Same-Being
with the Father, can no longer be conceived as * Son ' in any sense.
He passes beyond the conception of ' Sonship' absolutely. He
thus rises above that sphere of particularised being, and affirms
the conception of His Being on a wider basis. And the ' Father '
being His conception for universal Being, or ' heaven and earth,'
Jesus asserts Himself now to be Same-Being with the Cosmos.
We cannot think Jesus the Son and Jesus the Father to be Two
Beings.
We have also seen that He transcends in the same way, the
conceptions of ' Father,' and * Holy Spirit,' in as far as they
connote the limitations of Personality as we know it. He
abolishes the conception of particular or specialised Being both
from His own Name and that of 'God.' And we shall never
understand the high meaning of His teaching if we retain the
term c God ' as defining particular Being, or as Being determined
in a ' class of One' Nothing but limited Being can be given in
this way, and to specialise even ' God ' is to degrade the con-
ception, or rather it is to classify ' God ' as of the same type
as Zeus, Yahweh, Jupiter, et hoc genus omne, and merely a One-
Being, an apart-Being ; Being not us.
455. Now Jesus made it possible for a man to say everything
of his own being which it is possible for any man to say of any
Being. ' I AM ' is the highest expression conceivable for Being
of any name. But everything says it It is the common
affirmation of Being, and admits of no distinctions. For it is
always as true for man as it is for ' God' It is absolutely true of
nothing save Space-Being. And no conceivable predicate can
be made concerning either Man or * God ' which should specialise
558 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
the one from the other. It is the form of that consciousness
which underlies all that Is. Such terms as Man, Son of Man,
Son of God, Father, Spirit, God, are mere functional and con-
ceptual phases of this I-AM-Being, as human understanding has
been able in the past to interpret it to itself. We all reverence,
doubtless, such mediatory conceptions, just as Jesus did, but we
must also acknowledge their unit-limits, their finite entangle-
ments of sex, number, and relation, etc. ; and refuse to conceive
Whole-Being-God as capable of being put into any individualis-
ing or personalising name, absolutely.
456. Now, without this transcendence, which is effected
through the space-consciousness and which is freely implied
and emphasised in all His doctrine, we could have no concrete
basis for realising rationally that assumption of sinlessness
which Jesus makes, while at the same time asserting Himself
to be all a man is. Neither could we understand rationally why
He claims to forgive sins, to be the Father, to give the Holy
Ghost, and to speak for ' God,' and to be ' God.' Neither would
it be possible for us to realise intelligibly such aspirations as
" That they may be one, as thou Father art in me; that they
may all be one." Throughout the whole range of His teaching
there is an evident motion of mind towards rising to the
highest possible conception of Being, in order to unite both
conceptions of ' human ' and ' divine ' Being in one consciousness
of Being as whole, with no scintillation of parts in it. ' I in
them, and thou in me.'
The Sinless Consciousness.
457- We venture to affirm that the sinlessness consciousness
in Jesus is a common consciousness in all men, although not
realised conceptually by all. The lesser relative judgments in
us which ' convict of sin ' overbear the I Am judgment which
emancipates us from such convictions. Few have ever realised
this consciousness, because few before Jesus ever realised His
high consciousness of Whole-Being. It must be held to be true,
that if the Ethical Ideal which Jesus actualised had not been
present in the latent consciousness of every man, no man could
have believed such Ideal to be realisable by any person. When
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 559
considered on the broadest foundations, we can freely say that
it is just because the ' I am,' or Jesus-Consciousness was present
with all men in all ages, that men throughout the historical era
have been increasingly conscious of both perfection and
imperfection. We find such deep consciousness of sinlessness,
both for the individual and the world, to be the mainspring of
those visions of deliverance from imperfect being, and the real-
isation of universal beatitude which are outlined in Plato-
Socrates, in the writings of the highest Hebrews, and in the
Sacred Books of the East. He surely reads such writings
with little insight and less sympathy, who does not see that
it is the very presence of the Jesus-Perfection in such philo-
sophical, poetical, and prophetical utterances which, conflict-
ing with their concurrent conviction of its not being realised,
as yet, floods their emotions and thoughts with that passion
of grief which rolls like an undertone beneath all their sweetest
melodies. To believe that Jesus desired, or taught, that His
own consciousness of perfect life differentiated Him from all
men, is to distort His plainest lessons in ethical possibilities.
Like all men, He repudiates Himself as being the Ultimate
Perfection. He ever points away from His 'Person' to the
Father as His own standard of conduct. "Ye therefore shall
be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." " I can do
nothing of myself." The Perfection we behold in Him, is one
which is increasing and ascending. Until we reach with Him
a consciousness of Whole-Being in our " I am " consciousness,
Perfection cannot be rationally conceived otherwise. Hence
He tells the disciples that they are Branches in Himself, the
Vine, which yet the Father prunes in order that more fruit may
abound. Hence also His statement to Mary Magdalene that He
was not yet ascended to The Father, but that He was ascending
to His and her Father, to His and her God. The Perfecting
Way was common to both Him and her and to All men. But
where He is unique and alone is in His grasp upon that
inmost consciousness which refuses relationship, dual - being,
and all that such duality of being implies in a consciousness
of the sinner and the Sinned-Against. Where all conceive
that they have sinned against a Person quite distinct from
themselves, He has a consciousness that it is a sheer impossi-
bility for Being to be sinned against, or even to have such
560 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
a consciousness, for the simple reason that the I-Am-Truth
rebukes all such Dual-Being, and undeniably asserts itself as
Whole. In such a consciousness, ' Heaven and Earth pass
away/ as relativities and inter-relationships, and only Space-
Being remains ; I AM ; in which judgment all judgments of
mere unity, duality, and quality cease.
458. It is on this basis also that we can understand His
exceeding leniency with ' sinners,' the absoluteness of His con-
ception of Sin-Forgiveness, His limitation of the field of Forgive-
ness to the Earth and Man, and the extreme rarity of His
connection of even the related Being-Name of 'Father' with
sin. For any judgment upon Sin must fall below the ' I Am '
consciousness, and can never therefore be absolute, but only
proportionable to the light, law, or love sinned against. What
is clear is His consciousness that, in the highest Form of
that Motion of What-He-Is and We-Are, that is, the Spirit-
Space consciousness, no predicate of Sin, Righteousness, Good,
or Evil, is possible. There is only a consciousness of 'Joy,'
' Peace,' * Comfort,' or Being-Blessedness, Absolute Beatitude :
"the Kingdom of Heaven."
The age-long perplexity stands open and revealed in the
consciousness of Jesus as He interprets for us His Being-
Consciousness, " I Am." All His teaching comes round
constantly to this Key-Truth. Personality, Morality, Being
and the Ought-to-Be, always close upon His consciousness
of Himself. " If I had not come and spoken unto them, they
had not had Sin" ; " Except ye believe That I Am, ye shall die
in your Sins."
Jesus as Homoousious with the Father.
459. His anxiety was keen that men should know who or
what He was. " Who do men say that I am ? " " Who say
ye that I am?" (Mark, viii. 27-29). And men blindly called
Him by great personal names, Elijah, Baptist, Christ, not
knowing who or what He was. Then He has to "charge
them to tell no man of Him." It was His way of expressing
His disappointment with their answers. Every one fell short.
For every name they gave to Him was one of relativity,
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 561
limitation, personality, theocratic, official, provincial, tribal ; and
His own consciousness of Himself far transcended such con-
cepts. His own view of the case after vainly trying to get a
correct knowledge of Himself from men, was that absolutely
" No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father, and who
the Father is, but the Son" (Matt. xi. 27). To the last, His
immediate followers never apprehended Who He was, on the
same level of His own consciousness of Himself. It is also
because the Church has never interpreted Him from His own
height of consciousness that He remains still both her own
perplexity and that of the World. According to Harnack, the
great contention of the Church in the Fourth century was
around this consciousness. And we now see that that Church
simply settled no more than His relativity of Being on the basis
of our ultimate consciousness of relativity. As Harnack puts it,
interpreting the mind of the Athanasians " He (Jesus) is by
His own nature in all points similarly constituted as the Father ,
and finally He is all this, because He has one and the same
substance in common with the Father and together with Him
constitutes a unity" (Hist, of Dogma, iv. 33, Eng. Trans.);
(italics ours).
460. "This," says the great historian, "is the key to the
whole mode of conception : Son and Father are not a duality,
but a duality in unity, i.e., the Son possesses entirely the
substance which the Father is, He is a unity with the unity
which the Father is." And again, " The substantial unity of
Father and Son is the fundamental thought of Atkanasius"
p. 34 (his italics). And this interpretation of the central
matter which engaged the Nicene Council may be accepted
as endorsed by Christendom.
461. The question now falls to be asked, Do 'Substance'
and ' Unity of Substances ' exhaust the consciousness of Man
with regard to Being ? We have shown in the foregoing pages
that ' Substance' as an exhaustive interpretation for our con-
sciousness of Being, is impossible, unless by Substance we
mean Space ( 181). Science declares against it; Philosophy
discards it ; Theology, when undogmatic, prefers ' Spirit.' The
root antipathy to the concept as final for man or anything,
2 N
562 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
lies in the general consciousness. It is the same with Unity.
But ecclesiastical, philosophical, and scientific faith in unity is
yet strong ; although, in all departments of conscious thought
and its interpretations, the concept of * Unity of Being ' rings
hollow, and the deepest affirmative of the human consciousness
makes no response to it.
These two concepts, Substance and Unity, are, in short,
inept to exhaust that ultimate consciousness which Jesus had
of Himself, and which we all have of our own selves. Substance
means limitation. Unity means limitation. Neither ever
yields a consciousness of Whole - Being, and always leaves
outside of itself that consciousness of Being which is far
ampler than the one it begets in us. The declaration that Jesus
was substantively One with the Father, declared merely His
Relativity of Being, and declared no more. For the concept
of Father never helps us to our highest consciousness of
Being, any more than that of Son, for the reasons already
given, viz., its entanglement in sex - connotations, number,
and relativity, and its ultimate foundation in the limited
concept of Life. The ' I AM' consciousness in every man rises
far above such a concept, and never can be exhausted save in
the consciousness which yields no predicates save Is, I, Space,
or Whole-Being.
462. There can be no serious doubt, therefore, concerning the
reference by Jesus to Being in His " I AM " statements. They
are always His answers to questions concerning personat-being.
In the Eighth Chapter of St John, for example, His 'I AM'
answers are given to the questions " Where is thy Father?" and
1 ' Who art Thou ? " (vv. 19, 25), and " Hast thou seen Abraham ? "
(verse 58). Now, these questions deal with all that Science,
Philosophy, and Theology, have ever dealt with, or will ever
deal with in time,*'.*., (i) Absolute Origin of Being; (2) The
basis of continuous origin of personal-being (if we are allowed
to say so) through Past time ; and (3) What-we-are in the
present. And in the statement ' I AM,' the questions are fully
answered. The ' I am ' consciousness, indeed, answers all
questions.
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 563
The Test of Truth and the Transcendence of Time.
463. In the twelfth verse of the eighth chapter of St
John the narrative bears that Jesus asserted Himself to be the
" Light of the World." The Pharisees gave Him the lie direct.
They said, " Thou bearest witness of thyself, thy witness is not
true." They consequently trenched upon a problem of the first
importance to the world as well as to Jesus. That question is,
How is Truth verified to any man ? What witness of Truth
induces conviction in man of its Reality and undeniableness ?
Is it relative or absolute testimony? This, clearly, is a first
problem in Philosophy; this is all-important to the dissemina-
tion of the Jesus-Light in the World ; and scientific epistemology
should know the reason why. As we have seen in our second
chapter, it has been the centre of much able discussion in
modern times, by our clearest and most respected thinkers.
What is the ultimate test of TRUTH? How does Jesus answer
it ? He answers it in the way that modern philosophy has now
come to see it must be answered, viz., by an appeal to our con-
sciousness of WHAT-WE-ARE. " Jesus answered and said, Even
if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true " (John, viii. 14).
Philosophy, however, has assumed mistakenly that this
" Self" is witness to itself as One ; as separatedly a UNIX-Being,
all by its Self in a universe of othered selves, with difference
between its Self and even its 'God.' Jesus transcends this con-
cept of ' Self.' His witness of Himself is true, "For" He says,
" I know whence I came, and whither I go." This Man who in his
flesh debates with men in flesh, asserts this consciousness. But
He just bears witness of Himself, out of His consciousness of
What-He-Is. And He sums up His Being, (i.) as the present
'personal' Fact; (ii.) the Origin of that fact; and (iii.) the
future of that fact. Now this is the sum of knowledge about
anything that Is. What it is ; whence it came, whither it goes :
what is permanent : what is in the Flow. No other witness-
ing can add to the truth of such a fact. But, clearly, to know
whence we come and whither we go, is to state a consciousness
which far outstrips the consciousness of that particular,
isolated ' Self which is so confidently asserted in our philo-
sophies. If there was any need, which there is not, to dis-
tinguish them in terms, the one consciousness might be desig-
564 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
nated I-Am, and the other, I Am. The latter philosophical
I Am, or " Self," is never conscious of whence it comes nor of
whither it goes. But, strangely enough, it is said to have a
consciousness of Time, yet only as of an " eternal Now." Yet
there can be no consciousness of a Now without a ' past '
behind it and a 'future' before it, as Hegel rightly tells us.
Now, this ' I ' consciousness of Jesus, contrary to our first glance
of it, knows no limitations of Time. At no period of the Past
was this * I ' of His apart from it, and at no period of the
Future can there be prevision of this ( I ' as not there. The
Self-Consciousness of our philosophies has nothing identical with
it. For in the above expression Jesus takes up the common
terms and conceptions of Time and transcends them in a con-
sciousness of Timelessness.
464. For this is Jesus' Experience. He knows whence
He is, and whither He goes. His experience is as distinct
and true of the Future as it is of the Past, strange as the
statement may at first appear. That is, His being begins
with no Past and ends with no Future, which is just our own
consciousness. It is indeed that experience that does not include
Time at all within itself. It is Timeless Experience, the true
experience of our ' I AM.' It explains why Jesus could speak of
His Future as if it were Past. " I have overcome the world."
" I come again, and will receive you." " I am with you always
even to the end of the world." " And I am no more in the
world." " I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven," as
implying the close of all evil in the Universe. Similarly, He
sees the Future moving under His influence alone, His Spirit
controlling all things, and His presence dominating the
" Father's House." He so fills out the Future of our con-
ceptions till nothing finds room in it save Himself. It is His
consciousness of omniscience, and omnipresence.
465. This means a consciousness of no Time, and simply of
'I AM.' Such a consciousness of 'coming' and 'going'
therefore has only conceptual but not existential value. Such a
consciousness cannot be conceived to be based on the category
of LIFE, for life always pre-supposes time in its motions, now,
then when, etc., and consequent changes of birth, growth, death,
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 565
etc. The consciousness of Space as His conscious 'I AM,' alone
rationalises the content of it. He asserts His ' I AM ' conscious-
ness to be absolutely True, and independent of Time. All
the Past could never have made it truer, and all the Future
holds in it no power, or possibility, of falsifying it. It is above
the Relativity of Life, and the seeming perpetual flux of Time.
It is, indeed, because both categories of Life and Time are
withdrawn from His consciousness of What- He- Is, that He knows
His " witness " of Himself to' be invincibly true. And we never
can by any possibility know; or realise , any thing to be absolutely,
infinitely, unnegatably Real and True, without excluding the con-
sciousness of Life and Time from its content. And this conscious-
ness is never realisable except on the basis of the ' I AM ' as
Space-Being. But based on this consciousness of the concrete,
the rationality and absolute truth of the 'I AM.' consciousness
is at once guaranteed to the full. We can then say, "No Past
can alter, or could have altered, That-I-AM, and no Time to
come can find even a way of admission into That-I-AM to effect
it in any possible way." This ' I AM ' puts on Life and Time
as a raiment, and again ' lays down ' both.
466. Consequently, Jesus rends the narrow limitations and
isolations of the modern Self-Consciousness. " My witness is
true, for I know whence I come and whither I go." And He
knew it from Himself, in His own ' I Am.' His knowledge
springs from its native well in Himself. And nothing we know
is true knowledge till it is made whole with our ' I am ' know-
ledge. Truth is based on the unlimited Space-reference of the
Self to Being. He has knowledge of Himself beyond every
'whence' and every ' whither.' Jesus finds no limits, edges, or
verges, to His consciousness of That-He-Is. Nor do we.
Therefore His 'I AM,' 'I KNOW,' are self-contained, self-
originated, and sufficient for Truth. There is no need to claim
extraneous evidence for its truthfulness in the Historical, the
Mysterious, or the Miraculous. He simply maintains, in this
1 1 Am,' the most important of all epistemological facts, viz.,
That the I-consciousness contains in itself, and for itself, an
absolute verification of What-Is.
467. And it is here perhaps that we should emphasise once
566 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
more the inadequacy of H. Spencer's * Universal Postulate ' the
" inconceivableness of the negative " (p. 48). For authentication
of Reality by an incapacity to think it otherwise, sustains
nothing except such incapacity to think. Such a postulate
never accounts for the absolute affirmation of Reality in " I am."
Philosophy should have followed the example of Jesus and have
accepted the full content of affirmation which is always given in
the 'I Am' consciousness, and which is found nowhere else.
There was no necessity to affirm anything through negatives.
The feeble conceptual negations of Thought are always sunk far
below the self-predications of the conscious ' I.' And the grand
consciousness of Jesus is unfailingly Self -Predicative. Nothing
characterises, or can characterise Him save Himself. And this
is the consciousness we all possess in our " I Am." And as it
is always equal to, and indistinguishable from, the self-predica-
tion of Space-Being, the Reality affirmed in what-we-are is also
equal to, and indistinguishable from, the Reality of All that Is.
But coming down to the level of conceptual Thought, it is
impossible that any Thought can give absolute witness to
Truth unless such Thought springs from a consciousness which
is certainly sustained by all time past and all time to come.
Moreover, both such Thought and such experience must be
consciously sustained by our consciousness of That on which
both Past and Future are themselves based. This is the
force of the statement "My witness is true, for I know whence
I come and whither I go." This implies that Jesus is above
Time. He knows First and Last, Beginning and End, for, in
the I Am consciousness, Being is given, out of which Time itself
issues, as it is conceived in our judgments. Without this con-
sciousness no Absolute consciousness could be given of Truth
or Reality. Spencer's ' universal ' postulate is only as universal
as the sphere of thought, or Mind-Motion, and does not
guarantee that what is unnegatable just now will also be
unnegatable in the future.
Now, * I AM ' is not merely sustained by all Time past and
all Time to come as based in categorical c Matter ' or in categorical
' Life,' for these are but conscious Motions in us. We are
conscious that '/ AM' is a consciousness of Being which no Time
past ever created or made^ begat or initiated^ and which no Time
to come can possibly de-create ', annul, or change in the very smallest.
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, 1 AM 567
It rises far out and above Time and far out and above Life, and
all relativity is subsumed in it. And this it is to be conscious
Whence we have come and Whither we go; but within the
narrow consciousness of Life and Time, it is not possible to
know either the one or the other. And we think that it is just
because Science tries to discover an Absolute Origin of Being
within the categories of Matter, Motion, Life, and Time, that
she always fails.
On the other hand, it may seem that this view supports J. S.
Mill's test for Truth as ' Uniformity of Experience.' It actually
does not ; for this is not Experience that is ' uniform ' as
compared with experience which is not ' uniform.' It is
Experience which is Absolutely Whole. We do not, e.g.,
conceive Space to be merely ' uniform.' We must conceive
Space as not one but Whole-without-parts, and absolutely so.
Therefore our consciousness of Space rises above the relativity
of One-ness, or ' uniformity,' and gives solely a consciousness in
which neither Time, Motion, Life, nor Matter, obtains ; and it
is this consciousness which is given in our consciousness of
What-We-Are.
The I AM Truth then is the well of all truth. All other
witnessing to truth, is secondary to its own. That is, any other
testimony to Truth of Being, must necessarily be a judgment
given on a lower level of testimony, and from a less sufficient
basis than its own. The Space-Being contains in it every
Mystery, every Wonder, and only shares with every miraculous
Relativity somewhat of itself.
468. The imposing authority of the I AM consciousness is,
of course, not patent in common experience. Analogously, we
are never conscious of the thought which is answerable for our
movements of hands and feet. Sensible contact with outer
things is the patent consciousness. It is similar with the
position of the I AM consciousness in the great truths of
scientific discovery. An apple falls to the ground. At once
our consciousness of Being is put in prison-bonds till the reason
why the apple fell opens the door of liberty to us. " Weight,
Energy," say the materialists. But the limitations of this
Energy and Weight ? " Extends to all things in the Universe,"
says Newton. But he never says concerning this energy and
568 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
weight " whence it comes and whither it goes." He does not free
it from Time and Change.
Now, the I Am is conscious of certifying the truth of the
'weight' of the Universe as well as the 'weight' of the apple.
It finds itself outside or independent of this c weight/ even
as it is conscious of being 'outside/ or independent of
both apple and universe. The ' I ' says " I am not apple,
I am not the Cosmos." It affirms itself, that is, as different
from both. But, why ? Simply because the ' I Am ' yields a
consciousness of Being to which both our concepts of apple
and Cosmos fail to rise. The ' I ' is conscious of all else
as conceptually conditioned Being, and is not conscious of
conditioned Being for itself. It is not conscious of Matter for
itself; it is not conscious of Motion in itself. It is ' I.' But
Science stops at the Force which betrays both apple and
Cosmos ; calls it ' Gravitation ' ; and so rests. The ' I/ however,
has a consciousness beyond all that, and which includes all that,
and calls it SPACE-Being. It asserts an authoritative judgment
beyond what is ' known.' Simply, Is. And in this conscious-
ness the I-consciousness finds all that Is, itself included. It
authorises a consciousness of Whole-Being, in short ; an authority
to which nothing within the discoveries of Science has the
slightest pretence. There is no authority equal to the I AM.
For it affirms Being, Is, in which all our conceptions of
' particularities ' rise and fall like waves on the sea. Naturally,
then, Jesus appealed to the highest authority when He appealed
to His conscious ' I AM ' for witness of Truth. Even our
conception of ' God ' is not certified to us through any higher
authority.
469. The Past, then, to Him holds no mystery, and the
Future can yield none. Looking backward, as we say, the Past
stands on the same basis of Being as the Present : *>., LIFE.
We have a consciousness of Living. This connotes Life-Giving;
a Father. All Life then must be Father-Life, far as to the
uttermost of living-being. But this is Nature, Cosmos, Universe,
and Motion which connotes Time. Does He see no more in the
Past? He sees Spirit, as QuiCKENER, as true Father, but
Being with no connotations of Life or Time, that is, of
Change, in it. Before Abraham was, before any person was, I
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 569
AM. He transcends the bases given in the Past of Life and
Time. For the expression " Before Abraham," gives the limit-
less. But every category negated in the Relativity of Life and
Time, is still all it was and infinitely more, in the conscious
I AM. He negates such fragmentary categorical isolations of
Being to return them as Whole-Being in the I AM consciousness.
470. And in this consciousness of Jesus, we discern how far
He supersedes the consciousness of Buddha For in the con-
sciousness laid bare to us in Buddha's Eight-fold Path, every
relativity is undoubtedly negated to nothingness or to space,
but there it remains. The relative-person Buddha is negated to
Space-Being, but he never has a consciousness that this Space-
Being is Whole-Being with What-he-is, or that it yields every
relative quality of personality back in Whole-Personality. The
Buddha- personality vanishes in a Being which is always conceived
as different Being from Buddha. He never finds himself whole
with such Being in the consciousness of himself as space-being.
But this is just what we find in the consciousness of Jesus. He
comes more and more to Himself through the negation of Son-
Being, Father-Being, Spirit-Being, and all Being that is conceived
as Relative-Being, till in Space-Being He finds the full conscious-
ness of Himself, and realises the all that is given Him in the
* I '-consciousness to be more than "personality" or "super-
personality." All the categories of relative being are, through
the space-being of them, transcended and made Whole in the
' I,' or Is category ; Whole with Space-Being.
471. An absolute verification of itself as Truth is thus given in
the consciousness I AM, and no truth is ever found to transcend
it as truth, or Reality. Even when we say ' God,' it is always
through the consciousness of ' I ' that we can affirm such Being.
No truth is ever found to have a wider or deeper scope of Being.
The * I ' having the true consciousness of wholeness with Space,
Is, has no possible consciousness of transcendence by any other
consciousness. We cannot, as Spencerites would say, conceive
anything that could contradict it. It is itself the Whole-Truth
of Being. And being so, it follows that all other truth will
regulate itself under the I -consciousness, and become apparently
' Relative ' to it. In short, every truth will seem to move and change
570 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
under this Truth which is unchangeable. Hence the Past, the
Present, and the Future, or the great field of the Historical, as a
consciousness, will be subsumed under the I-consciousness, and
will not be able to offer a fuller knowledge of * Self than
that which the I-consciousness already possesses in itself of
What-it-IS.
That is to say, History, in any form, will find it impossible
to surpass or contribute to the knowledge we all have of What-
we-are. History, indeed, is in this view discerned to be but the
conscious ' I am ' revealing itself, all Relativity changing " as
clay under the seal." In this I-consciousness, it is clear, we
transcend both the historical Jesus and the ecclesiastical Christ,
and reach the common experience in which all men realise
themselves one. Here, also, we find the source of our being able
to view heaven and earth as passing away without any fear of
being affected by their passing. The facts of the Past as of the
Present fall far below the fulness of Truth which we find testified
in the I-consciousness of What-we-are. No Truth in the
Physical, Moral, Ethical, Social, Political, or any other depart-
ment of universal Knowledge, is even half so undeniably
certified of its truthfulness as that of the ' I Am ' Truth. Indeed,
if the truth professed by these historical products of the whole
Past were as fully vouched in their Truth as is the ' I AM ' truth,
we should have no possible consciousness of their Relativity to
What-We-Are. We should never find the dividing line between
them and ourselves, in the sphere of testimony. History can
only give conceptual fragments of Truth. Therefore, every
'Law' that moves through these historical spheres, is less
perfect to our knowledge than is the 'I Am' Law, or Whole-
Law. And it is just for this reason that Jesus found all the
Moral Laws of His Past inferior to that Law of His present
consciousness of What- He-Was. He found, in the consciousness
of His ' I AM,' a ' law ' of perfect-being which wiped out every
remnant of perfection to which they made profession. And for
the same reason, He could calmly regard the ' Sin ' which was
created by reference to such 'law' as being as invalid and
limited as the ' law ' which affirmed such ' Sin.' And the
inference that follows is simple. The only true Sin, would be the
Sin that could be created by reference to the I AM conscious-
ness. But, as already pointed out, this is impossible, for
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 571
such reference de-creates all duality of Being. The Holy
Spirit convicts the world of Sin, of Righteousness, and of
Judgment (John, xvi. 8), by reference to the Jesus-Person ; the
' I am Man ' reference ; the highest reference of Moral Life
on the earth, through which all Sin in excelsis is created for
Mankind (xvi. 9), and which is the utmost possible conscious-
ness which any man can have of Moral Relativity. If, that
is, Jesus be the Light of the World, the world will only
know its darkness by His light ; if He is the Way for the world,
the world will only know errors by defection from Him ; if He
is Truth and Life for the world, the world will only know its
falsities and deaths by Him.
472. And it is this highest Sin-reference to the Jesus-Person
which the world is accepting to-day as its Ultimate reference
for Sin. But while this is true, it is only Truth in its Relativity,
and is not the full Truth of the I AM consciousness. As Jesus
teaches all Sin-reference to be Himself as the ultimate sin-
reference, so He teaches that all Sin-abolition is by reference
to Himself. When man refers to the I Am consciousness, he
cannot find, any more than Jesus, a consciousness of sin in it.
It is space-clear.
473. Jesus therefore can say, "I said therefore unto you, that
ye shall die in your sins, for except ye believe That I Am, ye
shall die in your sins" (John, viii. 24). "They said therefore
unto Him, WHO art thou ? Jesus said unto them, Wholly That
which I now declare to you." T^i/ ap\riv OTL KOL AaAo> vfj.iv
(verse 25). We translate so, admitting the difficulties of the
passage, but accepting at the same time, with the American
Revisers, that Jesus is straightly answering a straightly put
question, without any attempt to avoid its point by a counter
interrogative thrust. The OTL translated 'that* in verse 24,
is the same which is rendered ' that which ' in this verse 25, and
again 'that* in verse 28. It has true reference to "Essential
Being" and is an exhaustive answer. The appeal of Jesus is to
His essential Being by its Ultimate affirmation '/ Am* No
truth refers, or can refer, itself to higher testimony.
474. For by saying, ' I AM,' ' That I Am,' Jesus does not
572 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
merely mean 'I Exist' ( 451). This is evident when we
read, " Except ye believe that I exist, ye shall die in your
sins." The Jews were not disputing His existence. They
quite believed Jesus the man to be before them as real as
they themselves were. They were disputing Who he was,
not if He was. In their question, "Who art thou?" His
existence is wholly accepted but not His " That I Am " state-
ments. He was, however, asserting Himself as " That- Which"
(cm), when believed, all sin-consciousness then vanished from
a man's convictions, die whensoever he might. He could not
then die in his sins. But this implies for Jesus Himself, that
He had referred Himself and all sin-consciousness to this
same consciousness of Being, and entered thereby into an
experiential consciousness of sinlessness concerning Himself.
His ' I AM ' consciousness transcended ' I exist,' or Cosmic
Being, and gave Himself a pure space-consciousness, wherein
no consciousness of sin was possible. It was also an affirma-
tion that the realisation of sinlessness in Himself was possible
to the Jews, by realising Who-they-were themselves, through
knowing and believing W 7 hat- He-was.
Jesus, however, acknowledges that the Jews cannot as yet
understand Him, and at once comes down to the level of
Relationship of that which they know. He speaks to them
then of the Father- Person. But still, "They perceived not
that He spake unto them of The Father. Jesus therefore
said, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know
That I Am, and that I do nothing of myself, but as the Father
taught me, I speak these things " (verse 28). Similar counsel is->
that given in Mark, ix. 9, " He charged them that they sKalr
tell no man what things they had seen, save when the Son of
Man should have risen again from the dead." They would
have then a fuller insight into That-He-was.
475. And this seems to refer to that knowledge of a man,
which forces itself into the convictions of men, when they see
him maintain unto death a steadfast witness, by his negation of
every instinct and preference which all men follow when Life
is placed in the scales against such maintenance. And it
carries in it the consciousness of Jesus that the Life-Truth
must ever give way before the maintenance of the I AM
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 573
Truth, even as all Relative-Truth must ultimately yield to
Whole-Truth, or as Person-Truth must be sacrificed for Space-
Truth. All their knowledge of Him was based upon, and
bounded by, the Life-Values ; and all their perceptions and
conceptions of Him as Man, Jesus of Nazareth, Teacher,
Master, Elijah, Messiah, were construed on the foundations
of the categories of Life and Time, and all that these cate-
gories involve. The command not to tell any one regarding
Him, till He was risen from the dead, and the promise that
they would then know What-He-Was when He had been
* lifted up,' was the acknowledgment on Jesus' part that it
requires both Life and Death, and the consciousness of Life beyond
Death, to reveal That- Man-Is. And this is an affirmation which
finds constant corroboration in the consciousness of every one
who has been bereft of friends ; for only after death do they
seem to be fully known. Life and Time really conceal That-
We-Are. We never really know Being until we have made
both Life and Time our "stepping stones to higher things."
Jesus therefore spoke in correct order of Values when He asked
the Jews to 'believe' That-He-Was, in order to effect the
abolition of Sin, for this 'belief is sufficient to beget a con-
sciousness of the Nothingness of this relativity ; but it was only
after Death that they could actually know Him, to the extent
at least of His true relationship to the Father, or all that heaven
and earth implied, and all that Life and Death environed.
Within this sphere of Being, He could say, " As the Father
taught me I speak these things." But when in the 58th verse
of this same discussion Jesus affirms "Before Abraham was,
I AM," all relativity of believing and knowing Him vanishes.
We transcend all consciousness of Life and Time, Son and
Father connotations, and that Self-Affirmation of Being which is
in every man, stands simple and alone. And this is the conscious-
ness which transcends the consciousness of Sin, as well as the
consciousness of the Father, and gives solely the consciousness
of our Space-Being, transcending all Life- Relativity. It is clearly
the highest consciousness which Jesus possessed of Himself,
and subsumes in itself both categories of Being usually termed
Divine and Human. The ' I am man ' consciousness links up
in itself all time, and every relation of Man, but the unrelated
'I Am' consciousness transcends Abraham's day, and all
574 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
time, and is before even a consciousness of * personality,'
Abraham's or any other. It is purely a consciousness of
Whole-Being.
476. It is this apparent double consciousness in man which
leads to the confusions of philosophy in its assertions of
Kantean ' Thing-in- Itself and Fichtean 'Ego,' as somehow
both Ultimate Being and yet somehow both separated in ex-
perience. This also leads, in theology, to conceptions of ' God '
as Related Persons and Unrelated Godhead ; alone in isolated
Unit-Being forever. Hence we have the twin realms of
Intellect and Belief, Faith and Reason, Natural and Spiritual,
Matter and Mind. The ' I am man ' consciousness is the
fountainhead of the isolated vSV^-consciousness, and explains
sufficiently a vast area of human experience, and probably
accounts for all we know as Nature, and Christianity as Dogma
and Creed ; but it is undoubtedly a consciousness which Jesus
surpassed and subsumed in one still higher, and one highest
of all. It is this consciousness which still waits to fulfil in man
a profounder experience than he has yet known, and one which
commands the future as certainly as the ' I am man ' conscious-
ness commands the Past and our Present.
For the consciousness in Jesus' 'I AM,' as vividly 'knows'
the Future as it ' knows ' the Past. The consciousness is of
Whole-Being, and the Future holds in it no mystery from it.
His disciples understood Jesus to have such knowledge of the
Future, for they cried out, " Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and
speakest no proverb. Now we know that thou knowest all things,
and needest not that any man should ask thee : by this we
believe that thou earnest forth from God " (John, xvi. 28-30). His
knowledge of Whence and Whither^ summing up as it did, all
knowledge of human experience, realised and unrealised,
determined Him as a Divine Being in their belief. But,
clearly, it is simply His ' I AM ' consciousness which affirms
such knowledge both for Past, Present, and Future. It
enabled him to say, " In the world ye shall have tribulation : but
be of good cheer : I have overcome the world " in the very hour
when the relativity of Time, and all it brings forth of broken and
blurred apprehension of Being, might have declared to Him,
" All is lost, and Doomed forever." No development in history,
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 575
nothing in the womb of time, could leap from Future-Being
to surprise Him. This is the comforting Spirit of Truth for all
ages. Jesus thus transcends our categories of Life and Time,
and He can only do so by taking space as His conscious basis
of whole-Being, which sublates both.
477. Therefore, in looking forward to Death, He calmly
says, " And whither I go, ye know the way " (John, xiv. 4). To
Thomas, and as yet to us, this assumed knowledge on the
part of common men was astonishingly queer. To Thomas,
as even yet to us, all was relatively clear and unmysterious
in the Past and in the Present, but in the Future !
" Lord, we know not whither thou goest : how know we the
way ? " Thomas felt it most exasperating to have to con-
tradict such gross obvious ignorance on the part of Jesus.
But to Jesus, the Future is just as clear and as ordered as is
the Past or Present. The Way thither is Himself. He is
the Future as He was the Past. " I am the Way, and the
Truth, and the Life." The ' I AM ' tells the same fact yet in
every man. What-we-are Is before Abraham was: what-we-
are Is, after all days. " Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my words shall not pass away." There is nothing for the
Future to reveal except conceptual realisations of what is all given
within the I, the Space-Being, Whole-with-all-Being. Hence,
we are 'not to regard Jesus as just speaking hopeful picture-
things when He describes the " Father's House." The fact of
Life-experience is as certain in future human realisation as it
has been in the Past. Such Fact and Process of Fact are space-
true ; before the world was ; and when the world shall be no
more. From the Father-Being Jesus is born, " and comes " ;
back into the Father-Being He is born, and "goes" Experi-
ence is not new before birth into this world, or into the ' next.'
It is whole-experience, and our consciousness or unconsciousness
of it is but its motion of concept in us. No man has a con-
sciousness of ever beginning, nor of ever ending : there is no
time in the I-consciousness. Our consciousness is of Being,
Is, but it is not even of time present, seeing that no Past nor
Future exists behind or before it. Is = whole.
478. Jesus says He goes 'to prepare a place' for His disciples.
576 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
There is therefore relative Life-Being in the * Father's
House,' just as there is here. The ' place ' prepared is an abiding
place, a ' resting place,' but there is no consciousness in Jesus
that such * place ' means permanence of Being. The Father,
and the Father's House, are to Jesus, His furthest conscious-
ness of Objective Being, Motional Being, Being Going-On.
Similarly, there is order and sequence, there as here, and
just as it is essential for one generation to come into
the world to prepare a place for the following one, so it is
essential for all that die to go before the others that are to
follow. It is a vision of absolute Order. Life and Death are
not, to Jesus, the playthings of passion and chance. In the
immensity of their multiplicity and complexity of 'coming'
and 'going,' there is absolute reason and purpose at work.
They are themselves but motions of a consciousness which
cannot be conceived as less than Space-Being. We may call
it Whole -Consciousness, Space -Being, Whole -Being, but our
consciousness of it is always the same, wholly identical
with our consciousness of What-we-are. The process is due to
conceptual Thought.
In the ' I AM' consciousness, therefore, it does not surprise
us that Jesus found neither * Time ' nor ' Eternity.' These
Relativities are subsumed in Whole-Being. All the Glory
which men usually picture in Eternity, Jesus can see in the
Past ' before the world was ' (John, xvii. 5). To us, in our poems,
psalms, hymns, and ' fancy-free ' Literature, all Beatitude lies
beyond Death. To Jesus, with His consciousness of Whole-
Being, it lay before Birth. But it is no less beyond Death to
Him. He was Loved "before the foundation of the world."
But He also sees Glory in Death. " Father, the hour is come,
Glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee." This glory is
in the Past, in the Future, and it is Here in the Present, for " I
glorified thee on the earth," " I am glorified in them," " the glory
which thou hast given me, / have given unto them." Being is
Whole, and our ' I am ' consciousness of it, at any moment,
gives the same revelation of it that Jesus has interpreted for us
all. Therefore, we never can lose anything in it. Jesus goes
away, but He comes again a * second ' time, and every time, and
at all times ; we never can have the experience of being
"orphaned" (John, xiv. 18). "For I am with you always"
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 577
(Matt, xxviii. 20). We always have His own experience of never
being ' alone,' for the Father-Being, or Life-Being, is with us.
Life was for us before time began, and Life is with us when
Time ends. There is Life, and Life more abundant, Eternal
Life. And as all Life-Being is consciously transcended in our
Space-Being, so Jesus transcends this consciousness in the
Future also, for He says, " I am not yet ascended unto the
Father." " I am ascending unto my Father and your Father,
and my God and your God" (John, xx. 17). While Life is a
consciousness, so must also the Father-Being be, but Jesus'
consciousness of Being is not absolutely bounded by the
Father- or Life -consciousness, any more than it is in our own
consciousness. He transcends it in that consciousness which,
before man had known either relation of son or father for either
himself or any one else, gave him a consciousness of GOD-
Being. This still remains in our ' I AM ' consciousness, for we
can no more conceive 'GOD J to be less than Space-Being
than we can conceive ourselves so to be. The glory of the
Son and of the Father are subsumed under this glory of
Whole-Space-Being.
The Atonement.
479. We venture now to assert that it is on this ground that
what is called * Forgiveness of Sin ' can be truly rationalised.
In all theological treatment of Sin-forgiveness, Sin is conceived
in some way as never de-created, but only blotted out, covered
over, washed away, and certainly never absolutely extinguished in
the memory of either Man or God. Punishment of sin is
averted, the sinner is protected from the stroke of Law, or of
' God/ by Grace, or Love, but the Sin is never de-created. The
conception of forgiveness, on such relative grounds, cannot be
rationalised. Sin is to all eternity a memory to every one
connected with it ; and such a memory, if possible absolutely,
would draw an everlasting shadow of bitterness across all hearts.
But the I AM consciousness as affirming Space-Being, also
affirms this contingency to be an impossible one. Sin never has
had existence except in the human judgment, and within the
boundaries of a Relativity of Being which human judgment alone
has created^ believed^ and known. It has been born ' out of the
2 O
578 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
heart of man,' and under an imperfect belief and knowledge of
THAT-Man-Is. Every conception of man and God, of Man-
Being and God-Being, has been created by men, in the same
way, but never affirmed in the I AM consciousness with the
same absolute affirmation of That- Itself. For Sin can only
be assured as Fact, on condition that Dual-Being, Man and God,
is assured. When this Duality is swept away by the negating
force of an affirmation which affirms Being to be Whole as
Space, the relation of Sin is also swept away with it ; and every
consciousness of ' I AM/ in Jesus or in Man universally, gives
this unnegatable affirmation of Space-Clearness of Being. And
every man then finds the confirmation of that Sinlessness of
Man, and that Sinless World for which Jesus has taught all
men to pray, to be not merely a forlorn hope, but truly nigh,
and even at the doors.
480. For the fundamental principle latent in men's con-
sciousness with regard to the abolition, forgiveness, or remission
of sin, is that of reduction of the duality and differences of
two persons to a One-ness. It is conceived as making At-
<9^-Ment. The duality and difference is supposed to con-
sist in Being, in barriers of debt owed, or in judgments of
law not yet satisfied, or generally, in two separate beings
separated also by Debt -being, Law -being, or Judgment-
being. When these being -conditions are swept away,
'washed away,' by 'water' or by 'blood,' or by any means
which will give a true conviction that the Duality, division,
or difference, has been reduced between the Two Persons,
then such an At-one-ment is effected as makes it possible
for the One to conceive the Other as At One. They are
conceived, at least, to be at one Mind with each other.
Sufficient material is found to create such a judgment, and
such a conviction.
Now, this was the furthest conception of the reduction of the
Duality and differences of Two Persons, before Jesus entered the
world. But He brought an entirely new conception of At-one-
ment of Two Persons. He said " I and the Father are One."
Two Persons were conceived as being not merely At One Mind
about themselves, but as being One-Being. Ontologically as
well as Ethically, the Duality, and with it the differences of the
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 579
Persons, was abolished. It is this attitude to the whole question
of Being which altered for Jesus His view of the entire question
of Sin. Relationship of Personality to Personality was shown by
Jesus to extend further than mere relative conditions. Nothing
could limit the relationship of Two Persons short of their being
One-Being. And hence He could truly abolish all conceptions
of Duality, and Relativity, and consequently every conception
of Sin as an Absolute Fact. He vindicated thereby the world-
old tendencies of men, ever urging them to one-ness of mind
and action, as having root in an unrealised Consciousness of
one-ness of Being, man with man, and all men in and with
* The Father,' or The Universe.
Rationally, this was necessary. Otherwise, it would have
been a sheer impossibility to reduce the duality of Judgment.
So long as the one was conceived as separate in being from the
other, nothing could remove the possibility of Judgment, the one
upon the other, and the possibility of Sin was thus never wholly
removed, either for 'time' or for 'eternity.' Jesus abolishes
the possibility of Sin-judgments by first abolishing all Duality
between the Two Beings, and then, in the consciousness that He
and the Father were One-Being, He could speak of all that the
Father had as having been given to Him ; of all Father-
judgment as having been committed to Him ; and of the Father
as judging no man, that is, of being at one with all Men. For
the Father was one with the man Jesus, and was no longer
merely related to Him. The conception of relation was de-created.
It is therefore only an extension of the same consciousness
which allows Him to say, " I in them and Thou in me " ; " Abide
in me and I in you"; "The Father in me doeth His works,"
and many other such expressions. " The kingdom of heaven is at
hand," and "is within you," are only cumulative phrases for the
same consciousness. Heaven and earth, Man and ' God,' were not
Two, but One-Being. Duality, both as a predicate of persons and
the Cosmos, was found to have no Reality as Absolute Truth.
And as He opens His ministry with the proclamation of this
consciousness of At-0 #-ment, calling upon all to ' repent,' or to
return to themselves in order to realise it, so He also ends
with it.
481. " All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and
580 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
on earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations" (Matt, xxviii. 18). Unity of Being was really the
heart of the Good News which He sent men to proclaim. He
certainly never commands the Church to judge mankind of
their sin. " Make disciples." But He does show that He
denounces all sin-judgment by Himself upon the world. He
first denudes The Father of all judgment upon man, and finally
denudes Himself of the same judgment, and bequeathes it
to the Church under the same possibility of final abolition.
This .important teaching is clearly seen in the interview He
held with His Disciples, and in the Commission which He gave
them regarding Sin.
482. " Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you.
As the Father hath sent me> even so send I you. And when He
had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them,
Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye forgive,
they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they
are retained " (John, xx. 21-23).
All judgment upon Sin is committed to the Church by Jesus
even as the Father sent Him with all judgment committed to
Himself. But now Jesus judges no more, even as the Father
did not judge ; not sending Him into the world to judge the
world but to save it. He must no longer be conceived as
a separate Being from the Father, and no longer a separate
person from Men, for He is in them, and to be with them to
the end of the world. The symbolic act of breathing upon
them, and asking them to receive or take the Holy Ghost,
could not interpret better His consciousness of Himself as
being the ' Holy Ghost.' It is the fulfilment of His promise
" I will not leave you orphans, I come unto you." This is
the day when they would know that He was their Father, that
He was in the Father, and that they were in Himself, and
Himself in them (John, xiv. 20). " Yet a little while, and
the world beholdeth me no more, but ye behold me :
because I live, and ye shall live." This is the fulfilment of
His promise, " Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and
I come to you " (John, xiv. 28). He had come to the same
men He had left. But He now comes as both Father and
Son (" We will come unto him and make our abode with
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 581
him," John, xiv. 23) and also as Holy Spirit, whom He asks
men to take and realise as their own Spirit
The important point to grasp in this charge to the Church,
regarding the forgiveness or retention of Sin, is the Whole-
Being of Son, Father, and Holy Ghost, as such consciousness
lies behind Jesus' words to the Apostles. The outpouring of the
Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost is a minor and unimportant
incident compared to this personal gift of the Spirit by Jesus.
There is indeed a certain weakness in the account of Acts, ii.
1-4 in the fact that the Spirit comes 'from heaven/ and not
from a personal source, whereas in Jesus' teaching, the Holy
Spirit comes from man and enters men. The church receives the
Spirit direct from Jesus Himself > and He is not mediated by
either ' fire ' or * rushing of a mighty wind.' Every term which
conveys the thought of ' God ' in it, as a Person^ such as Father
or Spirit, is, in the doctrine of Jesus, not separable from some
other Personality. The Son comes from the Father, the Spirit
from Father and Son. Child, Son of Man, Man, Father, Holy
Spirit, I am, are all connotive, in some way, of 'God '-Being,
as Jesus conceives it ; but the sublation of one ' person ' into the
other, in ascending Being, is never effected through any being
which connotes impersonality. But the ' spirit ' of Pentecost is
impersonal in source. It really represents the conception of the
Early Church rather than that of Jesus. For the Spirit has only
mediation from Jesus to the Church through His own 'person '
and theirs.
The God-consciousness is never divided in the mind of
Jesus, although the several Names under which He expresses
it seem to define separate ' persons.' Even in the term ' Spirit,'
the Space term for ' God,' personality is always affirmed, just as
personality is subsumed in the God-term below it ; and though
the same conception of ' God ' seems to change as each God-
term is sublated and affirmed, the ' God '-consciousness remains
whole, and the attitude towards Sin throughout remains the
same also. This is His fullest teaching on At-0-ment of
that 'God '-Being who could alone be conceived to wield
judgment upon Sin, and He reveals this Being as finally breath-
ing the spirit of a Father who sent Him not to judge but to save.
It is now committed to the Church alone to Judge Man, a fact
which was taught Peter, by himself, and as first fitted to receive
582 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
it, before the others (Matt. xvi. 16-19). Peter first grasped
the conception of Jesus as being " the Son of the living God,"
and judgment at once was surrendered to him. " Whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth," etc. (Matt. xvi. 19). Jesus stood
before Peter as being the Father who did not judge man. If
there was to be judgment in the world, it could then be
conceived as coming through man to man only, but never from
the Father to man, seeing that Jesus and the Father were One-
Being. It is the conception of Jesus as The Father seen of men
on earthy and not judging man, which is the important thing to
grasp in understanding both the charge given to Peter, and
to the Christian society as a whole, concerning remitting and
retaining sins.
The Church is therefore to go into all the world and preach,
but she is to go only in the spirit of that Father who sent Jesus
Y[\mse\f, judging no man. Jesus is clear on the matter. "As
the Father hath sent me, even so send I you" (John, xx. 21).
The Holy Ghost, who likewise judges no man, is breathed upon
her. The Church alone then confirms or annuls the judgment of
men upon sin. If she forgives, there is none higher who
condemns. If she annuls sin, there is none else who will
judge. It lies solely in her hands to forgive or to retain sin. Sin
is not a matter henceforth between God and man, between heaven
and earth ; it is wholly a question between man and man upon
the earth. " Receive ye," or rather, imperatively, " Take ye "
(Xa/3ere) " the Holy Spirit ; then realise that no duality of being
exists between my being and your being, for you and I are
One-Being. Go therefore, in this Father-Spirit, this Jesus-
Spirit, and breathe upon all men this Holy Spirit, and enable
them to realise also that you are not merely 'Brothers,' but
One-Being with them, and therefore not judging or retaining
sins for them." "That they may all be one, even as Thou,
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us."
For the Church herself, there is first, " that they may be
one, even as we are one, I in them, and Thou in me, that they
may be perfected into one " ; then that, finally, " the world may
know that Thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as Thou
lovedst me" (John, xvii. 21-23).
In insisting upon Unity for men, on the basis of the Unity of
Son and Father, Jesus plainly indicates that One Life is the highest
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 583
category in which this conception of duality is sublated. Still,
it is sufficient to annul relationship, and the possibility of Sin-
judgment between them, seeing that they are One-Being in
One Life. The conception of Unity annuls the conception of
dual-personalities which is necessary to a judgment of sin or
righteousness, evil or good. And no more than Unity of Being
can be predicated on such a basis. We cannot predicate Whole-
Being of Life alone. And even though we include the Holy
Spirit, no more than Unity of Being can be postulated, if we
insist that the Spirit is a distinct Personality by Himself.
Yet, if He were also conceptually sublated in Unity of Being on
the same Life-basis, it would be quite sufficient to annul the
Conception of Sin as a possible predicate. But when Spirit is
taken equal to Space-Being, and lifted above the Life-basis of
Being, the last remnant of all relationship vanishes, and Sin as
a Conception between dual beings becomes absolutely impossible
and unthinkable. Our consciousness then is of Whole-Being,
and of Sin as having no absolute validity in Being.
483. First, we grasp the grand fact that the " Persons " in the
Godhead are Unit- Being ; second, that this Unit-Being is
Father-Being, judging no man, but One with Man, Jesus,
whom men crucify ; third, that this Jesus-Man, returns to His
betrayers, and to His slayers, and does not judge them of Sin,
but rather breathes upon them a Most Holy Spirit, and so
sends them to all the world in the same spirit as the Father-
Being sent Him, that the world also, with the Church, may
realise the At-0^-ment of all Men in Being and in love, and
attain to the Consciousness of Sinlessness though yet conscious
of dying.
Jesus teaches undoubtedly an At-one-ness. But it is not a
mere ethical At-one-ness. It is Ontological One-ness. The
absolute necessity for this teaching is quite apparent, for if One-
ness of being had not existed in Being, it never could have been
conceived as possible for Mode of Being. Our consciousness of
the One-ness of Being, all Being, is the foundation for a possible
consciousness of Ethical One-ness. That is to say, Let every
man act and believe that he is a distinct One from every Other
One, and Judgment must ensue, and Sin forever reign over the
earth. But let every man act and believe and know and say as
584 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
Jesus did, " I and the Other are one," and all relative judgment
becomes impossible, and Sin is de-created to Space-clearness of
being. Every man will then find it impossible to " die in his
sin," or to conceive that any sin as a relativity has ever existed
in the Whole-Consciousness of Whole-Being, that is, ' GOD ' ; or
that sin can be for either himself or GOD an unnegatable
memory. He will find, as a matter of fact, that Sin has no
higher reference than conceptualised LAW, which is itself not
affirmed by our highest consciousness of Being, THAT-WE-ARE,
nor sustained by the highest judgment, I AM.
Repentance and the Space-Consciousness.
484. Neither are we now surprised that Jesus should insist
so much on REPENTANCE. It is the true, direct, and only path
to the space-consciousness of What-we-are. "Think within-
ward." " Turn in upon yourselves." " Come to yourselves, and
find there the knowledge of What-you-are." " Take truth, and
therein believe that you can only think yourselves as NOTHING ;
as Space-Being." " Be poor in spirit."
It is the primary knowledge, nay, the primary basis of
knowledge, for all knowledge waits to be corrected by the
knowledge of That-We-Are. For no knowledge is so con-
cretely based as is this knowledge. All other knowledge is
by comparison wobbling and treacherous. Why does man
constantly judge all other knowledge to be finite, to be limited,
and to be crowded with evidence of imperfection ? It is simply
because he is, above all, conscious that such knowledge is based
in a conception or judgment of Being which never rises level to
that consciousness which he possesses of What-he-Is himself.
And from this consciousness of his ' I AM ' he can judge all
other judgments, and find them wanting.
It is this I AM consciousness that ' overcomes the world,'
and can give ' Peace/ and 'Joy' and 'another Comforter,' from
the deepest shadow of Death. It is this that means Absolute
Beatitude, and of which the beatitude of the father and the
prodigal son, is but a faint reflection. The Space-consciousness
equates with the repentance of the son. He was simply
' nothing/ He ' came to himself.' He negated ail the ' qualities '
he knew of himself, and in this consciousness he knew himself
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 585
more fully, and attained a profounder satisfaction than he ever
knew when he retained every quality of his being which made
him real to the world. There is no joy so deep, so imperishable,
or so worthy the term * divine/ as in really knowing THAT-WE-
ARE. For then we know no sunderance from father, friend,
earth or heaven. There are no absolute isolations. We
transcend broken laws to find the Law that cannot be broken,
and surpass the distracted sex- and social-judgments of divided
relationships, c Divine ' or ' human,' to rest in the individable
consciousness of What-Being-Is.
485. "REPENTANCE," then, is not merely 'sorrow for sin.'
Fundamentally, it is the equivalent word by which Jesus
phrases the old Grecian dictum of the Delphic Oracle, " Know
Thyself." It has been the experience of all the Christs of the
world, and of all the noble and great. Did not Socrates repent?
Did not he "come to himself" in knowing himself to know
Nothing? Did not he then know himself as he knew space?
It was thus that he was truly the wisest of all the Grecians, as
the Oracle wisely affirmed.
486. Everywhere in the Teaching of Jesus this reduction of
sin-judgment as dividing man from man is shown to be the true
ethic for man. Deep in the minds of His generation lay the
conviction that only God could forgive sins. They discerned
that, given the Beings of God and Man as absolutely separate,
this sin-judgment always stood between Man and God. Jesus
showed that man could reduce all relativity absolutely, and
annihilate this sin-judgment, and that forgiveness was a Power
on the earth if it was anywhere (Mark, ii. 10). It lay not with
( God ' to forgive, but with Man. ' God ' had never condemned.
He had never judged. "And Jesus seeing their faith saith
unto the sick of the palsy, Son (Child) thy sins are forgiven.
But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reason-
ing in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak? He
blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins but one, God?" Jesus
perceived that their conviction was that no man could reduce
the sin-judgment, and proceeded to refute it. He then asked
them whether it were easier to annul sin or disease? They
could not answer, and He proceeded to say, " But that ye may
586 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
know that the son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins
(He saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee Arise, take
up thy bed." The inference is that as both Disease and Sin
have their origin and end in Man and on the earth, so it lies
within the power of Man to command them. He, a man on the
earth, can reduce and annul the distinctions and differences
which such conceptions have created as between God and Man,
and Man and Man.
487. The same teaching is impressed upon Peter. " Lord,
how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ?
Until seven times? Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee,
Until seven times : but, Until seventy times seven (Matt, xviii.
21-22).
Jesus forbade enumeration, or the counting up of judgments,
and by extending the times of forgiveness unto ( infinity,'
actually deprived Peter of the function of judging his brother
at all. It was endless forgiveness. But this simply meant,
" Judge not thy brother at all." If his brother chose to put duality
between himself and Peter, Peter must not follow him in this
ethic. Peter was to abide by the truth of the space-conscious-
ness in which no duality of even Being is to be found. Peter's
Adviser would never have asked him to do what He had never
done Himself, nor would He have given such advice if He had
not been convinced that ' God ' as condemning man was an
impossible conception. The truth of endless At-0?2-ment arose
first from His fuller consciousness of Whole-Being-God.
Jesus and Judas.
488. But it may be said that these instances are not revela-
tional of the deepest annulment of the very worst sins. How
stands the matter when the most awful crimes are committed ?
And again, how stands the matter when the sin is done against
the most holy ? Are we still to rear no bar of judgment against
such wickedness? The answer must follow the Master's
teaching. And the answer is given by Himself. Was Jesus
conscious of being one-being with Judas? He must. How
else did He never judge or condemn him ? The whole world
has judged Judas, and perhaps has not yet forgiven him. In
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 587
this matter, it acts not according to the teaching of Jesus. His
hardest word upon Judas is " And none of them is perished save
the son of perishing" (John, xvii. 12), (Westcott). And with
reference to the word " perdition " as associated with this
sentence, it is evident that it is too theological to convey the
true meaning of Jesus' words. The Master's attitude to the one
who was perishing was never less than friendly. His name for
Judas, even in the Garden, was "Friend" ('Erar/oe): with the
meaning, " My good Friend " (Matt. xxvi. 50).
489. Perhaps if Jesus had not found Good in this imperial
crime, it might have been impossible to convince men of the
mere temporality and relativity of all sin. Most people gasp at
the conception of good being found in this act of Judas. It
seems impossible to have anything else than duality of both
Being and Mode of Being between Jesus, Judas, and us. Judas
was convinced of this himself, and so went and hanged himself.
But Jesus did find good in His betrayal, and, still more wonder-
ful, He found the Highest Good there. He found The Father.
It was a cup held by The Father's hand to His lips. The cup
was not the cup of a 'devil.' The highest Love held the cup.
And the momentous struggle in the Garden was to discern this
fact, even as yet it is the grand struggle with every one in such
terrible trials. If we were allowed to say it, the grand truth
would be that Jesus saw the Father Himself in Judas. " The
cup which my Father hath given me." Judas was the Father's
hand. In the Garden, He calmly calls Judas "Friend;' "My
Good Friend."
490. How earnestly He prayed that the cup should pass
from Him ; He shrinks from it with a passion truly human.
But every freedom in the universe is bestowed upon all, and all
its forces are freely at the command of every one for any
purpose absolutely. The Father gives all He possesses to all,
and Jesus first discerning the power which confers, prayed that
the same power might restrain. In the presence of overwhelming
disaster it is the position we all take up. Each person wishes
special treatment in the universe for his own special case, and
according to his own limited conceptions. To be shred to the
' personless ' space-level : to seem as of no account in the vast
588 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
All: to be Nothing! To consent to this 'cup,' is the true
agony. But this is the level of Whole-Being, if we would but
let all duality go from us. Here we find ' God,' and ' God '
who alone is Good, The Father. And as soon as Jesus
reached this Nothingness of Himself, Death had no menace
and no terror. He discerned, rather, that all death, any death,
is Good and not Evil. He rose to that conception of Being
which does not give to Life an absolute value. This is how He
conquered Death.
491. Jesus indeed, as we can see, was but illustrating in His
own person, in the human sphere, that truth of ' laying down of
life ' which He had taught regarding the Grain of Wheat. He
and It were not dual in Being. The Cosmos is One, and man
has no duality in it. Father and Child are One. For in the
true vision of all things we can also discern that every one who
goes forth to sow, " betrays " the seed to a ground-death as truly
as Judas "delivered up" the Son of man. Every seed, if it
could be consulted about its fate, would probably plead to be
spared such a doom. To be thrown as Nought to the earth to
rot, seems from the seed's point of view, a calamity most dire.
But the Cosmos, The Father, has as much need of Death as of
Life, and calmly enjoys (John, x. 17) the 'glorifying' of His
seed-child as it willingly consents to fall into the ground and
die, knowing well that thus it will 'bear much fruit' and not
abide in lonely duality. " Laying down Life " is the primal act
of Whole-God-Being, else no one had been ; and this is His
path of glory for every one as for Himself. And having laid
down all He is in <7//-being, He has become Nothing ; space ; to
be Whole-in-All. All-kenosis is All-pleroma.
492. No death can lead us beyond That-we-are, but it brings
us to the true Space-Being we are; Whole-with-'God ' ;
absolutely Blessed. And as the Father had given all He was
to Jesus, Jesus likewise gave all He was to the Father and to
the world. Thereby in His Nothingness, or Space-Being, He
realised Himself Whole-with-' God.' And the world still affirms
that He hath borne " much fruit."
All death is urged by Father-Love. Fundamentally, it is
always the forces of Life which bring about death. It is the
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 589
process that moves the Cosmos. The refts and clefts of
relativity in heaven and in earth, which men believe they see,
and at which they shudder because it is " red in tooth and claw,"
Jesus discerned as Good, and accepted it as from The Father of
All. For this Whole- Being process makes the Universe itself,
as we see it, but an instrument of the sowing and the reaping of
the ' seeds,' and just because we see the * betrayal ' and the dying,
and have not vision, nor faith unto the end, we judge it all as
evil, and as the work of a devil. Jesus, on the contrary, attests
it, in His own experience, to be the highest gift of a Father.
That is to say, He teaches that even Judas-Evil is relative and
temporary; Evil solely created in the personal judgments of
Man ; and nowhere to be found in the Being of the Most High,
who subsumes all such judgments in an unnegatable affirmation
of Absolute Good : Absolute Beatitude.
" I and the Father are one." Perhaps no words are of so
much importance to mankind at this hour. In them personality
is transcended ; and, consequently, all ' personal ' judgments.
Duality of Being is only affirmed in order to be transcended in
Indivisible Being. 'Personality' is subsumed in space-being
which is still more than ' personal '-being. ' Personality ' is not ;
and, in its nothingness, reveals Being Whole. The negation of
every quality of ' personality ' bears the fruit of Glorified-Being.
Both ' affirmation ' and ' negation ' are subsumed in the I-Am-
Affirmation ; Whole in its unnegatableness. We say, ' I Am.'
But this is not to say, " Not you," " Not the World," " Not the
Universe." There are no negations possible in this I AM. We
do not merely name ourselves thereby ; for when we say I AM,
everything says it. It is the voice of Whole-Being.
It is this ' I am ' which all men hear speaking to them in
and from all things, for all being goes through All. And in
awe and adoration men then exclaim, ' This is God who is
immanent in all things.' But when each thing is reverently
interrogated, 'Art Thou then God?' each abashed whispers,
' He is not in us.' But evermore, Being thunders ' I Am,' so
that even the dead in their graves hear the voice, and then men
in their weary perplexity mutter ' He must then be beyond each
thing : God transcends all things.' Thus is God objectified, and
becomes, Himself, A Thing. He is here, there ; this, that.
He is placed, sphered, isolated, and limited ; men not discerning
590 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
that the ' I Am ' is ever the voice of what-they-are : eternal
Deep: Der Abgrund : Space-Being.
The Changing Conception of God.
493. In this twentieth century, ' the World-Mind rises
slowly above Two vast convictions which have long, too long,
held the nations in thrall.
I. God's absolute isolation from man in Essential Being.
II. God as having Himself created this absolute difference
between Himself and Man on account of Man's Sin.
With the solitary exception of the Religion of Jesus, all
other religious systems hold, and assume, the distinct severance
of the being of God from the being of Man as an essential and
fundamental truth. And it is against this world-old assumption
that the I AM consciousness is continually protesting through
all the means open to it. The struggle for Unity in all
Philosophical Thought, from Plato down to the most modern
Thinker, attests the strength of this protest, and the depth of
the conviction that this severance of Being must be unified in
a profounder postulate. Science carries forward the same
unexpressed conviction in seeking for the principle which will
command the whole of Physics. It does not matter that such a
postulate for philosophy as Unit-Being would never satisfy the
consciousness which urges the human mind in this direction,
nor that the atom, ion, or any imaginable unit-thing could
possibly meet the ultimate want of Scientific minds, the fact is
clear that all Thought is bent towards annihilating the conception
of the Essential Severance of Being.
The same struggle has, of course, been evident in every
religion in all ages. The strenuous efforts made to bridge the
gulf between God and Man, as sundered from each other, by
modes of appeasement, by systems of propitiation, and mediations
of priesthoods, through which the ' God,' almost always in wrath,
and the individual man, might be " brought nigh " and made
At-One, witness to the same trend of the world.
But the human mind requires a genuine concrete basis,
unnegatably affirmed for every Thought, philosophical, scientific,
or religious, before this Truth of Whole-Being can be reached.
And no such basis is ever forthcoming from, or possible in, the
JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM 591
conceptions of mere Motions, or Processes of Being. Neither
Life nor Thought has the authority of Whole-Being given to it.
Hence it is vain to found upon the processes of Evolution, or
the processes of Biology, or upon the Cosmos, or Thought
Each yields a certain precarious Unity, sufficient for many
purposes of knowledge, and good for many generations to rest
their faith in, but containing no promise of Absolute- or
Whole-Permanence.
494. This trend marks undoubtedly the noblest endeavour of
the Human Mind. No work goes forward upon the earth at
this hour, of more consequence to Man. It is labour well worth
the most cultured intellects, the holiest hearts, and the most
valuable lives, for it is the work in which the Son of Man * laid
down ' the All He was. It is the guaranteeing spirit, and life-
blood, of all future advancement of man on earth, for it is every
day becoming more patent that if it cannot be shown beyond
all cavil that God and Man are Whole-Being, no conception of
unit-being for mankind is capable of practical substantiation.
No doubt, men may temporarily build, and build well, upon
the foundations of conceptions which go no deeper than the
Family, the Tribe, or the State, and rear worthy enough
superstructures of Brotherhoods and Societies upon them. But
the sanctions of the I AM consciousness will not be satisfied
long with such fluctuating bases which themselves are afloat in
the ' Flow ' of all Life itself. And, without the sanctions of the
I AM consciousness, in its witness for the ultimate Being of
God-Man as Whole-Being, a foundation upon which 'person-
ality ' itself is based, no permanence can be realised, and no
faith in eternal permanence of Being will be possible in the
human heart.
495. And it is just here where Jesus proves Himself to be, in
the highest sense, the SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. He rises
above Family, Brotherhoods, Societies, and States ; He ascends
above * Ions/ ' selfs,' and every unit-thing in Creation ; He finds
in His 'I AM' a consciousness of His permanence when "heaven
and earth pass away " ; He transcends even ' personality ' as we
know it ; and sees His personality and that of the Other to be
One, a conception of Unit-Being which we have tried to show
592 SPACE AND PERSONALITY
He still further subsumes in a consciousness of Spirit which
cannot be thought differently from Space-Being : Is. And
having done so, He and we are conscious that ' God '-Being is the
nearest and dearest of all that Faith can grasp or Love can
enfold, or Thought can conceive, or Time or 'eternity' can
realise. For Space- Being is the basal fact for Life and Time,
for Birth and Death, for all we conceive of Good, and Holy, and
Beautiful and True, nay, for all that is summed in our I AM
Being. Therefore, in the highest sense, He alone has been able
to say, speaking from the fathomless consciousness of His own
Space-Being
Peace I leave with you ;
My Peace I give unto you :
Not as the world giveth,
Give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled.
Neither let it be fearful.
THE END
INDEX
ABBOTT, Dr E. A., 523
Abbott, T., on Distance, 171
Abgrund, Der, 285, 590
Abolition of Sin by the extinction of dual
being, 547
Abraham, 568, 573
Absolute and Relative, 37
Reality, Natural path to, 124
Being, Sin never referred to, 538
Truth excludes Life and Time, 565
Abyss, The, 325, 467
Aesthetic, The, and the Ethical, 266
Affirmation and negation of Being, 51
Agnosticism, II
''All Flows," the ancient conception of,
458
Direction in the, 459, 470
Almightiness, Our root-consciousness of,
54
Attribute of, 186, 230
American Revisers, 336
Analysis and Synthesis, 141-6
Animal as a generalisation, 90
and Man, order of thought in, 136
Apostolic Mission, The, 495-6
Appearance and Reality, 19, 26, 40, 47,
134
Aristotle, 89,93, 94,96, 159
Ark, The, 306, 327 f.
Arnold, Matthew, 298
Art, Limitations of, 262
The highest function of, 263
" As a hen doth gather her chickens," 520
Astronomy, 185
Athanasius and the Unit-Being of Father
and Son, 561
Atonement, 577
Fundamental principle of, 578
Attention, 109
Attributes of God found in Man, 86, 97
Authority of the ' I Am ' Consciousness,
567-8
BACON, i, 7, 71, 115-21, 118
Bain, Prof. Alex., 6, 60, 74, 109, 133, 159,
200
593
Basis, a permanent, desired for philosophy,
65
" Basis, firm and solid," for Being, Bacon's
desire for, 116
Be, To, 230
Beatitude, Absolute, 183, 481, 544
Beatitudes, The, 480-1, 484-6, 494
Beautiful, The,26o, 267
Beauty, 264, 267
Become ? are we conscious of having, 15
' Becoming,' abstract, 44
"Before Abraham was, I am," 554, 568,
573
Beginning impossible, 173
Begriff, Hegel's, 15
Being, is abstract to Hegel, 36
stands on space, 41
certifies itself as Real, independently, 49
Consciousness of, the prius of all
judgment,
and Nothing in reference to Quality, 68
The ' Ultimate,' of Idealists and Empiri-
cists, 73
as ' object ' of Ontology, 107
absence of, 129
False conception of, 140
and Thought, 203
that cannot be sinned against, 225, 559
greater than Yahweh God, 323
and Will, 398
The basis of Ought-to-Be, 480
and Beatitude, 486
and Existence 571-2
Belief in an Everywhere Thing, 2
disbelief, and doubt, whole psychology
of, 52
Benzinger, Prof. Immanuel, 331
Bergson, Prof. H., Creative Evolution of,
18, 33, in, 411, 428 f.
Berkeley, 6, 170, 279
Birth, the new, 499, 556
Bosanquet, Prof. Bernard, 45, 255,
Bradley, Prof. F. H., 19, 25/26, 46, 48, 49,
53,413
Brahman, 296, 311
Bread of Life, 527
2 P
594
INDEX
Bruce, Prof, A. B., 480
Buddha, 297, 302, 408, 456, 464, 569
Burnet, Prof. (St Andrews), 32, 45
Burney, Rev. C. F., 323
Bush, Burning, 330
Byron on Space, 265
CAIN and Abel, 322
Caird, Prof. Ed., 14, 40, 41, 98, 149, 206,
236, 282, 294, 296, 360, 413
Caird, Principal John, on Nothingness, 37
Cantor, 34, 236,
Carlyle, Thomas, 3, 268, 289, 487,
Categorical imperative, Kant's, 504
Categories of the understanding, 87
Cause, 15, 33, 80,94, 205, 257, 489, 510-11
Chance, 2
Change, 52, 191, 460 f.
and Permanence, 218
Chaos, 31, 487
Cherubim, The, 305-4$* 453, 473
Cheyne, Prof. T. C., 310, 325
Childhood and Truth of Being, 468
Choice, 227
Christendom, Creeds of, on Sin, 538
Christianity justified by Reason, Fact, and
Faith, 462
Church, The, 448, 453, 454, 478, 580 f.
Circle, The, in Art, 260
Civilisation rests on human concepts, 113
Imperfect ideals of, 140-1
Claiming 'Self,' 516
Clement of Alexandria, 305
Cloud, The, as Sign of the Son of Man,
38i
Colour, 261 , W&^*"<'Lj t ^* /U '7-
Commandment, The New, 482, 502
Commandments, The Ten, 482
Communion, 277
Absolute, 175
and Communication, 482, 488
Comte, 370
Concept, The, and Knowledge, 73, 74. 7 ,
no, includes whole-space within itself,
78
The, deals with objects, 78
no, guarantees permanency of being, 86
as recept, 104
The mechanism of the, 127
no : no memory, 132
and percept, 133
Concept-judgments, 124, 125
Conception, 72
arbitrary, 80
no continuity of, 109
Transcendence of Conception, 123
of Energy in Science surpassed, 220
Central, for Son, Father, and Spirit, 446
Concepts due to judgment, 61
widen to the illimitable Is-Consciousness,
83
Concepts, fallacious, 119
and sensations, 130-1
Imperfection of the highest, 139-40
Conduct, Jesus sole Arbiter of, 540
Confucius, 502
Consciousness, Reading, without mistakes,
3
is it at fault ? 5
the ultimate, 24-54
of Reality, the content of our, 27
of what-we-are as space, 28
Ultimate content of, in Hume, Kant,
Hegel, Scientific Thought, Phil-
osophy, and Theology, 28
of the Uncaused, 33
of being beyond all conceptions of
physics, 35
The Ultimate, 37
of self-affirmation, 49
of space and what-we-are is conscious-
ness of Whole-Being, 55
of Whole -Being highest fact in Phil-
osophy, 56
Prof. J. Sully on development of the
Spatial, by each sense, 60
wide-open, 129
the, beyond the sphere of memory, 131
of reality of Self and of All, 144
of Jesus self-predicative, 233
Hebrew, 305
the Yahvistic, 314-24
Jesus' contribution to the realisation of,
348 f.
of Jesus outlined, 439
of lesus and Wholeness, 469
of Perfect-Being and the Cosmos, 471
as motion of what-we-are, 513
of Sinlessness, 547-53, 558 f., 573
of ' I am,' two contents of the, 103, 135,
374, 514, 563-4
Contact, 46, 105
Content Of " Soul," 3, 5, 6
Continuity, no, of Conception, 109
absolute, how given to us, 1 10
of arithmeticians and unity of phil-
osophers, III
Continum of Thought, 108
The arithmetical, 108
of Sensation, 125, 126
Continuous being as what-we-are, How
realised, no
Cosmic Process Self-denying, 526
Consciousness of Good in Jesus, 529
Cosmos, Self not separated from, 201
associated with Father, 378
Being as Father-Being, 542
Creation and Deity, 312
as infinitely repeated, 508
Creed, The Nicene, 537
Criteria of Reality, Defect underlying, 49
Criterion, absolute, of Reality, 45-50
INDEX
595
Croll, J., on Molecular Force, 224
Curtius, Mettus or Mettius, 188
DANTE, 183
Darkness, 334-41
Darwin, 126
Dead, Speculations among aborigines con-
cerning the, 1 88
Death, not possible to Space-Being, 138-40
not evil but good, 476
God's delight in, 501
as Good, 526
not expiration, 527
not conceivable in the I am conscious-
ness, 550
and Father-Love, 588
to Jesus and to the grain of wheat, 588
Decreation by thought-process, 64
Dedekind, 34, 236
Deduction and Induction, 115-20
Deity, 117
abstraction, 2
in Space, 2
Attributes of, 230 f.
Delitzch, Franz, 307
Democritus, 32
Descartes, 6,^ 116, 120
Dialectic, 70, 161
Difference denied, 21
abolished between Appearance and
Reality, 51
and Unity discussed, 56-9, 67
accepted as absolute fact of being, 57,
143,151, 155, 161, 182
Differentiation and Whole-Being, 121,
154-85
Divine and Human in Jesus' Conscious-
ness, 357, 556
The, What ? 428
Division in Being, The root fallacy of, 96
No, between Space-being and What-we-
are, 10 1
How is, possible, 160
of Being and Non-Being, 177
of Being, 433
Doubt, 64
Drama, the Grand, 184
Duality, 4, II, 12
due to the omission of the Space-Con-
sciousness in judgment, 106
of Being, the basis of Sin, 578 f.
of Being, not absolutely true, 579
Duration, 33, HO, 173
Dying in Sin, 547 f., 571, 572
EAR, The, and space-boundless, 62
Earth, as Sinless, 551
Eden, Garden of, 314
Ego, Fichte's, 144
Hegel on the, 282
Elements, Greek Speculations concerning
primal, 189
Elijah, 270
Emptiness as a Space-Consciousness, 213
Endlessness not infinity, 164
Energy, 456
Conservation of, 83
Notion, and Spirit, as identical Con-
sciousness, 83
Consciousness of, in the I-Consciousness,
195
Dissipation, transformation, and con-
servation of, 195
and resistance, 208
No absolute conception of, 208
in the I-Consciousness, 221
of Science not Self-subsistent, 221, 223 f.
Energy- Whole, 194
Environment, 197
Epicurus, 32
Epiphenomenalism, 19
Error, The grand, in ancient and modern
philosophy, 121
' Eternal ' and ' Age-long,' 540
Eternity, The basis of this conception, 541
unknown to Jesus, 576
Ether, 32, 190
Ethics, Comparative, 502-3
Ethos of Jesus, Scope of the, 477 f.
of Jesus, Foundation of the, 477 f.
as Experience, 495
The, of Jesus, and the Space-Conscious-
ness, 500
The absolute, 507
Eucken, Prof., 411, 428
Evil, 343
End of all, 479
Jesus as, 532
The Cosmos as, 532
Origin of, 535
Evolution, 20, 33, 470
Excellence, Individual and Cosmic, 479
Existence, 73
of Supreme Being, Kant on the, 283 f.
and Being, 571-2
Experience, Uniformity of, 26
Quintessence of all our, 27
our true test of reality, 45
Fundamental nature of, 46
Not every, certifies To Be, 46
anteceding Time, 50
Our ultimate of ultimate, 53
The appeal to, 59
As Whole, 60
First condition of Spatial, 60
Wider than conceptuality, no
First, and Whole-Being, 118
and memory, 130-4
Resultant, 192, 196, 198, 199
as Universal, 280
Uniformity of, 26, 567
. S
ec.
596
INDEX
Extensity discussed, 60-3
Eye, The, and Space-boundless, formless,
measureless, 62. 7^-
Eye-space, The, 264, 266, 269 , f^>
Ezekiel, 302
FAITH, 2, 136, 280 f.
and Reason, 2
and Knowledge are Whole, 366
Fallacy, The, in judgments of Good and
Evil, 515
Fate, 292
Father and Non-Father, 344
as based on ' Life,' and ' Spirit ' on
* Space,' 370, 385
The, as impersonal Being, 387
and Son, Westcott on identity of, 402
term equivalent to ' Heaven and Earth,'
405
equivalent to Child, 406, 419
as based on k Life,' mediatory between
Thought and Being, 413
as Nature, 415 f.
Conception of the, and Personality, 413,
418
term denotes no Permanence of Being,
413
Concept, Limitations of, 413, 419, 427
God, not our ultimate consciousness of
God-Being, 413, 530
Personality sublated in Son- Being, 422
and Spirit, difference of, 434, 437
and Nature, 437
and Son, inadequacy of terms of, for
4 God,' 452
term not symbolical of Absolute Perfec-
tion, 517
Son-Being not Absolute Good, 521
term, Why Jesus uses it, 528
God, Ignorance of the world concerning
the, 529
Being as Cosmic Good, 530
Being as Cosmos-Being, 542
Father's House, The, 575
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 203
Ferrier, Prof. D., 201
Fichte, 72, 514
Flow, The All, 196
Force, 13
Conception of, 191
of Forces, The, 194
Resultant, 196
as conceived by Scientists, 210
of Gravitation, of Thought, of Moral
Law, 220
Is it self-directive ? 223
as Moral Law, 225
Force-Almighty, 216
Forces, All lead to Space, 210
Forgiveness of Sin, 549, 586
Rationality of the, 558
Form, 94, 121
Form Space as, 42
Bacon on, 71
and Sensation, 129
and Substance, 129
and colour, 261
Fraser, Prof. Alex. C., on Berkeley, 279
Freedom, 227, 506
Futurity as known, 564, 568
GALILEE, The Man of, and the poverty of
the concept, 113
Gap, Void, 34
Ginnunga, 44, 304
Garden of Gethsemane, 587
Gardner, Prof. Percy, 214
Garvie, Principal, 20
Generalisation, A, becomes objective to
inner perception, 77
No, includes all the perceptive material
given, 78
examples of a, 86
Geology, 184
Gethsemane, 504
Ghost, The Holy, 580. (See Spirit)
Glory of God, 260
of Being, 576
God, Fallacious concept of, 64
a changing conception, 87
as a concept of personality is limited,
and Nothing, James on, 98 f.
conception of, and that of the Absolute,
98
and ' Space ' as logical creations, 102
never a memory, 131
consciousness of, 137
Christendom and the conception of, 141
Hebrew conception of, 141
and Self, 151-2
as a conception, 1 86, 232 .qf, 13 J, If- bl
Is the name intelligible ? 279
as Formless, Matterless, and the Empty
Absolute, Hegel on, 288
conceived dually, 289
as Allah, 290
conception of, varies, 290
and Nothing, 424 >e j^
is Spirit, 444
as conceived under terms of Son, Father,
and Spirit, 455
Seeing, 493
as realised through man, 529
as alone Good, 532
as Spirit- Being, 532
terms, Transcendence of, 558
changing conception of, 590
God-Being as rooted in Father-Being, 530
God-Consciousness of Greece, 292
of the Hebrews, 298
of Persia, 303
of Scandinavia, 304
INDEX
597
God-Consciousness, Names, 356
definitions sublated, 379
Why have we a, 419
Godhead, Space-being the basis of, 446, 464
Golden Rule, The, 482 f., 502, 543
Jesus never acts on the, 483
Good, The, 249-52
and Evil, 250, 507, 509. 512, 513, 519
Art and the, 266
identical with 7s, 493
in Nature surpasses righteousness in
Man, 519
in Nature, Why men fail to find, 519
a higher ethos than ' Righteous,' 520
as Evil in higher judgment of Good,
522
and Evil as varying judgments in men
and in Jesus, 525
in Jesus, Cosmic consciousness of, 529-31
Why callest thou me, 530
and Evil not predicable of Spirit-Being,
532
and Evil creations of human judgment,
535
Gorgon, Space as, the, 40
Gospels, The Four, 553
Grain of Wheat, 588
Grand Drama, 306
Gravitation, 200, 215
towards space-consciousness, 189
Limitations of, 567-8
Greek philosophers on Space, 4
philosophers on Soul, 5
philosophy condemned by Bacon, 116
Green, T. H., 248
Growth out of Nothing, 34
HAECKEL, 217
Happiness and the mental science, 183
Harnack on the Nicene Council, 561
Hebrew God-Consciousness, 298 f.
Religion passes, 377
Hegel, 72, 91, 156-7, 160, 168, 203, 219,
240 f.
on Being, Nothing, and Becoming, 12-
16
does not appeal to Consciousness but to
Logic, 17
on experience of accepting fact, 27
never reaches concrete Being, 36
wrong as compared with Hume, 41, 42
never joins his system and Nature, 44
on the certainty of ourselves, 46
and Quality, 67
his most important conception, 68
and Bergson, in
and consciousness of Space, 161
Hegel's special work, 22
consciousness of Being and Nothing as
same, 43
Subject and Object as unit-beings, 77
Hegel's misreading of the space-conscious-
ness, 106
Begriff, 124
Category, 259
scientific conception of God, 281
conception of the " I," 282
Heredity, 197
Herodotus, I, 303
Hesiod's Theogony, 45
Hindu view of Existence, 17
Historicity and the ultimate consciousness
of Truth, 333, 552, 570
History, 185
Universal, 137, 173
Hobbes, 6
Home, widest word for, 41
Human mind, noblest endeavour of, 591
Hume, 7-9, 12, 15. 41, 91, 147, 230, 258
Huxley, n, 187, 201, 470, 473
" I," the conscious, 3
as a consciousness of unrelated being, 49
as a consciousness of non-appearance, 51
as conscious of not being caused, 51
as not in the ' Flow' of the All, 51
not necessarily 'one,' 105
the conscious, at its deepest, equals
space-being, 118
difference of content of, 135. (See Con-
sciousness')
is not generated, does not grow, assimi-
late, act, etc., as Life^ 404
I am, as 'self,' and as 'Space-being,' 45, 46
as relative, 48
the, 359
consciousness, its two contents, 374', 532,
539. (See Consciousness)
Jesus and the consciousness of, 404, 465
a term not transcendable, 433
a limitless consciousness, 446
Two contents of the consciousness of,
514, 517, 563-4
consciousness, General view of the Ethical
scope of, 546-53
consciousness is relationless, 549
consciousness renders sin unthinkable,
55
consciousness of Jesus and philosophical
"Being," 553-62
of St John, 554, 562
the channel of all revelation, 555
expression the highest for Being. 557
and our consciousness of absolute origin,
562
excludes Life and Time, 565-6, 574
truth the well of all truth, 565, 567
and knowledge of the future 568, 574
as absolute authority, 568, 569
the ultimate appeal for essential Being,
571
not ' I exist,' 571-2
598
INDEX
I am, as known and believed, 572-3
Ideal, Principal, of Philosophy, 123
Ideal-Being in Consciousness, not derived
from the Cosmos, 471 f.
and conception of Sin and Evil, 473
Identity, 12, 132, 147
Iggdrazil, tree of Life, 44, 272, 275
Immanence of God, 437, 5^9
Immortality, 53, 140
Imperative, The Absolute, 505
The Absolute, above Life and Life
relatively, 524
Incarnation, 20, 555
Induction and deduction, 115-20
Inductive Method and Ultimate reality,
117
Inertia, 127
Absolute, 216-18
Infinity, 164, 234-44
Interactionism, 19
Ions, 207
Is, First and last affirmation of anything,
41
the ultimate consciousness, 47, 49
Consciousness of, supreme idiom of
space-being, 55
Knowledge of, 72
an unclosed, unlimited, affirmative judg-
ment, 82
the sole idiom of Whole-Force, 211
our final consciousness of Being, 275
a consciousness sublating every concep-
tion of Individuality, 337
Is consciousness. 514, 518
the dynamical affirmation of every
concept, 82
The, the consciousness of highest energy,
83
how realised, 129
fundamental for conceptions of Deity,
230
the foundation of religion, 274
Isolation never an absolute, 105
Israel, Judgment of the House of, 539
JACKS, Prof. L. P., 424
Jacob's Dream, 303
Jairus's daughter, 5 11
James, Prof. W., 6, 18, 38, 39, 46, 52, 74,
98 f., 276
Jerusalem, 8
Jesus, n
an independent witness of Himself, 49
and personality, 181
and Sin, 226
as God, 233
His special gift to Thought, 332
His unique power over Thought, 349
and Philosophy, 350
corrected the Consciousness of the world,
369
Jesus, Holy Spirit, 445, 452
as Related- and Unrelated-Being, 532
as Absolute Evil, 536
the Separator, 537
as Son and Father, in relation to judg-
ment, 541-2
as Human and Divine, 556
homoousios with the Father, 560
the highest reference for Sin, 571
as The Way. the Truth, the Life, 575
and Judas, 586
Jesus' consciousness vastest of all, 368 f.
changing conceptions of God-Person-
alities, 462
sublation of relative being in Whole-
Being, 518, 521
consciousness of Himself as not Good,
530
teaching on the Origin of Evil, 535
vision of Satan as fallen from heaven,
545
Psychology and Philosophy, 555
attitude to Sin and Sinners, 560
consciousness of omniscience and omni-
presence, 564
consciousness of transcending time, 566
consciousness self-predicative, 566
last charge to the Church, 580
Jews, 8
judgment of the, 540
Job's Cosmogony, 44
Johannine Controversy, 334
John Gospel, The Consciousness of, 148,
333-45
Jones, Prof. Sir Henry, 25, 276
Josephus, 306
Judas-evil, relative and temporary, 589
Judgment creates concepts, 61-4
conceptual and inconceptual, 82
ultimate and limited, 103
synthetical, 142, 144
and the space-consciousness, 507 f.
the primal motion of Thought, 513
of objectivities not absolutely valid, 515
of Whole-Good, Space- Being as basis of,
532
creates quality of Evil, 534
of Good and Evil transcended, 534-6
The Last, 537, 539
of Good and Evil begins and ends in
Man, 537
All, ceases in Jesus, 539
The Last, not the last of the world, 540
Jesus abolishes absoluteness of, 541
The last of, upon Man, 542, 579
committed to the Church, 580
Judgment-consciousness, The, in Son and
Father, 541
Justice, 516
Jesus founds nothing on, 492
and Judgment, 542, 543
INDEX
599
Ka\6v Td, 266 77
Kant, 35, 37, 72,^147, 168, 203, 232, 249,
256, 276, 514, 532
on the self, 10, u, 12
on 'empty space,' 35, 37
does not include space in his concept of
Being, 36
wrong as compared with Hume, 41, 42
on phenomena and the empty void, 42
his x-idol, 53. fifty,
and the Unknown, 88
his sp.ice is ' Form,' 120
his " Thing-in-itself." 124
and our consciousness of Space, 127
and Space, 129
and Unit-personality, 143-4
and the Soul, 176
and personality, 179
on Permanence, 217
on the starry worlds and the moral law,
223
The Categories of, 259
on the existence of a Supreme Being,
283 f.
Schlegel on, 287
on the Soul, 383
Kelvin, Lord, 32, 204
Kenosis and the Space-consciousness, 54,
426
Knight, Prof. Wm., on Being as zero,
38
Know Thyself, 24, 585
Knowing the Unknown, 72 ??.
Knowledge and the Concept, 73, 83
neither begins nor ends with concepts,
84
independent of categories, 87
never absolutely attained conceptually,
101
transcends the Ontological and Episte-
mological, 107
man's endless capacity for, 233
Basis of, 364 .3%tf-,
of What-is, Sum of the, 563, 574
Absolute, why Jesus was conscious of,
565
LAW as force, 225
Moral, 225 f., 482
as Whole, 570
Laws of Thought, 177
Laying down Life, 268, 418, 588
Legion-Personality, 467
Leibniz, 6
Leucippus, on the Void, and what-is, 32,
40
Liberty, 228
Life, 19
Soul, Spirit, rest on positive knowledge,
88
as a generalisation, 89-93
Life, as a concept, does not account for
what-we-are, 92, 403
as a concept, 95
Imperfect postulate of, 137-40, 403
and death transcended, 138-40, 403
and Quality, 158
not accounted for by motions, 158, 191
governs Thought, 179
as One, 198
is one, 198, 415
and Death, 199
non-vital elements of, 201
no absolute conception of, 208, 412
The power which directs, 268
and Death, concepts of, transcended,
270, 412, 497
transcended, 270, 403
Tree of, annihilated, 275
in relation to Light and Space, 335-42
as a consciousness sublated in Is, 337,
403-4, 412
and Light come forth from Darkness, 338
not originated in Man, 372
and Death are not permanences, 381, 412
viewed as simple and indivisible, 393,
401-4
Being not dependent on, 401-3, 412
never is What-we-are, 403-4
we have no consciousness of a thing, Life,
in What-we-are, 404, 411-12
Category of, in Philosophy of East and
West, 410-12
a mediate between Thought and Being,
413
is Nature's highest category, 416
the limit of Father-and-Son Being, 416,
420 f.
Knowledge of, not equal to our con-
sciousness of ' Spirit,' 443
is not the absolute Good, 526
common in man and God-Father, 529
and the Spirit that quickens, 556, 568
transcended in ' I am ' consciousness,
564, 577
and Time, Absolute Knowledge excludes,
565
has no absolute value, 588
Light, 215
and Sound, 135
Line, The, in Art, 260
Literature and Space consciousness, 44
Locke, 6
on Space, 215
Locke's division of qualities, 261
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 20, 33, 204, 206, 207,
214
Logic, 71
never gives absolute reality, 120, 123
of Hegel, 159
Lotze, 6, 255
Luther, 415
600
INDEX
M'CLELLAN, Rev. J. B., 510
Magdalene, Mary, 436, $$9
Mahaffy, Prof. J. P., 1 20
Man as a concept evolved and generalised,
89-101
The conception of, 100
He drove out the, 329
and Ideal Man, 370 f.
as God, 495
requires Life and Death to reveal him,
573
Man-being as Space-being, 140
Man-Definitions sublated, 379
Martyr, Justin, 305
Mathematics, 34, 169, 175
Matter, 31, 66, 86, 94, 187, 204, 279
and energy, 86
Maxwell, Prof. Clerk, and electric charge,
32
Measure, 64
of all things, 64
Mechanics, 169
Meekness and heiring the earth, 488-9
and the cosmic process, 489
of the Godhead, 489
Memory, 130-4
and space- spread, 130
and experience, 130-3
degrees of, 131-3
The order of, 131-3
The Sphere of, 131
no, of what-we-are, 132
Merciful, The, 491-3
Messiah, 55, 376
Method, Hegel's, 13, 14
Philosophical, Descartes', Kant's,
Hegel's, 64, 84
mathematical and the Soul, 175
of Jesus and Buddha as to Personality,
456, 464
Methods of great philosophers defective,
84
Middle Ages, 6
Mill, John S., 25, 26, 50, 566
Mind and Matter, 66
the primal mould of, 129
Miracles and Cause, 510-11
Miraculous, The, 565
Mohammedanism, 290
Monad of Leibniz, 124
Monism and Pluralism, 58
Moses, i, 260, 301
Motion, 44, 126, 200
Consciousness of, 28
presupposes space, 63
Hegel never frees Being and Nothing
from, 70, 72
not found in the I or space-consciousness,
72
consciousness of, subsequent to con-
sciousness of space, in
Motion not conceivable as absolutely con-
tinuous, 112
or Process as conditioned in the 1-
consciousness, 211
Motion-sans-substance, 193
Motions not separate but whole, 103
Mourning and com f ort, 486-8
Mysterious, The, 565
Mysticism, 294
NATURE, 25
a fathomless Abyss, 39
lost to man in Greek Philosophy, 117
what based on, 147
and Man, Common basis in Being for,
198
space basal for, 228
not self-determined, 471
and father, as one, 479
Necessity, 2, 229
Negation negated absolutely, 49
and determination, 135
Negative. Inconceivableness of the, 26, 47,
49, 566
The, which negates all negation, 219
Neuter God-Being, 354
Newman, Cardinal, and the space-con-
sciousness, 288
Newton, 74, 75, 204, 397, 567
Nicene Council, Central matter of the, 561
Nicodemus, 499
Nirvana, 41, 47, 297, 409, 411, 508
Non-Being and quality, 68-71
an impossible consciousness, 81
No-Space, 42
' Nothing,' Prof. Wm. James on, 39
and the numerical zero, 69
How we have a consciousness of, 129
Nothing-Consciousness, 409
of Jesus, 442
Science, Philosophy, and Religion, and
the, 456
Notion, Absolute, 14, 69
Hegel's, 34
of Hegel, apart from Space-Conscious-
ness 41
Number, Hegel never frees Being and
Nothing from, 69, 72
OBJECT, Why every conception of an, is
untrue, 51
The, refers itself ultimately to space-
consciousness, 73
The, Why we are always ultimately dis-
satisfied with it, 73
of Worship, variable and ascending,
434-6
Objectivities, 515
Objectivity, 14. Chap. iii.
55, 105, 108-9, I2 2
The Father the Ultimate of, 268
INDEX
601
Objectivity, Negation of all, equivalent to
'poor in spirit,' 485
and Relationship, 491
Omar Khayyam and the Space-Conscious-
ness, 289
Omnipresence, 232
of God, 2
Omniscience, 231-3
One, measure of, how created, 64
One-ness, 105, 148. (See Unit, Unity)
Ontological At-one-ness, 583
Order of Being, 102
Origen, 305, 554
Origin of Sin, 552
of Being, 566-7
Other, The, not in Jesus' highest Ethos,
494
Otherness not possible in the I am con-
sciousness. 550
Ought and Is as consciously Whole, 480
identical, 505
PAN, I, 167
Pantheism, 294
Parallelism, 19
Parmenides and Space, 44
Part, Why we are able to affirm a, 49
the, and Whole-Being, 20, 115
Pascal, 207
Past-Being, 132
Pater-Pantheism, 428
Path, Buddha's Eight-fold, 569.,4,//, fpf,
Pentecost, 581
Percept, the, 74, 133
Perception, 72
Percepts and concepts, 66
and Qualities, 8 1
Perfect-Being, Man as, 473
Perfection, Absolute, 465 f., 470 f.
Degrees of, and conceptions of Being,
478
Cosmic, is Personal, 479 f.
is Realisation of what-we-are, 481
Self-affirmation of, 481
Permanence, 458
absolute, 218
in Theology, Root-consciousness of, 219
and the ' Flow,' 412, 543
Permanent and Impermanent as treated by
Jesus, 375 f.
Permeation does not account for creation,
112
Personalities, Son, Father, and Spirit as,
393
Personality and consciousness, 2 .
and impersonality, 67, 97, 179, 456
a generalisation and transcended, 86
the age-long conception of, 122, 123
and conceptuality, 123
Transcendence of, 123,456
and space, 269
Personality transcended, 270, 389-464,
589 -70.
Impersonality and Space, 276,^-7,
narrow conception of, 276
defections of, 346
under process, 355
Jesus method of treating, 385
a product of conceptual Thought, 389
Conception of, never identical with con-
sciousness of, 39*4f f70,
freedom of, 390 f.
Hegel defines, 390
How we conceive, 390 f.
Prof. Wm. Knight defines, 390
Procession of, 392
and will, 394
negation of 394-400
Man is more than, 398
conception of, and consciousness of what-
we-are, 400
Substance of, 400, 407
Permanence of, 413
Procession of, equivalent to Evolution,
414
in everything, 466-7
Peter, Saint, 529
and Forgiveness, 586
Peter's, St, confession, 511
Pharisees and Verification of Truth, 563
Philo Judaeus, 306
Philosophy v. Psychology, 4
and the Abyss, 41
astray after Hume, 41
Modern, divided from Nature, 70
and the common mind, 84
The purpose of, 96
German, Error of, 147
German, and Modern Thought, 148
theology and science, 154
neither life nor colour in the unit-beings
of, 261, 265
Modern, The fallacy in the heart of, 383
Modern, and Buddhism, 409
Pineal gland, 8
Plato, 5, 8, 270, 301, 373, 590
and Aristotle on Modern Philosophy,
Baleful influence of, 96
Cosmogony of, 130
and the oversoul, 183
Plato-Socrates and Conception, 30
Plato's Cave-Symbolism, 21-3
Ideas and Space, 35
conceptual limitation of Being, 93, 96
Pneuma, the space-content of, 35
Poets and the Personal, 468
Poincare, Lucien, 187, 215
Point, why we are able to affirm a, 49
Line, and surface, Their basis of reality,
no
602
INDEX
Point in space, The, 172-4
The, in Art, 260
Poor in spirit, 484-6, 533
in spirit identical with consciousness of
Space-Being, 533
Postulate, The Universal, 26, 46, 49, 566
Power-Almighty as Space-Being, 222
Prayer to Jesus, 435
to Spirit, 436
and the impersonal, 468
Priestly Code, Consciousness of, 324-32
Pringle-Pattison, Prof. A. Seth, criticises
Hegel, 1 6, 33
and the space-consciousness, 37
and absolute emptiness, 40
on fundamental nature of experience, 46
on Self, 150
on Existence, 254
Process, 20
is Hegel's ultimate Consciousness of
Being, 17
Consciousness denies, to be ultimate
Being, 34
always gives limitation, 112, 117-19
explains little of Being, 460
Cosmic, 466, 470, 472
Cosmical and tthical, 470 f., 472
Cosmic, Man a product of, 471
does not create, 472
not necessary to perfect Being, 472
divorced from space-consciousness, 473 f.
origin of, 474
reveals Perfection inherent in Being, 475
due to ever-changing conceptions, 476
that transcends the cosmic process, 490
How it ends, 495 f.
All, transcended, 498
Cosmic, and self-negation, 501
never reveals What-Is, 508
by which Jesus reaches the consciousness
u Poor in Spirit," 533
Prologue of the John Gospel, 334-9
Psyche, the space-content of, 35
Psychology uncertain, 3, 4
and the ' Soul,' 7
challenge to, 29
and space-consciousness, 44
tends to narrow the percept to the sphere
of sensation.76
Ptolemy. 8,3^V,
Pure in heart, 493
Purpose and Action whole, 367
euALiTiES of God, 457
uality, 157-8, 161, 162
and Being, 67-9
and Quantity, Primary consciousness of,
135
and quantity not absolutely valid, 104
and Quantity, 161, 162, 169
Quantity, 34, 68-71
Quantity only gives a temporary certainty
of reality, 104
the foundation of arithmetical concepts,
no
euickener, Spirit as, 568
uismet, 291
RATIONALITY of Jesus, changing concep-
tions of Himself. 558
of sinlessness, SS& */,%* &*#&
Real is Rational and Rational/Is Real, 36
the, cannot have a relative Unreal, 54
Reality v. Appearance, 26
and the pragmatic rule, 38
what necessary for a consciousness of, 48
and Abstraction, 49
consciousness of, 51
of all that is, how we can affirm the, 52
absolute uncertainty of, in Hegel's
philosophy, 68
and generalisations of judgment, 85
the certainty of, 104
Absolute, 115
for all as for self, 144
Recept, the, of the ' I ' consciousness, 74,
133
Relation decreated, every conception of,
579
Relationship and Religion, 273
Relative conceptions impossible in the
Space-consciousness, 48
absolutising the, 106, 108, 182
Relatives, all, only partially true, 107
Relativity, how transcended, 139
of Appearance and Reality, how it arises,
134
negation of all, identical with ' poor in
spirit,' 485
Absolutising, 517
of Life and Death negated in 'I am'
consciousness, 551
Religion as Relationship, 273
its foundation, 275
Religions, all the great, revere space-
consciousness, 44
Repentance, 507
as Sublating process, 495-6
and the space-consciousness, 584
equivalent to "Know Thyself," 585
Resistance, Resultant, 153
to Thought, 209
Space-Consciousness the greatest con-
sciousness of, 216, 221
Response in nature, 202
Rest and Motion, 190
Retrospect of argument on God-Person-
alities, 460 f.
Revelation of Self to Man, The highest,
485
Righteousness, Hungering and thirsting
after, 489
INDEX
603
Righteousness and Sin, $07
Judgment of, changeable, 538
Royce, Prof. J., 236
Ruskin, 48
on form and colour, 261
on Space, 263
Russell, Hon. Bertrand, 34, 164, 166, 175,
236
SACK of Jerusalem, 377
Sacred Books of the East, 7, 295
Sacrifice not in Justice, 492
Same -being impossible of two ultimate
concepts, 70
Satan and Father, 433
Satan fallen from Heaven, 544
Saviour of the World, 591
Scandinavian view of Existence, 17, 44
Schlegel on Kant, 287
Science. Modern, and Process, 32
The Higher, 81, 193. 204, 499
Theology and Philosophy have an
identical consciousness of Energy,
83
has never included the fact of facts in
her judgments, 106
and the Space-fact, 471
The limits of, 471
and an Absolute Origin of Being, 567
Scientists and the Void, 44
and the Unknown, 88
1 Self among all things that flow, 48
of philosophy imperfect, 52-3, 564
Not-Self, and Relationship, 274
defections of the, 350. 352
Not-Self and God, 361
and 'God' as objects, 151-2, 516
as One, 563
Self-affirmation of Space, 49
Why we have, 49
Self-Consciousness, 27
as living experience, 46
Self-Denial, Absolute basis of, 504
Self-examination laborious, 24
Self-judgment, 513
Self-negation in Man and Nature, 474
of Space-Being, 489-91
Sensation, Extensity of, 60
space-consciousness deeper than, 61
Continuum of, 12$
and Form, 129
and conceptualisation, 130
and Memory, 130
and Thought, Nexus between, 133
retention of, 134-5
Senses and Thought, Both assured by
space-being, 50
The, and objectivity, 61
The, do not create forms or objects, 63
and Sensation, 77
not fallacious, 119
Senses, The, and the constancy of the
universe, 119
and conceptions, 136
Serpent-symbolism, 17
Shakespeare, 184
Sin and righteousness, 519
Jesus does not refer, to Absolute Being,
538, 546
Judgment of, changeable, 538, 548
as measured and created by Jesus, 544,
546
and the I am consciousness, 547
sublation of, in Jesus consciousness, 548
Origin of, 552
not absolutely valid, 570 f., 577
The impossibility of man dying in, 572
based on dual being, 578
abolished, 579
forgiven upon the earth, 582, 585
referred only to Law, 584
Sin-conceptions of Christendom, versus
those of Jesus, 538
of the Old Testament, 538
Sin-judgment not found in I am conscious-
ness, 548
Sinless world, 551
Sinlessness of the I am consciousness, 226,
251
of Jesus, The consciousness of the, 544,
548
of man though dying, 547
Desire of man to realise, 549
Universality of the consciousness of,
558
Sins, forgiveness of, 226
Skinner, Principal John, 311, 320
Sky and Eye, 270
Socrates, 5, 93, 301, 585
Something and Nothing, 219
Son of ' Man,' 371
of ' Man' equivalent to ' Man ' universal,
405
Father, spirit, as service -conceptions,
463
Father, and Spirit, as God-Qualities,
457
of God, 557
Son-Being transcended, 557
Soul. Chap. i. 1-23
cardinal lack in theories of the, 20
and Space, 43
annihilation of, 47
no permanence of the, 383-4
The immortality of the, 501
Space as Zeus, I
personalisation of, I
impersonal, I, 2
worshipped, I, 3
and study of personality, 3
consciousness of reality of, 4
consciousness of, as left by Hegel, 23
604
INDEX
Space, We cannot think differently of what-
we-are and, 28
as Something, 33
and pragmatist's rule, 38
something beyond, 42
and What-we-are, We cannot think
differently of, 45
our ultimate consciousness of what-we-
are, 45
alone certifies Being, 46
has no Past, no future, and no change,
S A
never Appears, 51
conditions all our sense-activity, 51
does not Flow, 52
Omission of consciousness of, from
judgment?, 52
and Objectivity, 55-85
knows no relationship, 55, 67
equal to distance between two objects,
59
Dr S. H. Hodgson on cognition of,
through sight and touch, 60
' Extensity ' an essential element in, 60
Prof. C. Read on construction of, 60
attested by all the senses, 61-4
of three dimensions, 64
and time, 65
hides under nothing, 66
yields no predicate save Is, 66
cannot be objectified, 67
has no qualities, 67
and Absolute freedom from Number and
Motion, 70
and absolute permanence, 73
in Newton's generalisation, only objective
or distance space, 75
and the object whole in What-we-are, 76
the most scientific of all facts, 76
Kant's, depends on Number and Form,
and can disappear, 79, 80
of three dimensions, 79
as omitted from our concept-judgments,
86-122
a consciousness which transcends Life
and Death, 92
never counted as Being, 92
and the predicates of what-we-are. 97
and the Object never divided, 103
never objective, 103
as Quantity absolute, HO
gives no consciousness of change, 118
all and every consciousness yields a
consciousness of, 119
of three dimensions quantitative, 125
consciousness of. transcends concepts of
motion and inertia, 127
as distance, 129,7^ f/Q, fjf,
as Resultant Resistance, 153
and division, 163
and what-we-are, 164
Space has no qualities, 165
and form, 169
and the Soul, 171
and Time, 174
as Whole Energy, 186
conceptual, 193
the fundamental experience, 198
the force of forces, 205
as 'empty,' 206
is Absolute Power, 210
not subject to Force absolutely, 210
has no Other, 217
and 'God,' 223
as Limit, 228
uncaused, 257
and Supreme Being, 284 f.
sustains AIL 302 [,
no consciousness or an orii
as Concrete, 370
we know everything less than we know,
igin for, 32
and Life, 431
as Whole-Ethos, 464 f.
What is, 512
is not appearance, 513
Space-Being, as real to the senses as to
Thought, 50
Fulness of the experience of, 50
concrete and natural, 52
The imaginary zero-ness of, 53
alone gives our primal want, concrete-
ness, 58
not unit-being, 59
cannot be conceived as impermanent, 73
the true rock of knowledge, 87
is judgment, 88, 101
not a generalisation, 88
transcends both Known and Unknown,
88
alone is Uncaused, 95
Man's absolute satisfaction with, 118
never a memory, 131
as simplest fact, 142
the summation of all Perfection, 475
Space-Consciousness counted of no value,
29, 31.
deepest in all the great writers, 29
fundamental one of all human Thought,
29
and Ancients, 31
in Theology, 34
no effort annuls it, 35
the sole consciousness which gives
absolute certainty, 45
as absolute in its Is -being assurance,
47
why necessary to the consciousness of
what-we-are, no
The omission of it from the fundamentals
of Thought, 1 20
and the "laws of Thought," 177 f.
INDEX
603
Space-Consciousness and personality, 179
Omission of, from judgment, 181
the sovereign force, 209, 210
fundamental in Religion, 272 f.
of Jesus, 346
of Jesus as to Personality, Cosmic and
Ethical Process, 353
Jesus determines all by the, 464 f.
Personal examples of the, 509
Space-Darkness, 326 f.
Space-Force and concept-mechanism, 137
Space-Form, 129-35
Space- Resistance, 210
Space -Spread, Space -Form, or Space-
Extension, 128
Point-form of the, 129-35
The, 170
Speculative research, method of, 135
Spencer, H., II, 26, 47, 199, 236, 283,
471, 566
and Unknown, 66
on Mind and Matter, 155-9
Spencer's, H., conception of undetermined
Being, 40
' universal postulate,' 46, 49, 566
Sphinx, 24, 54, 8r, 296
Spinoza, 37, 49, 72, 124, 135, 253, 256
Spirit, 91
not in consciousness, 16
as a concept of Man, 96
an inefficient term, 140-1
is will-less, 400
We have no consciousness of a Thing
'Spirit,' 16, 411-12
and Space, 431
as Life-Giver, 432
as Person, 432
and Father, Distinciiun between, 434
Holy, as Child, 438, 463
not Personal, 438
compared with Father and Son, 439,
463
not objective to either conception or per-
ception, 439
as Father, 442-3, 463
as Joy, 442
The ultimate consciousness of, 445
= Everywhere or Space, 446
subsumes concepts of Life and Time,
446 f.
as the Father of Jesus, 447, 463
Ultimate source of Life, 447, 449, 463
controls realms of Matter, Mind, and
Heart, 448 f., 453
the Supreme name of God, 449
as Comfort to the Church, 451
Father and Son sublated in, 451
' and the world, 452
as Glory of Truth, 455
How known, 45 5 f.
as Whole, 485
Spirit, Consciousness of, equal to con-
sciousness of Space, 485
idiomises Being, 495
Holy, 580 f.
Spirit-Being, Jesus' realisation of Himself
as, 531
Standard of True or False in reality, 25,
566
Staticity, 127
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 1 1
Stirling, Dr Hutchison, 12, 68, 280
Stone, a, as conceived, 78
Stout, Prof. G. F., 169
Substance, 33, 94, 252 f.
as Space, 80
and Form, 129
True, 499
not exhaustive of Being, 561
Substantia, 44, 209, 257
as Space, 159
Summary of Jesus' process in teaching
Absolute Beatitude, 533
Supper, The Last, and the Space-conscious-
ness, 510
Symbolism of Son, Father, and Spirit,
454
Symbols of Faith, Three, 330
Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel, 511
Synthesis and Analysis, 141-6
of Absolute Being imperfect in all philo-
sophy, 44
of Being, Hegel omits space from his,
91
Synthetical unity, a priori, 145-7
TABERNACLE, 306
Temple, Solomon's, 322, 327
Temptation in the Wilderness, 488
Tennyson and the Process of Personality,
277
Tertullian, 8, 305, 403, 554
Test of Truth, 45, 563, 566
of the truth of objectivity, 52
' That art Thou,' 235, 296
'That I am,' 547, 5:4, 560
Thing, The, abstract, 119
Thomas, St, 529
Thought, Laws of, 67
concept! ve, and the supreme Fact of
Consciousness, 70
Space-Being conditions, 71
The grand trend of human, 72
feeling, and memory, 134
Laws of, 176
as conditioned Motion, 209
Timaus, 31
Time, Why we are able to affirm, 49
a concept depending on Motion, 79
no consciousness of, in what-we-are, 173
Course of, 375
Time subsumed in Holy Spirit, 450
^
606
Timeless Being, 541
experience of Jesus, 564
Totality when not possible as a concept, no
Tower of Babel, 321
Transcendence of God-' Persons,' 436, 439
of Relative Being is transcendence of
relative excellence, 480
of Time, 563
of God, 589
Transfiguration, 511
Trinitarians, 423, 432 - i^.^.2. *
Trinity, The, 440, 463, 580 f.
Truth, no absolute, requires testimony from
other truth, 46
Absolute only in the Space-Conscious-
ness, 50
So-called degrees of, 50
its basis, 107
Absolute, Why Jesus was conscious of
being, 565
and History, 570
ULTIMATE of ultimates for our belief,
The, 46
Uniformity of Nature, 219
of Experience, 567
Unifying God, Universe, and Man in one
concept, 124
Unit, Self as unit. 168
Unitarians, 423. Zy/ , ^.^P ^L..
Unit-Being, The fatal assumption of man
as, 91
Crudity ot the conception of, 142-4
of Father and Son, 561
Unity, 244-6
as reality, 41
as things rolled up together, 46
in diversity, 46
Absolute, aim of philosophical endeavour,
56
is a closed and limited concept, 88
'not'ah'ultimate of consciousness, 112
and Hegel, 113, 114
does not yield a consciousness of whole-
being, 113
as a Total, 114 f.
beyond Difference, 136
synthetical, a priori, 145-7
and Totality, 162, 166, 167, 168
of the Godhead, no scientific basis for
the, 440-1
of G00ofand Righteous, 527
of moral and natural law, 527
of personal and cosmic excellence, 527-
8
of heaven and earth in personal life, 528
Struggle for, 590
Universe, The ultimate conceptions of the,
86
as All in All, 105
INDEX
Un^+n+tt, K*t*eArn ty,
Universe, Unity of the, 187
The, and Whole-Being, 530
Unknown, The, 72
Tendency to adore the, 97
VALUE and philosophy, 38, 39, 43
of Space- Being equal to Whole-Being,
53
of space not given by Self or Universe,
59
= Worth, 247 f.
of Jesus' doctrine of the Last Judgment,
539
Verification of Truth, Absolute, 569
Vision, path of, never continuous, 108
of Judgment, 537
of a Perfect World, 542
Void, The, 30, 32, 33
and Atoms, Leucippus on, 40
World and the, 68
WALLACE, Prof. W., on Hegel's theory of
Being, 36
on Nirvana, 40
on Thought (the Idea) as unification,
H3
Ward, Prof. James, on Reality, 26
on God, 98
on Self and Not-self, 148
on Experience, 192
Wellhausen, 314
Weltbewusstsein, 347
Westcott, Bishop, 336, 402, 430
What-we-are, consciousness of, 28
is space-affirmed being, 50
yields same consciousness as space, 51
never a memory, 131
and gravitation energy, 212
as Space-being, 444
as Impersonal, 467
is not appearance, 513
as sole test of Truth, 563. (See 'lam')
Wheat, the grain of, 497 f., 507
Whole-Being, more than unit Being, 50
assured in space-being, 52
idiomised as Space-Being, 89
consciousness of, never found in ancient
or modern philosophy, 1 1 2, 121
and the part, or division in Being, 114 f.
Philosophy and, 141
and Division, 160
and Hegel and Kant, 166
Consciousness of, not created by know-
ledge of the Cosmos, 214
Whole-Cause, 489
Whole-Energy, 208
cannot be known as Force, 209
Whole- Experience, 139
Whole-Force is Sole-Force, 211
Wholeness of Being, 20
Whole-Person,
INDEX
607
Whole-Will, 299, 368, 508
Will in man, strongest force in the universe,
213
in the I-consciousness as Gravitation in
the Universe, 214
Good, 249
in Jesus, 394
of the Father, 395
Procession of, 396
not essential to What-we-are, 397-9
and Being, 398
not isolated, 398
Being not dependent on, 402
of the Spirit, 438
Wolf, 6
Woman of Samaria, 434, 444
Wordsworth, 184
World - mind, the, in the twentieth
century, 590
Worship, 434, 444 f.
of the Hebrews, 307
Wundt, 198
YAHWEH, 219, 538, 557
Yahweh-God and the conception of ' God '
in Jesus. 538, 543
Yahweh's "coming down," signification of,
321
ZEUS, as space, I, 557
Zikkurat, Babylonian, 320
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