KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE 



telligence and will as- these transcend mere me- 

 chanical motion?" 1 Of all the ideas we owe to 

 him, this I hold to be supreme. 



Hereupon we are faced with the question of 

 personality. The glibness with which this is dis- 

 cussed and settled must amaze every thoughtful 

 person. To talk of personality without asking in 

 what it consists is surely, as Job said, to " darken 

 counsel by words without knowledge." To as- 

 cribe personality to the Eternal is really no less 

 anthropomorphic than to talk, with Genesis, of 

 his hinder parts. Furthermore, it is. palpably to 

 assign a limitation to him and to ignore the wise 

 counsel, "Enlargissez Dieu." Now, if personality 

 means anything, it connotes the possession of in- 

 telligence and will, and the answer to the supposed 

 alternative between attributing to the Eternal either 

 personality or something lower is the same as the 

 answer to the question of intelligence that the 

 choice is not between the personal and something 

 lower, but between the personal and something 

 higher. Form a "clear and distinct idea," in 

 the Cartesian phrase, of the supra-personal, we 

 indeed cannot; but that is surely because the un- 

 knowable is unknowable. And in relation to this 

 question of personality we may remember that it 

 has always been in losing his personality and its 

 limitations that the mystic has thought that he has 

 attained to a vision of the Eternal. 



1 1 offer no apology for repeating so soon a saying so splendid. 

 355 



