PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 



NOTE. As suggested in the Preface, the study of this 

 chapter may be postponed with advantage until the first 

 five chapters, at any rate, have been read. 



IMMANENCE and transcendence are words that must be 

 used again and again in any study directed towards the 

 fuller understanding of the problems of God and the 

 universe, for the concepts they express are essential to 

 any ultimate discussion of the facts of experience. 



In the Universe we find change proceeding within the 

 realm of Time and Space. We live in a world of becom- 

 ing; and from the process of becoming we ourselves are 

 not exempt. 



Yet there is within us something that will not rest 

 satisfied with a theory of mere becoming, mere change, 

 mere process. Our minds demand unity in the whole; 

 something stable that lies behind the flux of things. 

 The Many cannot bring us rest without the One. Process 

 has nothing for us unless it is directed towards an End. 

 Becoming has no real meaning without its correlative 

 Being. Time and Space, however real they may seem, 

 yet set themselves up as being in some relation of oppo- 

 sition to a far vaguer concept, in which is neither Time 

 nor Space, that lies almost unrecognised in the back of 

 our mind 1 : the concept of Simultaneity. 



The intuitive grasp of these facts has its results even 

 among men who do not think deeply or clearly. Natural 



1 Cf. Pringle Pattison, The Idea of God in Recent Philosophy, 

 p. 368. " If we speak of the Divine Activity as an eternal act, that 

 means for us, if we throw it, as we must, into terms of time, an act 

 which is being accomplished now, and which we are helping to 

 accomplish... the whole life of God is poured into what we call 

 our human 'Now'." et passim. 



