42 The Triunity of God [CH. 



present, and omniscient of all reality. That which is 

 becoming has not yet achieved absolute reality, but is 

 in process of achieving it. Thus it is only relatively real, 

 and so is susceptible only of relative knowledge 1 . Hence, 

 in so far as God is indwelling the Universe He knows it 

 with the relative knowledge of a being who is in process. 

 He knows it as man knows it ; that is to say, His know- 

 ledge reaches only up to a point, and differs from man's 

 in degree, not in kind. The Immanent God is limited by 

 the contingency common to the knowledge of all im- 

 manent beings. But in so far as all process is compre- 

 hended within the circle of the eternal activity of God- 

 head, the partial knowledge of process which is being 

 experienced is swallowed up in the perfect knowledge 

 of Transcendent Experience of activity in which there 

 is no process nor duration, but only the perfect experi- 

 ence of simultaneous Reality 8 . 



retain goodness. And on the other side I have insisted (if I may 

 repeat this) upon the absolute, the unassailable right of every 

 aspect of life to its own place, function and liberty." Op. cit. pp. 



47L 472- 



1 By relative knowledge I mean knowledge of things which are 

 real, but only in conditions of time and space. For a discussion of 

 the subject see Bradley, Appearance and Reality. 



1 I imagine that the relations of being to becoming, and of 

 becoming to being, can never be satisfactorily determined by the 

 human mind. They involve the whole perplexing question of the 

 degrees of Reality, with which the present scribe is certainly not 

 competent to deal. Nevertheless a brief discussion may clear the 

 air and present the problem to our minds in its naked simplicity 

 a simplicity that only adds to its difficulty. Absolute Being we 

 can only define as the full experience of self-conditioned Reality. 

 Becoming is not absolute, because it is conditioned by something 

 that is not-self. It is not merely the experience of duration, but 

 rather of that which is implied in the word duration of something 

 that produces the changes of becoming. There could be no dura- 

 tion without change; there could be no change without something 



