CHAPTER II 



THE TRIUNITY OF MAN 



LET us now turn from the question of revealed religion 

 to consider man's own conception of God how it 

 arises and what are its salient features. No doubt, to 

 Christian and metaphysician alike, it is obvious that we 

 can only pretend to do this. Revelation is the correla- 

 tive of evolution. Man could know nothing of God if 

 He did not reveal Himself through His attributes, and 

 even if we say arbitrarily that we are going to examine 

 man's conception of God from the purely human stand- 

 point, the claim to use such a method is artificial, and 

 amounts to no more than a statement that we propose 

 to follow more or less closely the historical order of 

 man's expanding ideas of God, as he appreciates more 

 truly God's attributes. Yet even such an obvious truth 

 requires further analysis before we can see its meaning. 

 These attributes, as we have seen, constitute the 

 modes in which God is manifested to beings external to 

 Himself. Their significance is in relation to the Cosmos, 

 not to Himself. Men, in so far as they are external to 

 God, can only know Him at second-hand, through the 

 mediation of His attributes. Such knowledge, being 

 external, can never satisfy. The spirit of man yearns 

 towards immediate knowledge of God. It craves union 

 with Him, in which alone is true immediacy- We can 

 never be content to know what God is, we need to know 

 Himself. But we can only learn to know God through 

 knowing what He is. Mediate knowledge must precede 

 immediate. The reason for this is obvious. Really to 

 know a person to know him, not merely his attributes 

 means to love him. Aimer c'est tout comprendre; 



