n] The Triunity of Man 7 r 



of the deepest functions of personality. We shall each be 

 ourselves in timeless existence as well as in time, but the 

 self-identity is no mere isolation, but interpenetration 1 

 Thus our bodies have two functions. They mediate 

 between our wishes and our ends when those ends, 

 whether they concern persons or things, are regarded 

 simply as objects external to ourselves; but they also 

 come to mediate between ourselves and other beings, 

 the self and the other being regarded as persons, and so 

 sharing their experience more and more completely. 

 This function, later achieved, is the higher, and moves 

 outside the sphere of time, in Reality. For consider. 

 You love because you abide. That of you which func- 

 tions in love is your real eternal self, which does not 

 change. The permanent you loves the permanent he. 

 (Grammar must lapse when its correct use involves a 

 misrepresentation of the mutual causality of relation- 

 ship.) Because I am I love; not because I become or 

 change. Rather, in spite of the fact of change, I love. 

 I am not change itself, because / experience change; 

 and the same is equally true of the beings I love. As 

 we shall see when we come to consider the doctrine of 

 the Trinity in more detail, Eternally Begotten connotes, 

 not process, but reality of relationship*. So too, the 



1 At first sight this would seem to contradict the fact we have 

 already stated, that in timeless existence, with its perfect pene- 

 tration, selves know each other directly, without the mediation 

 of attributes that attributes are the means of manifestation of 

 a personality to other personalities that are in process, and so 

 are in duration. This is not really so. The spiritual body is not 

 an attribute, but the expression of the self -identity. The per- 

 fected selves are different, since their process of becoming has 

 been different. They are self-identities. A is still A . and B still B, 

 though each is perfect. (See Evolution and Spiritual Life, ch. vi.) 

 The spiritual body is thus simply the ground of distinction of the 

 self-identity. 



* Cf. the Note on this point, ch. vii. p. 204, in which the general 



