mj The Triunity of Personality 105 



knowing myself free, without recognising that there is a 

 freedom which caused my freedom. I cannot be for 

 myself alone; and yet I cannot be in an absolute sense 

 at all if I feel that God is an external other for myself. 

 An external other must be a limitation, since it predi- 

 cates conditions which are not my conditions. Other- 

 ness can only not be a limitation when it is internalised 

 in perfect union. For instance, my will is not a limita- 

 tion of my thought, nor is my freedom a limitation of 

 either, for these are all myself. Again I do not feel that 

 others, with whom I was in perfect sympathy, would in 

 any sense limit me by their otherness, because I should 

 penetrate it, and they would penetrate my otherness. In 

 earthly life I never reach this, but I do find that the 

 more my love for friends approaches perfection, the less 

 they limit me and I them. Rather they develope my 

 personality, and I theirs. Similarly, if I know God's will 

 and thought and freedom as my own, while yet I am not 

 God but myself, I find fulfilment, not limitation, in Him. 

 And reverently we may say that the same is true forGod. 

 Each to each is no longer 'other' externally, since we 

 interpenetrate and share the same experience, but each 

 remains himself, and so is an 'other' in a sense that 

 includes no limitation, but is, so to speak, internalised, 

 having become mere differentiation. Yet though I can- 

 not be for myself alone, even in the transcendent exist- 

 ence we have just considered, and to which we approach 

 only in a very small measure in this life ; though I can- 

 not exist for myself even in the sense that God exists for 

 Himself ; yet I am self-existent, though not purely self- 

 existent. I can will myself, think myself, freely; yet 

 know myself one, in so far as I am. My will is not an 

 abstract quality that is part of myself. I am a creative 

 being. My intellect is not an abstract quality that enables 

 me to think myself. I am a thinking being. My emotion 

 is not an abstract quality that enables a whole that is 



