vn] The Awakening of Personality 207 * 



represents the sheer misconception of an ill-digested 

 dualism. There is, of course, a change for God when man 

 comes into being, for wills definitely opposing His will 

 begin to work. His potential limitation becomes actual 

 in a far-reaching sense. In this measure there is truth 

 in Platt's idea but in urging, even for a dialectical pur- 

 pose, the distinction as between an inorganic universe 

 and the wills of men he is guilty of a serious blunder, for 

 from the rigid determinism of matter up to the limitation 

 of the Incarnation you cannot isolate the stages of 

 creation. The whole self-limitation of God is implicit in 

 the first step of creation. 



The utter untenability of any position which insists 

 on an objective reality in the cosmos apart from per- 

 sonal wills is ably shown from the standpoint of a scient- 

 ist, by Haldane 1 . He points out that the world is per- 

 ceived as something of potential use or hindrance to the 

 self, and we cannot separate it from our interest in it. 

 What we see in it is determined by our attention, which 

 itself depends on our needs as organisms. What we can 

 use in fact, ceases to be an ' other' for us, as we have so 

 often insisted, and is incorporated in ourself. " If I knew 

 more about the piece of stone its teleological determina- 

 tion would be more perfect. If, for instance, I knew its 

 exact chemical composition, and how to decompose it 

 with ease into its elements, its potential value to me 

 would possibly be greatly increased. And if I knew a 

 means of liberating the enormous stores of energy locked 

 up in the atoms of the stone, its potential value might 

 be almost incalculable. If, finally, I knew what lies 

 hidden behind the appearance of atoms, and energy, and 

 all the other physical and chemical appearances in the 



we here make must not be thought to imply a general condemna- 

 tion of the book. On the contrary it may be recommended as 

 a valuable statement of modern views. 

 1 Mechanism, Life, and Personality. 



