208 The Awakening of Personality [CH. 



stone, I could completely adjust myself to it. Its teleo- 

 logical relations to me would be entirely transformed; 

 it would be wholly a part of myself, and the end of my 

 scientific study of the stone would be completely 

 attained 1 ." As we have seen from our special stand- 

 point; as Haldane the physiologist shows; and Kant, 

 and Hegel, and all the thinkers who are not self -de- 

 ceived into a belief that the scientific abstraction we call 

 matter is in its own form an ultimate reality; the 

 material universe can only be understood as the medium 

 in which a certain definite purpose is realised. That 

 purpose is the development of personality. The cosmos 

 is not self -existent ; only the personalities for whose self- 

 fulfilment it exists God's first, and then those of men 

 are that. It is instinct with purpose; the means by 

 which the Love of God is realised in creation. It only 

 exists for God as a self -limitation of His activity; for 

 men, at present, as an external limitation, through 

 which they yet achieve and realise their own person- 

 alities. And out of matter, both that which is proper 

 to himself as his body, and that which is external, each 

 man goes on to create his own cosmos of self-limitation, 

 for good and ill. For good, in so far as the self-limitation 

 is refusal to use what he has for unworthy ends that will 

 eventually raise a barrier between him and his own ful- 

 filment in so far, that is, as the object is creative. For 

 ill, in so far as he uses what he has for evil purposes. 

 Men are as gods, creating. Any thought which separates 

 God's creation of the universe from His creation of man 

 is hopelessly wide of the mark. As with matter, so too 

 with time and space. Both of these are judgments upon 

 the continuous process of becoming, in conditions of 

 limitation. And what is becoming is the personality 

 whether it be that of man, coming into being in the con- 



1 Haldane, op. cit. pp. 112, 113. 



