CHAPTER VIII 



THE EVOLUTION OF TRANSCENDENCE 



THE time has now come when the various suggestions 

 we have made must be gathered up into a whole, the 

 many partial theories built together into one structure. 

 Till this is done we can form no judgment of our con- 

 structive work, nor attempt any fresh synthesis of the 

 everyday phenomena of conscious life. 



We began with an examination of the theories of 

 Immanence. Box-Immanence we rejected as leading 

 either to pure pantheism, or else to the insoluble riddle 

 of the thing-in-itself, which leaves man wholly out of 

 touch with Reality; and we showed that both of these 

 are contrary to our experience. We are true, self-deter- 

 mined beings, not merely parts of God; and we know 

 that we are not barred out from knowledge of Reality 

 by any external unpierced wall, but only, and only in 

 part, by our own limitations. We touch Reality, even 

 though we do not grasp it. 



Body-Immanence we rejected on the ground that the 

 word body has too definite and limited a meaning, 

 though there is much to be said for this form of expres- 

 sion. 



Instead, we proposed the term Work-Immanence. 

 Work implies first a Creative Mind and so a Creative 

 Thinker; then the material; then the expression of the 

 creative idea through the emergence of an entity which 

 satisfies that Idea. The Creative Thinker is the Trans- 

 cendent God; the thought or idea an expression of His 

 Essential Being as Love, of the need of Love's fellowship, 

 expanding in ever widening circles of being, all sharing 

 the Perfect Experience. The material is the expression 



