vm] The Evolution of Transcendence 221 



or of Godhead, but rather made it fuller, gave greater 

 depth to our understanding of Christ's perfect Man- 

 hood. 



Next we turned to the ordinary conception of human 

 immortality, and tried to analyse the intuition on which 

 it is based. From this study one chief point emerged 

 that any doctrine which laid the chief stress on the un- 

 likeness of man to God was doomed to failure. Our hope 

 of immortality rests on the fundamental likeness, iden- 

 tity even, between the experience of men and God 1 . 



Finally we discussed the shadowy region in which 

 Personality has its beginnings, and tried to give a more 

 definite meaning to Bergson's phrase "the inturning of 

 the consciousness upon itself." 



It now becomes clear that, all through, our examina- 

 tion has tended towards one conclusion that man's 

 experience, including his self-experience, partial though 

 it be, is yet the same as God's, differing in degree only, not 



1 It is exactly here, in the self-identity and the absoluteness of 

 all personality, that we join issue with Tuck well (Religion and 

 Reality, p. 152). "We do not say that the Absolute is a Person, 

 because, as we have said, so far as we understand the legitimate 

 significance of the word Person, it always imports finitude. It is, 

 we hold, properly employed only where we distinguish the / from 

 a Thou; it has, therefore, always a social reference, a mutually 

 exclusive or negative meaning towards other selves. The Abso- 

 lute, therefore, as all-inclusive, cannot be said without a contra- 

 diction to be a Person, but may, we contend, accurately be termed 

 in respect of its spirituality and unity a Perfect Self." This is 

 going back to the days before Lotze, and the most it indicates is 

 the ' Spiritual College ' of McTaggart. Our whole argument baa 

 led us to postulate mutual inclusiveness. not exclusiveness. as 

 characteristic of personality, and we have seen that every per- 

 sonality is internally substantiated as I and Thou, through a 

 third relation which establishes its freedom. In short, TuckweU 

 unintentionally but exactly defines the necessity for a doctrine 

 of the Trinity. 



