360 MAN AND GOD. 



§ 24. An elaborate investigation of the doctrine 

 of the Infinity of the Deity has been found necessary, 

 but it was fully warranted by the magnitude of the 

 issues Involved, and of the results attained. For 

 it ought to have resulted in a firm conviction that 

 neither religion nor science nor philosophy has 

 anything to gain rather than everything to lose 

 by the assertion of this doctrine. It ought to be 

 at length clear to all that the Pantheism which is 

 arrived at by deifying the abstract category of the 

 unity of the universe arises out of paralogisms and 

 confusions, is unable to explain the interaction of 

 existences which do not require it, and, were it 

 conceivable, would plunge all speculative and practi- 

 cal philosophy into irredeemable chaos. 



The assertion, therefore, of the finiteness of God 

 Is primarily the assertion of the knowableness of the 

 w^orld, of the commensurateness of the Deity with 

 our Intelligence. By becoming finite God becomes 

 once more a real principle in the understanding of 

 the world, a real motive in the conduct of ^ life, a 

 real factor in the existence of things, a factor none 

 the less real for being unseen and inferred. For it 

 is much that the Deity can once more be made the 

 subject of Inferences, that intelligible reasons can 

 once more be given for the existence of God, and 

 that the Kantian criticism of the " physlco-theo- 

 logical proof" (ch. II. § 19) falls to the ground. And 

 it is a sufficient concession to the instinctive humility 

 of religious feeling to admit that the Deity Is tin- 

 known to us as yet, that He is a God who "wears 

 a fold of heaven and earth across His face" ; we 

 must not permit it to ascribe to Him the suicidal 

 attribute of unknowableness. 



And the discussion of the relations of Monism 



