GOD BOTH IMMANENT AND TRANSCENDENT. 367 



unsatisfactory and unstable nature of the relations 

 between the Deity and the Ego, and to this also 

 must be ascribed the all-pervading element of Evil. 



But as the Deity is one factor in this interaction, 

 i.e., in all things, there is within and throughout the 

 world also an element of good, that makes for a 

 more perfect harmony between God and the Egos, 

 ourselves and the world. Thus God is immanent 

 in all things, a constant, all-inspiring, ever-active 

 Force. And yet God is not dissolved in the All, 

 which was the heavy price paid by Pantheism for 

 the immanence of its " God," but has also a real 

 personality, a truer and transcendent existence for 

 Himself. In this way we solve the old controversy 

 of the transcendence or immanence of the Deity, by 

 showing how God is in different ways both imman- 

 ent and transcendent, and oppose to the Pantheistic 

 Monism, which could not explain the world, a plural- 

 istic Theism, which can. 



§ 28. And if this doctrine seem at first somewhat 

 to detract from the effective supremacy of God, and 

 to shock the ears accustomed to an unthinking 

 worship of the " Infinite," and if the ascription of 

 Evil to the limitation of God seem even to reduce 

 His power to a shadow, let us reflect, and realize 

 that omnipotence becomes impotence in the absence 

 of resistance, that resistance also Is the measure of 

 power. Hence, though it may seem a task un- 

 worthy of the divine power to overcome the re- 

 sistance of fools and beasts, it does not follow that 

 the apparent is a true measure of the real resistance. 

 For to impress on fools and beasts even a dim sense 

 of the rationality of the scheme of things, is a task 

 more difficult by far than to prevail over the dissent 

 of superhuman intelligences. And besides, how do 



