KEV. A. R. WHATELY^ D.D., ON IMMORTALITY. 



19 



further than to say that they are complementary or obverse. 

 But that is no justification — indeed the reverse — for ex- 

 plaining the second in terms of the first, yet not the first 

 in terms of the second. Now it is plain that we cannot think 

 of concrete individuals as such as containing other individuals. 

 We have to ignore them as such, and to think of them first 

 as systems. And that only means that we have shirked the 

 idea of individuality. 



In other words, we should have to show directly that the 

 Absolute is an Individual — not simply by trying to prove that 

 there must be an absolute System. And we must be able to 

 apply to it the term individual, meaning what it means in 

 Common Sense, from which we first took it. 



A¥hat is an individual ? Whatever else it may be, it is 

 certainly a unit for consciousness. We can never merely resolve 

 it into its parts, even on the understanding that the parts 

 " express " it, for we first received it not piecemeal, but as a 

 whole. Like the mere psychologist, the absolutist forgets that 

 individuality means this, that, and the other concrete individual. 

 Not at all, he may say, they are concrete individual systems. 

 But why not say as well " systematic individuals " ? Indivi- 

 duality cannot be a mere predicate at the last analysis. It is a 

 mistake to say that the parts even of any system merely 

 " express " it. They also contribute to it. And we — free, 

 responsible units of creation, as, for religion certainly, we are — 

 can we not contribute — none the less freely because through 

 God — to the fulfilment of His ends ? Are we not his fellow- 

 workers ? Or is our freedom only the necessitated unwinding 

 of what He has wound up in us ? Can we not make choice even 

 of eternal issues ? Are we only phases of God ? 



Dr. Bosanquet's Absolute is no true individual, because it has 

 no focus. It cannot be given in experience, because it is 

 Experience. Christianity proclaims that God has focussed 

 Himself for us in time and space : that he has revealed Himself 

 to man and in man and as man. He is not reached as a mere 

 idea. He is not everywhere in general and nowhere in 

 particular.* And as we realize His individuality, so we realize 

 our own. As we know Him through His personal approach, so 

 in approaching Him we know ourselves. We realize our 



* I think this comment is perfectly fair, though there are " degrees of 

 reality." For these only ascend ad indefinitum. I hope I have 

 summarised fairly Dr. Bosanquet's view : at any rate the logic of his 

 general position cannot be missed. 



c 2 



