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Cudworth, and Berkeley against both, or to uphold with 
Schelling the intellectual intuition (intellectuelle Anschauung) 
of the Absolute. I should simply venture to lay down thus 
much : we have a notion of the Infinite, no matter whence or 
how derived, as truly as we have of the Finite ; not an image, 
of course, but a conception ; and this Infinite is to us a neces- 
sary correlative of the Finite : so that — even as the distinct 
knowledge of good implies in it the knowledge of evil, its cor- 
relative— we cannot conceive of the Finite without the Infinite, 
of the Limited without the Unlimited. 
But has this conception of the Infinite, the Absolute, the 
Unlimited, necessarily any personal existence corresponding to 
it ? One would say that as the finite man has personality, so 
the Infinite, too, may be expected to be personal ; and, as we 
have a conception of the one finite nature in many finite persons, 
we infer that there is an Infinite Nature personally existent 
corresponding to our idea of it. Thus we come to the well- 
known arguments of Descartes (Med. iii. and v.) : — “The idea 
of an All-perfect, Infinite Being, is, without controversy, in my 
mind — how did it get there? Not from the outer world; not 
from education ; not from any finite source, because the finite 
and imperfect could never give me a conception of the Perfect 
and Infinite; the effect could not transcend the cause. Hence, 
if I have the idea of God, a God must necessarily exist.” And 
again : “ As the existence of a triangle is implied in the very 
nature or essence of the conception we have of it, so the exist- 
ence of God is implied in the essence of our idea of Him / 5 
This may be flat realism, but, if it is, so much the better for 
realism. The conception of the superhuman is neither, as 
Locke would tell us, a mere abstract notion of humanity with 
human conditions removed, nor, as Fichte might say, a pro- 
jection of our own self-consciousness into the region of the 
unknowable, but a real representation of a real existence. A 
representation, but, as I said above, not an image; or else that 
argument might hold good which presses the impossibility of 
there being an idea of the Infinite at all. Can that which is 
finite, it is urged, take in the Infinite, the measured com- 
prehend that which is immeasurable ? We know the old tale 
of St. Augustin of Hippo ; that when designing to write an 
exhaustive treatise on the Txdune mystery of the Divine Being, 
he saw in vision by the seashore a child who had scooped a 
hollow in the sand with a shell, and smilingly told the Saint 
that he was going to pour the ocean into it with the same 
instrument. “Nay,” said St. Augustin, “ surely it were foolish 
to think of taking up the wide sea with a little shell, and 
