states, and not 'I.' A relation to an external reality is not necessary; and, consequently, 'personality' also is not bound to the condition of finiteness to wit, to that of being limited by another reality of the same kind."

Personality, then, in Deity has been very clearly relieved of those accidental limitations which confused thought had attached to personality, and which would have ended by destroying all knowledge of Him whatsoever. The Infinite "alone, therefore, is capable of a self-existence, which needs neither initiation nor continuous development by means of anything which is alien to it, but maintains itself in an eternal movement within its own essence." Disastrous to theology as anthropomorphism, under some current conceptions, might be, its charge clearly avails not in the light of all that has now been advanced against the supposition of personality as a thing of quantitative limitations. How difficult it is, however, to get rid of this quantitative infinite, modern philosophy bears abundant witness. We therefore believe recent philosophical theism to be with W. S. Lilly when, in his Great Enigma,' he has, in Lotzean strain, remarked that, in the proper sense of the word, "Personality (Für-sich-sein) can be predicated only of the Infinite," and that "perfect self-hood means immediate self-existence. What we call personality, self-hood, in man, is but the dimmest shadow, the faintest effluence from the source and fount

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of Being, in whom alone is perfect Reason, perfect Will." Further, "the Ultimate Reality contains. within itself the conditions of its existence. Man does not; for he needs the stimulus of non-self to be conscious of his self-hood. He does not need that stimulus to become a person, for the non-self does not create consciousness; it merely manifests it; it is an occasion, not a cause. The idea of Personality, like all ideas, is realised only in that self-existent-the original of all existencewhich transcends those ideas, indeed, but in transcending includes them." To its deepened conceptions of personality, true, infinite, eternal, in God, real, abiding, supreme, in man, must be attributed much of the fulness and depth of recent theistic philosophy, and we, for our part, see no reason why greater richness may not yet gather around its conceptions in this sphere. It is, in fact, just here in our view that theistic thought has a great and inspiring work to do, for it is here-in personality-that potentiality, trueness, fulness, depth, infinitude, for us reside, though as yet by us imperfectly known. And we, for our own part, do not see how we can in the future face the scientific view of the illimitable universe, except as we think more profoundly along the lines of personality. This, it seems to us, we must do, or give up the faith—in fact, relinquish theology. There is no need to make impossible attempt here at historic treatment of this subject in recent theology and philosophy, seeing the theme has received

attention on its historic side in Germany from Sengler, Wirth, Hanne, Pfleiderer, Drews, and others in our time of scarcely less consequence in our estimate, and since we are here concerned less with mere historical and systematic exposition than with critically estimating the advances made by theistic philosophy. We shall take leave to say, however, that the full results of recent German thought and research in this connection do not seem to us to have been at all fully assimilated in British theological scholarship and thought, which we account matter of extreme regret. It may be remarked that the older dogmatic interest in the perfection, infinity, and spirituality of God has given way to a more philosophic interest in the conception of personality in Deity. The personality conception was found helpful in bringing out the Divine superiority to, and independence of, the world, in the revulsion that took place against Spinozism. What in recent times has been most firmly held to in personality is undoubtedly related to Kant. Kant sees in freedom and independence of the mechanism of all nature the essential moment of personality. One-sided as his view of self-determination may be, there is yet more to be said for his than for many more recent representations of personality. He boldly elevates the notion beyond mere intelligence to something in which he sees the proof of a new and higher order founded in freedom. Man is to him, in virtue of personality, a

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being capable of life, of reason, and of forming judgments. There is now associated with the reflective subject, to which we attribute personality, such a practical activity that we see it marked by selfdetermination, and not by mere self-consciousness.

Recent philosophy of theism may, we suppose, be said to have carried its thought along the theistic lines of Jacobi and Baader, even though the positions of these thinkers may fall very far short of present-day conceptions of personality and proofs of the same. The former of these, Jacobi, was

able on occasion to assert his belief-defective as its objective grounds might be in an intelligent and personal cause of the world (verständige persönliche Ursache der Welt). Fichte expressly held that "in the conception of personality lie limits" (Schranken); that what we in our finitude apprehend never by any ascent (durch unendliche Steigerung) can be “ changed into an Infinite," and that such ascent since it never can be rid of limitation and finiteness-may bring us to a magnified man, but never to God. Both his theistic tendencies and his shrinking from personality in Deity appear in the sublime strains of his Vocation of Man,' wherein he breaks out: "Sublime and Living Will! named by no name, compassed by no thought! I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided! Thy voice sounds within me, mine resounds in Thee; and all my thoughts, if they be but good

and true, live in Thee also. . . . That which I conceive becomes finite through my very conception of it; and this can never, even by endless exaltation, rise into the Infinite. Thou differest from men, not in degree, but in nature. In every stage of their advancement they think of Thee as a greater man, and still a greater; but never as God - the Infinite Whom no measure can In the idea of Person there are imperfections, limitations: how can I clothe Thee with it without these? . . . Thou workest in me the knowledge of my duty, of my vocation in the world of reasonable beings: how, I know not, nor need I to know.

mete.

.

Thou knowest what I think and

what I will. . . . Thou willest that my free obedience shall bring with it eternal consequences. . . Thou doest, and Thy will itself is the deed, &c.' With Fichte, indeed, when we have attributed consciousness and personality to God, we have not really thought God, as we wished to do, but have simply multiplied ourselves in our thought, and so finitised the Deity. The pure or absolute Ego, which Fichte speedily identified with God, is no determinate individual, but simply pure and infinite activity. To his stress on this principle of the ego, Fichte united emphasis on Will-an eternal, infinite Will-as, in his later writings, he did on Life-the Absolute Life-both of which he identified with God. To this principle in any of these forms determination is denied, and to that