e multiplicity of things which they know but do not
cause and the tiny fragment {47} of the Universe which by means of this
knowledge they can control. Nevertheless, though all our thoughts of God
must be inadequate, it is by thinking of Him as Thought, Will and
Feeling--emancipated from those limitations which are obviously due to
human conditions and are inapplicable to a Universal Mind--that we shall
attain to the truest knowledge of God which lies within our capacity. Do
you find a difficulty in the idea of partial and inadequate knowledge?
Just think, then, of our knowledge of other people's characters--of what
goes on in other people's minds. It is only by the analogy of our own
immediate experience that we can come to know anything at all of what
goes on in other people's minds. And, after all, such insight into other
people's thoughts, emotions, motives, intentions, characters, remains
very imperfect. The difficulty is greatest when the mind which we seek
to penetrate is far above our own. How little most of us know what it
would feel like to be a Shakespeare, a Mozart, or a Plato! And yet it
would be absurd to talk as if our knowledge of our fellows was no
knowledge at all. It is sufficient not merely to guide our own thoughts
and actions, but to make possible sympathy, friendship, love. Is it not
so with our knowledge of God? The Gnosticism which forgets the immensity
of the difference between the Divine Mind and the human is not less
unreasonable--not {48} less opposed to the principles on which we conduct
our thinking in every other department of life--than the Agnosticism
which rejects probabilities because we cannot have immediate certainties,
and insists on knowing nothing because we cannot know everything.

The argument which infers that God is Will from the analogy of our own
consciousness is one which is in itself independent of Idealism. It has
been used by many philosophers who are Realists, such as Reid or Dr.
Martineau, as well as by Idealists like Berkeley, or Pfleiderer, or
Lotze. It does not necessarily presuppose Idealism; but it does, to my
mind, fit in infinitely better with the idealistic mode of thought than
with the realistic. If you hold that there is no difficulty in supposing
dead, inert matter to exist without any mind to think it or know it, but
that only a Mind can be supposed to cause change or motion, you are
assuming a hard and fast distinction between matter and force