e merit of seeing the paramount importance of the active
side of experience. To this then primarily, and not to any merely {54}
intellectual function, we may safely refer the category of causality.'[9]

I may add that Professor Ward's _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, from which
I have quoted, constitutes the most brilliant and important modern
defence of the doctrine which I have endeavoured very inadequately to set
before you in this lecture.

It is a remarkable fact that the typical exponent of popular so-called
'scientific' Agnosticism, and the founder of that higher metaphysical
Agnosticism which has played so large a part in the history of modern
Philosophy, should before their deaths have both made confessions which
really amount to an abjuration of all Agnosticism. If the ultimate
Reality is to be thought of as a rational Will, analogous to the will
which each of us is conscious of himself having or being, he is no longer
the Unknown or the Unknowable, but the God of Religion, who has revealed
Himself in the consciousness of man, 'made in the image of God.' What
more about Himself we may also hold to be revealed in the human spirit, I
hope to consider in our next lecture. But, meanwhile, a word may be
uttered in answer to the question which may very probably be asked--Is
God a Person? A complete answer to the question would involve elaborate
discussions, but for our present purpose the question may be answered
very {55} briefly. If we are justified in thinking of God after the
analogy of a human soul--if we are justified in thinking of Him as a
self-conscious Being who thinks, feels, and wills, and who is, moreover
(if I may a little anticipate the subject of our next lecture) in
relation with, capable of loving and being loved by other such
beings--then it seems most natural to speak of God's existence as
personal. For to be a self-conscious being--conscious of itself and
other beings, thinking, willing, feeling, loving--is what we mean by
being a person. If any one prefers to speak of God as 'super-personal,'
there is no great objection to so doing, provided that phrase is not made
(as it often is) an excuse for really thinking of God after the analogy
of some kind of existence lower than that of persons--as a force, an
unconscious substance, or merely a name for the totality of things. But
for myself, I prefer to say that our own self-consciousness gives us only
an ideal of the highest type of existenc