to the mathematical
dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is
monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of
outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena
therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without
infinite Being: so that in "returning to God" we might take the whole
world with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal
illumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic
portrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth.

On the whole I think M. Benda's two Gods are less unfriendly to one
another than his aggrieved tone might suggest. This pregnant little book
ends on a tragic note.

"Hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while
serving the imperial God, has paid some grudging honours, at least
verbally, to the infinite God as well, under the guise of
liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. But today
this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced
except that which gives strength. If anyone preaches human
kindness, it is in order to establish a "strong" community
martially trained, like a super-state, to oppose everything not
included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of
utilising the non-human forces of nature.... The will to return to
God may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world,
a sublime accident."

Certainly the will to "return to God", if not an accident, is an incident
in the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime
accident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and
precarious. Yet so long as the imperial God continues successfully to keep
our world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that
many a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a
sense of liberation, and even with joy. The infinite God owes all his
worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the
imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop
these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe
to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look
beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may _look_ beyond, and
take comfort in the vision, they cannot _pass_ beyond. As M. Benda says,
the most faithful Lev