have
retarded the true development of mankind. To accurately convey this
conception in words, is perhaps, impossible, and to attempt definition is
to introduce that very idea of limitation which is our object to avoid. It
is a matter of feeling rather than of definition; yet some endeavour must
be made to indicate the direction in which we must feel for this great
truth if we are to find it. The idea is that of realizing personality
without that selfhood which differentiates one individual from another. "I
am not that other because I am myself"--this is the definition of
individual selfhood; but it necessarily imparts the idea of limitation,
because the recognition of any other individuality at once affirms a point
at which our own individuality ceases and the other begins. Now this mode
of recognition cannot be attributed to the Universal Mind. For it to
recognize a point where itself ceased and something else began would be to
recognize itself as _not_ universal; for the meaning of universality is the
including of _all_ things, and therefore for this intelligence to recognize
anything as being _outside itself_ would be a denial of its own being. We
may therefore say without hesitation that, whatever may be the nature of
its intelligence, it must be entirely devoid of the element of
self-recognition _as an individual personality_ on any scale whatever. Seen
in this light it is at once clear that the originating all-pervading Spirit
is the grand impersonal principle of Life which gives rise to all the
particular manifestations of Nature. Its absolute impersonalness, in the
sense of the entire absence of any consciousness of _individual_ selfhood,
is a point on which it is impossible to insist too strongly. The
attributing of an impossible individuality to the Universal Mind is one of
the two grand errors which we find sapping the foundations of religion and
philosophy in all ages. The other consists in rushing to the opposite
extreme and denying the quality of personal intelligence to the Universal
Mind. The answer to this error remains, as of old, in the simple question,
"He that made the eye shall He not see? He that planted the ear shall He
not hear?"--or to use a popular proverb, "You cannot get out of a bag more
than there is in it;" and consequently the fact that we ourselves are
centres of personal intelligence is proof that the infinite, from which
these centres are concentrated, must be infinite intelligence, and