British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871
Various
English periodicals
Again it is said that to know the infinite is to know the sum of all
reality, and as that would include the universe and its source
together, it must necessarily include on the one hand the knower along
with his knowledge, and on the other all the possibilities of
existence. The possibility of our knowing the Infinite Being as
distinct from the universe is denied, since infinite existence is said
to be coextensive with the whole universe of things. But that the
source of the universe must necessarily exhaust existence and contain
within himself all actual being is a mere theoretic assumption. The
presence of the finite does not limit the infinite as if the area of
the latter were contracted by so much of the former as exists within
it. For the relation of the infinite being to the finite is not
similar to the relation between infinite space and a segment of it. It
is true that so much of finite space is so much cut out of the whole
area of infinite space--though, if the remainder is infinite, the
portion removed will not really limit it. But as our intuition of the
infinite has no resemblance to our knowledge of space, we believe that
the relations which their respective objects sustain have no affinity
with each other. The intuition of God is a purely spiritual
revelation, informing us not of the quantity but of the quality of the
supreme being in the universe. And to affirm that the finite spirit of
man standing in a fixed relation to the infinite spirit of God limits
it, by virtue of that relation, is covertly to introduce a spatial
concept into a region to which it is utterly foreign, and which it has
no right to enter.[16]
We therefore maintain, in opposition to the teachers of nescience,
that a positive knowledge of the Infinite is competent to man, because
involved in his very consciousness of the finite. And when
psychologically analysed, this intuition explains and vindicates
itself.
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