We are incapable of apprehending a Personality, except in the sense of something that masks or represents an incomprehensible notion; and dogmatic systems are to us no more than the formal envelopes of spiritual truth. * * * * * Two cardinal ideas run through our deeper religious thought. One is the Maya, or cosmic illusion, which cuts the knot of any difficulty touching the relation between Spirit and Matter, and produces Unity by exhibiting the visible universe as a shadow projected upon the white radiance of eternity; the other is the notion of the soul's deliverance by long travail from existence in any stage or shape. * * * * * In short, we have a religion, but no theology. "By Plotinus 'The One' is explicitly exalted above the 'νοῦς' and the 'ideas'; it transcends existence altogether, and is not cognizable by reason. Remaining itself in repose, it rays out, as it were, from its fulness an image of itself, which is called 'νοῦς,' and which constitutes the system of ideas, or the intelligible world. The soul is in turn the image or product of the 'νοῦς' and the soul, by its motion, begets corporeal matter. The soul thus faces two ways--towards the 'νοῦς,' from which it springs, and towards the material life, which is its own product" (_vide Encyclopædia Britannica_). A consideration of the theosophy of the "Sohar," or Book of Splendour, does not afford a key to the solution of this problem. We meet there with the same difficulty, the inconceivable transition point, where the "inactive" mingles with the "active." Ensoph is the Absolute, the great "I am," the endless, the boundless, the incomprehensible. Mr. Bradley, in his book on _Appearance and Reality_, asks whether we really have a positive idea of an absolute defined as "one comprehensive sentience"; and he answers that, while we cannot fully realize its existence, its main features are drawn from our own experience, and we have also a suggestion there of the unity of a whole embracing distinctions within itself. "Identity only exists through differences, unity through multiplicity. Such is the constant thesis of the Hegelian philosophy."[AC] [AC] _Vide_ Professor Seth's _Position of Man in the Kosmos_. The apparent connection between the Buddhist and Christian conceptions of a God is very ably stated by Dr. Paul Carus, and with the following extracts from his writings I may fitly close the subject of this chapter:-- "Buddhism is commonly said to deny the existence of a God. This is true, or not true, according to the definition of God.