Hence, without continuing this line of argument, which it would not be
difficult to trace through every constituent branch of human psychology,
we may take it as unquestionable that, if there is a Divine Mind, it
must differ so essentially from the human mind, that it becomes
illogical to designate the two by the same name: the attributes of
eternity and ubiquity are in themselves enough to place such a Mind in a
category _sui generis_, wholly different from anything which the analogy
furnished by our own mind enables us even dimly to conceive. And this,
of course, is no more than theologians admit. God's thoughts are above
our thoughts, and a God who would be comprehensible to our intelligence
would be no God at all, they say. Which may be true enough, only we must
remember that in whatever measure we are thus precluded from
understanding the Divine Mind, in that measure are we precluded from
founding any conclusions as to its nature upon analogies furnished by
the human mind. The theory ceases to be anthropomorphic: it ceases to be
even 'anthropopsychic': it is affiliated with the conception of mind
only in virtue of the one fact that it serves to give the best
provisional account of the order of Nature, by supposing an infinite
extension of some of the faculties of the human mind, with a concurrent
obliteration of all the essential conditions under which alone these
faculties are known to exist. Obviously of such a Mind as this no
predication is logically possible. If such a Mind exists, it is not
conceivable as existing, and we are precluded from assigning to it any
attributes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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