Page:The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892).djvu/166

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THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

self; perhaps his transcendent wisdom consists simply in knowing, in establishing, in harmonizing their relationships, so that, as Schiller says, “while no one of them is his equal, his own endlessness foams up to him from out this beaker of the infinite world of spirits.” Then, indeed, their lonely heroism is his triumph; their seeming isolation is simply the manner in which he realizes, through them, the organization of his own life; their diversity and ignorance are merely his way of expressing the unity in variety, the completeness in differentiation, of his own manifold nature. If so, then God isn’t somewhere far off there, outside the world, so that we feel in vain for him amongst the dead and dismal things in themselves. God is in you, just in so far as you are alive and hearty and humane; in your human relationships, just so far as they are devoted, loyal, organic; in your very ignorance, in so far as it enables you to be heroic; in your very finiteness, in so far as it is a condition for your accomplishment of a definite task. God, outside of such a world of finite agents, would rejoice only in his empty infinity; he would be, as Schiller also said, in the poem from which I have just quoted, — he would be “friendless,” he would “suffer lack.” To be the God in reality, he would have to enter into finite form, and preserve his infinity merely through the unity, the organization, the conscious spiritual form of his universe of active creatures. We were wrong then, when we sought him as it were afar off, in the mirage of space and time, or even in the laws of outer nature as Spinoza did. We were even wrong to say, as Kant said: We never take hold of his real self, we only postulate him. The fact is that, in our spiritual life, we already possess him, are flesh of his flesh, are one with him, just in so far as we have vitality, courage, loyalty, wealth, strength, sanity, of will and of understanding. We know of him just so much as we are. And we are of him just so much as we are morally worthy to be.