After reading such maxims, we shall probably be inclined to think that
"the Infinite" as a name for God might be given up with advantage.
There is nothing Divine about a _tabula rasa_.]

[Footnote 178: Cf. Richard of St. Victor, _de Praep. Anim._ 83,
"ascendat per semetipsum super semetipsum."]

[Footnote 179: The same is true of our attitude towards external
nature. We are always trying to rise from the shadow to the substance,
from the symbol to the thing symbolised, and so far the followers of
the negative road are right; but the life of Mysticism (on this side)
consists in the process of spiritualising our impressions; and to
regard the process as completed is to lose shadow and substance
together.]

[Footnote 180: It may be objected that I have misused the term _via
negativa_, which is merely the line of argument which establishes the
transcendence of God, as the "affirmative road" establishes His
immanence. I am far from wishing to depreciate a method which when
rightly used is a safeguard against Pantheism, but the whole history
of mediaeval Mysticism shows how mischievous it is when followed
exclusively.]

[Footnote 181: See Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. i. p. 58.]

[Footnote 182: Seth, _Hegelianism and Personality_, states this more
strongly. He argues that "the ultimate goal of Realism is a
thorough-going Pantheism." God is regarded as the _summum genus_, the
ultimate Substance of which all existing things are accidents. The
genus inheres in the species, and the species in individuals, as an
entity common to all and _identical in each_, an entity to which
individual differences adhere as accidents.]

[Footnote 183: McTaggart, _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 159 sq.,
argues that Hegel means that the Absolute Idea exists eternally in its
full perfection. There can be no _real_ development in time. "Infinite
time is a false infinite of endless aggregation." The whole discussion
is very instructive and interesting.]

[Footnote 184: So Lasson says well, in his book on Meister Eckhart,
"Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while
Pantheism generally stops at causality."]

[Footnote 185: As, for instance, Leslie Stephen tries to do in his
_Agnostic's Apology_.]

[Footnote 186: The system of Spinoza, based on the canon, "Omnis
determinatio est negatio," proceeds by wiping out all dividing lines,
which he regards as illusions, in order to reach the ultimate truth of
thi