eaker, "in
saying that God is not a person; but then it is because, as Hegel
says, he is personality itself--the universal personality which
realizes itself in each human consciousness, as a separate thought of
the one eternal mind. Our idea of the absolute is the absolute itself;
apart from and out of the universe, therefore, there is no God."

"I think we may grant you that," said Harrington, laughing.

"Nor," continued the other, "is there any God apart from the
universal consciousness of man. He--"

"Ought you not to say it?" said Harrington.

"It, then," said our student, "is the entire process of thought
combining in itself the objective movement in nature with the
logical subjective, and realizing itself in the spiritual totality
of humanity. He (or it, if you will) is the eternal movement of the
universal, ever raising itself to a subject, which first of all in
the subject comes to objectivity and a real consistence, and
accordingly absorbs the subject in its abstract individuality.
God is, therefore, not a person, but personality itself."

Nobody answered, for nobody understood.

"Q. E. D.," said Harrington, with the utmost gravity.

Thus encouraged, our student was going on to show how much more
clear Hegel's views are than those of Schelling. "The only real
existence," he said, "is the relation; subject and object, which
seem contradictory, are really one,--not one in the sense of
Schelling, as opposite poles of the same absolute existence, but
one as the relation itself forms the very idea. Not but what in
the threefold rhythm of universal existence there are affinities
with the three potencies of Schelling; but----"

"Take a glass of wine." said Harrington to his young acquaintance,
"take a glass of wine, as the Antiquary said to Sir Arthur Wardour,
when he was trying to cough up the barbarous names of his Pictish
ancestors, 'and wash down that bead-roll of unbaptized jargon which
would choke a dog.'"

We laughed, for we could not help it.

Our young student looked offended, and muttered something about the
inaptitude of the English for a deep theosophy and philosophy.

"It is all very well." said he, "Mr. Harrington; but it is not in
this way that the profound questions which, under some aspects, have
divided such minds as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and under others,
Gosehel, Hinrichs, Erdmann, Marheineke, Schaller, Gabler -----"

Harrington burst out laughing. "They divide a good many ph