d at; but the Spencerian
Absolute is the most certain of certainties, described by Professor
Hudson as "the one Eternal Reality, the corner-stone of all our {79}
knowledge"--otherwise as "the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all
things proceed." But the corner-stone of all our knowledge can be such
only because, so far from being unknowable, it is intimately related to
all our experience--which is tantamount to saying that it is not absolute
at all; and again, if God be the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which
all things proceed, that Energy must be thought of as related to all
things--in other words, it is the very reverse of absolute. And hence
the imaginary impossibility of thinking of the Deity as conscious and
intelligent vanishes at one stroke. If God were really absolute, in the
sense of the definition quoted above, it would certainly be, as Professor
Hudson says, "from the standpoint of philosophical exactness" quite
inadmissible "to speak of the Divine Will, or a Personal Creator, or an
intelligent Governor of the universe"; but as we have seen that this
absoluteness is purely fictitious, it follows that we may legitimately
inquire whether consciousness, intelligence, will--and hence
personality--are predicable of God, without heeding a veto which rests on
imaginary foundations.

It is true Professor Hudson raises two further objections; these,
however, will not long detain us. We are informed in the first place
that "the further progress of thought 'must force men hereafter to drop
the higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First {80} Cause, as
they have long since dropped the lower'"; but since our guide, a few
pages later, quotes with approval the dictum that "unless we cease to
think altogether, we _must_ think anthropomorphically," we may be
pardoned for declining to believe that "the further progress of thought
must force men hereafter" to "cease to think altogether." Such a suicide
of thought would furnish an odd comment upon philosophic "progress." We
shall, of course, continue to think anthropomorphically of God; our
thought will thus inevitably fall short of the Reality, but it will be
truer than if we did not think of Him at all. Again, Divine Personality
is declared to be a self-contradiction because

"Personality implies limitation, or it means nothing at all. To talk of
an Infinite Person, therefore, is to talk of something that is at once
infinite and finite, unconditione