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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of God the Known and God the Unknown, by
+Samuel Butler
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+God the Known and God the Unknown
+
+by Samuel Butler
+
+February, 2001  [Etext #2513]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of God the Known and God the Unknown by
+Samuel Butler
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+
+                        God the Known and
+                         God the Unknown
+
+                        BY SAMUEL BUTLER
+
+
+
+                         Prefatory Note
+       
+"GOD the Known and God the Unknown" first appeared in the form of 
+a series of articles which were published in "The Examiner" in 
+May, June, and July, 1879.  Samuel Butler subsequently revised 
+the text of his work, presumably with the intention of 
+republishing it, though he never carried the intention into 
+effect.  In the present edition I have followed his revised 
+version almost without deviation.  I have, however, retained a 
+few passages which Butler proposed to omit, partly because they 
+appear to me to render the course of his argument clearer, and 
+partly because they contain characteristic thoughts and 
+expressions of which none of his admirers would wish to be 
+deprived.  In the list of Butler's works "God the Known and God 
+the Unknown" follows "Life and Habit," which appeared in 1877, 
+and "Evolution, Old and New," which was published in May, 1879.  
+It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three works are 
+closely akin in subject and treatment, and that "God the Known 
+and God the Unknown" will gain in interest by being considered in 
+relation to its predecessors.
+
+                      R.  A.  STREATFEILD
+------------------------------------------------
+
+                        God the Known and
+                         God the Unknown
+
+                        BY SAMUEL BUTLER
+
+       
+                            CHAPTER 1
+       
+                          INTRODUCTION
+       
+MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse 
+ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is 
+felt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it is 
+considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist, 
+to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that 
+it has long been finally settled, so that there is now no 
+question concerning it.
+
+So far, indeed, has this been carried through all time past that 
+the actions which are most important to us, such as our passage 
+through the embryonic stages, the circulation of our blood, our 
+respiration, etc.  etc., have long been formulated beyond all 
+power of reopening question concerning them - the mere fact or 
+manner of their being done at all being ranked among the great 
+discoveries of recent ages.  Yet the analogy of past settlements 
+would lead us to suppose that so much unanimity was not arrived 
+at all at once, but rather that it must have been preceded by 
+much smouldering [sic] discontent, which again was followed by 
+open warfare; and that even after a settlement had been 
+ostensibly arrived at, there was still much secret want of 
+conviction on the part of many for several generations.
+
+There are many who see nothing in this tendency of our nature but 
+occasion for sarcasm; those, on the other hand, who hold that the 
+world is by this time old enough to be the best judge concerning 
+the management of its own affairs will scrutinise [sic] this 
+management with some closeness before they venture to satirise 
+[sic] it; nor will they do so for long without finding 
+justification for its apparent recklessness; for we must all fear 
+responsibility upon matters about which we feel we know but 
+little; on the other hand we must all continually act, and for 
+the most part promptly.  We do so, therefore, with greater 
+security when we can persuade both ourselves and others that a 
+matter is already pigeon-holed than if we feel that we must use 
+our own judgment for the collection, interpretation, and 
+arrangement of the papers which deal with it.  Moreover, our 
+action is thus made to appear as if it received collective 
+sanction; and by so appearing it receives it.  Almost any 
+settlement, again, is felt to be better than none, and the more 
+nearly a matter comes home to everyone, the more important is it 
+that it should be treated as a sleeping dog, and be let to lie, 
+for if one person begins to open his mouth, fatal developments 
+may arise in the Babel that will follow.
+
+It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of having 
+reason to complain of the desire for the postponement of 
+important questions, as though the world were composed mainly of 
+knaves or fools, such fixity as animal and vegetable forms 
+possess is due to this very instinct.  For if there had been no 
+reluctance, if there were no friction and vis inertae to 
+be encountered even after a  theoretical equilibrium had been 
+upset, we  should have had no fixed organs nor settled  
+proclivities, but should have been daily and  hourly undergoing 
+Protean transformations,  and have still been throwing out 
+pseudopodia like the amoeba.  True, we might have come to like 
+this fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system if 
+we had taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yet 
+young; but we have contracted other habits which have become so 
+confirmed that we cannot break with them.  We therefore now hate 
+that which we should perhaps have loved if we had practised [sic] 
+it.  This, however, does not affect the argument, for our concern 
+is with our likes and dislikes, not with the manner in which 
+those likes and dislikes have come about.  The discovery that 
+organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much 
+astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the 
+world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its 
+contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception.  
+Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the 
+good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in 
+having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility 
+in having been willing to change so much.
+
+Nevertheless, however conservative we may be, and however much 
+alive to the folly and wickedness of tampering with settled 
+convictions-no matter what they are-without sufficient cause, 
+there is yet such a constant though gradual change in our 
+surroundings as necessitates corresponding modification in our 
+ideas, desires, and actions.  We may think that we should like to 
+find ourselves always in the same surroundings as our ancestors, 
+so that we might be guided at every touch and turn by the 
+experience of our race, and be saved from all self-communing or 
+interpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts around 
+us.  Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us; 
+and we, too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, so 
+as to see the facts around us as perhaps even more changed than 
+they actually are.  It has been said, "Tempora mutantur nos et 
+mutamur in illis." The passage would have been no less true 
+if it had stood, "Nos mutamur et tempora mutantur in 
+nobis." Whether the organism or the surroundings began 
+changing first is a matter of such small moment that the two may 
+be left to fight it out between themselves; but, whichever view 
+is taken, the fact will remain that whenever the relations 
+between the organism and its surroundings have been changed, the 
+organism must either succeed in putting the surroundings into 
+harmony with itself, or itself into harmony with the 
+surroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable to 
+remember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there
+fore to die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identity 
+further.
+
+Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other of 
+these two ways: it must either change slowly and continuously 
+with the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the 
+smallest change with a corresponding modification so far as is 
+found convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible, 
+and then make larger and more sweeping changes.
+
+Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference 
+being only one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the 
+other, as a ripple is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their 
+advantages and disadvantages, so that most organisms will take 
+the one course for one set of things and the other for another.  
+They will deal promptly with things which they can get at easily, 
+and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which are 
+more troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled upon 
+more cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods of 
+repose followed by short periods of greater activity.
+
+Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action many 
+times a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or three 
+times a day, and breed for the most part not more than once a 
+year, their breeding season being much their busiest time.  It is 
+on the first principle that the modification of animal forms has 
+proceeded mainly; but it may be questioned whether what is called 
+a sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has 
+been long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been met 
+step by step by as much small remedial modification as was found 
+practicable: so that when a change does come it comes by way of 
+revolution.  Or, again (only that it comes to much the same 
+thing), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughts 
+which sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinking 
+for a long time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and have 
+yet been unable to arrive at any conclusion.
+
+So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as a 
+general rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the more 
+sweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the longer it 
+will be deferred.
+
+The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more 
+cataclysmic methods are obvious.  For, in the first place, all 
+composite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so 
+that some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as 
+in the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles, 
+nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it.  To meddle with 
+the skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring of 
+one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it off 
+till whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likely 
+to be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time.  
+Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attention 
+during the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between the 
+periods of resettlement.  Passion and prejudice have time to calm 
+down, and when attention is next directed to the same question, 
+it is a refreshed and invigorated attention-an attention, 
+moreover, which may be given with the help of new lights derived 
+from other quarters that were not luminous when the question was 
+last considered.  Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make such 
+alterations as  experience has proved to be necessary than to 
+forecast what is going to be wanted.  Reformers are like 
+paymasters, of whom there are only two bad kinds, those who pay 
+too soon, and those who do not pay at all.
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER II
+
+                          COMMON GROUND
+
+I HAVE now, perhaps, sufficiently proved my sympathy with the 
+reluctance felt by many to tolerate discussion upon such a 
+subject as the existence and nature of God.  I trust that I may 
+have made the reader feel that he need fear no sarcasm or levity 
+in my treatment of the subject which I have chosen.  I will, 
+therefore, proceed to sketch out a plan of what I hope to 
+establish, and this in no doubtful or unnatural sense, but by 
+attaching the same meanings to words as those which we usually 
+attach to them, and with the same certainty, precision, and 
+clearness as anything else is established which is commonly 
+called known.
+
+As to what God is, beyond the fact that he is the Spirit and the 
+Life which creates, governs, and upholds all living things, I can 
+say nothing.  I cannot pretend that I can show more than others 
+have done in what Spirit and the Life consists, which governs 
+living things and animates them.  I cannot show the connection 
+between consciousness and the will, and the organ, much less can 
+I tear away the veil from the face of God, so as to show wherein 
+will and consciousness consist.  No philosopher, whether Christian 
+or Rationalist, has attempted this without discomfiture; but I 
+can, I hope, do two things: Firstly, I can demonstrate, perhaps 
+more clearly than modern science is prepared to admit, that there 
+does exist a single Being or Animator of all living things - a 
+single Spirit, whom we cannot think of under any meaner name than 
+God; and, secondly, I can show something more of the 
+persona or bodily expression, mask, and mouthpiece of this 
+vast Living Spirit than I know of as having been familiarly 
+expressed elsewhere, or as being accessible to myself or others, 
+though doubtless many works exist in which what I am going to say 
+has been already said.
+
+Aware that much of this is widely accepted under the name of 
+Pantheism, I venture to think it differs from Pantheism with all 
+the difference that exists between a coherent, intelligible 
+conception and an incoherent unintelligible one.  I shall 
+therefore proceed to examine the doctrine called Pantheism, and 
+to show how incomprehensible and valueless it is.
+
+I will then indicate the Living and Personal God about whose 
+existence and about many of whose attributes there is no room for 
+question; I will show that man has been so far made in the 
+likeness of this Person or God, that He possesses all its 
+essential characteristics, and that it is this God who has called 
+man and all other living forms, whether animals or plants, into 
+existence, so that our bodies are the temples of His spirit; that 
+it is this which sustains them in their life and growth, who is 
+one with them, living, moving, and having His being in them; in 
+whom, also, they live and move, they in Him and He in them; He 
+being not a Trinity in Unity only, but an Infinity in Unity, and 
+a Unity in an Infinity; eternal in time past, for so much time at 
+least that our minds can come no nearer to eternity than this; 
+eternal for the future as long as the universe shall exist; ever 
+changing, yet the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.  And I 
+will show this with so little ambiguity that it shall be 
+perceived not as a phantom or hallucination following upon a 
+painful straining of the mind and a vain endeavour [sic] to give 
+coherency to incoherent and inconsistent ideas, but with the same 
+ease, comfort, and palpable flesh-and-blood clearness with which 
+we see those near to us ; whom, though we see them at the best as 
+through a glass darkly, we still see face to face, even as we are 
+ourselves seen.
+
+I will also show in what way this Being exercises a moral 
+government over the world, and rewards and punishes us according 
+to His own laws.
+
+Having done this I shall proceed to compare this conception of 
+God with those that are currently accepted, and will endeavour 
+[sic] to show that the ideas now current are in truth efforts to 
+grasp the one on which I shall here insist.  Finally, I shall 
+persuade the reader that the differences between the so-called 
+atheist and the so-called theist are differences rather about 
+words than things, inasmuch as not even the most prosaic of 
+modern scientists will be inclined to deny the existence of this 
+God, while few theists will feel that this, the natural 
+conception of God, is a less worthy one than that to which they 
+have been accustomed.  
+
+
+                           CHAPTER III
+
+                           PANTHEISM.  I
+
+THE Rev.  J.  H.  Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, 
+etc.," defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God is 
+everything, and everything is God."
+
+If it is granted that the value of words lies in the definiteness 
+and coherency of the ideas that present themselves to us when the 
+words are heard or spoken-then such a sentence as "God is 
+everything and everything is God" is worthless.
+
+For we have so long associated the word "God" with the idea of a 
+Living Person, who can see, hear, will, feel pleasure, 
+displeasure, etc., that we cannot think of God, and also of 
+something which we have not been accustomed to think of as a 
+Living Person, at one and the same time, so as to connect the two 
+ideas and fuse them into a coherent thought.  While we are 
+thinking of the one, our minds involuntarily exclude the other, 
+and vice versa; so that it is as impossible for us to 
+think of anything as God, or as forming part of God, which we 
+cannot also think of as a Person, or as a part of a Person, as it 
+is to produce a hybrid between two widely distinct animals.  If I 
+am not mistaken, the barrenness of inconsistent ideas, and the 
+sterility of widely distant species or genera of plants and 
+animals, are one in principle-sterility of hybrids being due to 
+barrenness of ideas, and barrenness of ideas arising from 
+inability to fuse unfamiliar thoughts into a coherent conception.  
+I have insisted on this at some length in "Life and Habit," but 
+can do so no further here.  (Footnote: Butler returned to this 
+subject in "Luck, or cunning?" which was originally published in 
+1887.
+
+In like manner we have so long associated the word "Person" with 
+the idea of a substantial visible body, limited in extent, and 
+animated by an invisible something which we call Spirit, that we 
+can think of nothing as a person which does not also bring these 
+ideas before us.  Any attempt to make us imagine God as a Person 
+who does not fulfil [sic] the conditions which our ideas attach 
+to the word "person," is ipso facto atheistic, as 
+rendering the word God without meaning, and therefore without 
+reality, and therefore non-existent to us.  Our ideas are like 
+our organism, they will stand a vast amount of modification if it 
+is effected slowly and without shock, but the life departs out of 
+them, leaving the form of an idea without the power thereof, if 
+they are jarred too rudely.
+
+Any being, then, whom we can imagine as God, must have all the 
+qualities, capabilities, and also all the limitations which are 
+implied when the word "person" is used.
+
+But, again, we cannot conceive of "everything" as a person.  
+"Everything" must comprehend all that is to be found on earth, or 
+outside of it, and we know of no such persons as this.  When we 
+say "persons" we intend living people with flesh and blood; 
+sometimes we extend our conceptions to animals and plants, but we 
+have not hitherto done so as generally as I hope we shall some 
+day come to do.  Below animals and plants we have never in any 
+seriousness gone.  All that we have been able to regard as 
+personal has had what we can call a living body, even though that 
+body is vegetable only; and this body has been tangible, and has 
+been comprised within certain definite limits, or within limits 
+which have at any rate struck the eye as definite.  And every part 
+within these limits has been animated by an unseen something 
+which we call soul or spirit.  A person must be a persona-
+that is to say, the living mask and mouthpiece of an energy 
+saturating it, and speaking through it.  It must be animate in all 
+its parts.
+
+But "everything" is not animate.  Animals and plants alone produce 
+in us those ideas which can make reasonable people call them 
+"persons" with consistency of intention.  We can conceive of each 
+animal and of each plant as a person; we can conceive again of a 
+compound person like the coral polypes [sic], or like a tree 
+which is composed of a congeries of subordinate persons, 
+inasmuch as each bud is a separate and individual plant.  We can 
+go farther than this, and, as I shall hope to show, we ought to 
+do so; that is to say, we shall find it easier and more agreeable 
+with our other ideas to go farther than not; for we should see 
+all animal and vegetable life as united by a subtle and till 
+lately invisible ramification, so that all living things are one 
+tree-like growth, forming a single person.  But we cannot conceive 
+of oceans, continents, and air as forming parts of a person at 
+all; much less can we think of them as forming one person with 
+the living forms that inhabit them.
+
+To ask this of us is like asking us to see the bowl and the water 
+in which three gold-fish are swimming as part of the gold-fish.  
+We cannot do it any more than we can do something physically 
+impossible.  We can see the gold-fish as forming one family, and 
+therefore as in a way united to the personality of the parents 
+from which they sprang, and therefore as members one of another, 
+and therefore as forming a single growth of gold-fish, as boughs 
+and buds unite to form a tree; but we cannot by any effort of the 
+imagination introduce the bowl and the water into the 
+personality, for we have never been accustomed to think of such 
+things as living and personal.  Those, therefore, who tell us that 
+"God is everything, and everything is God," require us to see 
+"everything" as a person, which we cannot; or God as not a 
+person, which again we cannot.
+
+Continuing the article of Mr.  Blunt from which I have already 
+quoted, I read :-
+
+"Linus, in a passage which has been preserved by Stobaeus, 
+exactly expresses the notion afterwards adopted by Spinoza: 'One 
+sole energy governs all things; all things are unity, and each 
+portion is All; for of one integer all things were born; in the 
+end of time all things shall again become unity; the unity of 
+multiplicity.'  Orpheus, his disciple, taught no other doctrine."
+
+According to Pythagoras, "an adept in the Orphic philosophy," 
+"the soul of the world is the Divine energy which interpenetrates 
+every portion of the mass, and the soul of man is an efflux of 
+that energy.  The world, too, is an exact impress of the Eternal 
+Idea, which is the mind of God."  John Scotus Erigena taught that 
+"all is God and God is all."  William of Champeaux, again, two 
+hundred years later, maintained that "all individuality is one in 
+substance, and varies only in its non-essential accidents and 
+transient properties." Amalric of Bena and David of Dinant 
+followed the theory out "into a thoroughgoing Pantheism."  
+Amalric held that "All is God and God is all.  The Creator and the 
+creature are one Being.  Ideas are at once creative and created, 
+subjective and objective.  God is the end of all, and all return 
+to Him.  As every variety of humanity forms one manhood, so the 
+world contains individual forms of one eternal essence."  David 
+of Dinant only varied upon this by "imagining a corporeal unity.  
+Although body, soul, and eternal substance are three, these three 
+are one and the same being."
+
+Giordano Bruno maintained the world of sense to be "a vast animal 
+having the Deity for its living.  soul." The inanimate part of the 
+world is thus excluded from participation in the Deity, and a 
+conception that our minds can embrace is offered us instead of 
+one which they cannot entertain, except as in a dream, 
+incoherently.  But without such a view of evolution as was 
+prevalent at the beginning of this century, it was impossible to 
+see "the world of sense" intelligently, as forming "a vast 
+animal."  Unless, therefore, Giordano Bruno held the opinions of 
+Buffon, Dr.  Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with more definiteness 
+than I am yet aware of his having done, his contention must be 
+considered as a splendid prophecy, but as little more than a 
+prophecy.  He continues, "Birth is expansion from the one centre 
+of Life; life is its continuance, and death is the necessary 
+return of the ray to the centre of light." This begins finely, 
+but ends mystically.  I have not, however, compared the English 
+translation with the original, and must reserve a fuller 
+examination of Giordano Bruno's teaching for another opportunity.
+
+Spinoza disbelieved in the world rather than in God.  He was an 
+Acosmist, to use Jacobi's expression, rather than an Atheist.  
+According to him, "the Deity and the Universe are but one 
+substance, at the same time both spirit and matter, thought and 
+extension, which are the only known attributes of the Deity."
+
+My readers will, I think, agree with me that there is very little 
+of the above which conveys ideas with the fluency and comfort 
+which accompany good words.  Words are like servants: it is not 
+enough that we should have them-we must have the most able and 
+willing that we can find, and at the smallest wages that will 
+content them.  Having got them we must make the best and not the 
+worst of them.  Surely, in the greater part of what has been 
+quoted above, the words are barren letters only: they do not 
+quicken within us and enable us to conceive a thought, such as we 
+can in our turn impress upon dead matter, and mould [sic] that 
+matter into another shape than its own, through the thought which 
+has become alive within us.  No offspring of ideas has followed 
+upon them, or, if any at all, yet in such unwonted shape, and 
+with such want of alacrity, that we loathe them as malformations 
+and miscarriages of our minds.  Granted that if we examine them 
+closely we shall at length find them to embody a little germ of 
+truth-that is to say, of coherency with our other ideas; but 
+there is too little truth in proportion to the trouble necessary 
+to get at it.  We can get more truth, that is to say, more 
+coherency-for truth and coherency are one-for less trouble in 
+other ways.
+
+But it may be urged that the beginnings of all tasks are 
+difficult and unremunerative, and that later developments of 
+Pantheism may be more intelligible than the earlier ones.  
+Unfortunately, this is not the case.  On continuing Mr.  Blunt's 
+article, I find the later Pantheists a hundredfold more 
+perplexing than the earlier ones.  With Kant, Schelling, Fichte, 
+and Hegel, we feel that we are with men who have been decoyed 
+into a hopeless quagmire; we understand nothing of their 
+language-we doubt whether they understand themselves, and feel 
+that we can do nothing with them but look at them and pass them 
+by.
+
+In my next chapter I propose to show the end which the early 
+Pantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness of 
+their error.
+
+
+                           CHAPTER IV
+
+                          PANTHEISM.  II
+
+The earlier Pantheists were misled by the endeavour [sic] to lay 
+hold of two distinct ideas, the one of which was a reality that 
+has since been grasped and is of inestimable value, the other a 
+phantom which has misled all who have followed it.  The reality is 
+the unity of Life, the oneness of the guiding and animating 
+spirit which quickens animals and plants, so that they are all 
+the outcome and expression of a common mind, and are in truth one 
+animal; the phantom is the endeavour [sic] to find the origin of 
+things, to reach the fountain-head of all energy, and thus to lay 
+the foundations on which a philosophy may be constructed which 
+none can accuse of being baseless, or of arguing in a circle.
+
+In following as through a thick wood after the phantom our 
+forefathers from time to time caught glimpses of the reality, 
+which seemed so wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted back 
+again into the thickets, that they declared it must be the 
+phantom they were in search of, which was thus evidenced as 
+actually existing.  Whereon, instead of mastering such of the 
+facts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts would 
+have betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again of 
+others, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what was 
+within their reach, and followed hotly through brier and brake 
+after an imaginary greater prize.
+
+Great thoughts are not to be caught in this way.  They must 
+present themselves for capture of their own free will, or be 
+taken after a little coyness only.  They are like wealth and 
+power, which, if a man is not born to them, are the more likely 
+to take him, the more he has restrained himself from an attempt 
+to snatch them.  They hanker after those only who have tamed their 
+nearer thoughts.  Nevertheless, it is impossible not to feel that 
+the early Pantheists were true prophets and seers, though the 
+things were unknown to them without which a complete view was 
+unattainable.  What does Linus mean, we ask ourselves, when he 
+says :- "One sole energy governs all things" ? How can one sole 
+energy govern, we will say, the reader and the chair on which he 
+sits? What is meant by an energy governing a chair? If by an 
+effort we have made ourselves believe we understand something 
+which can be better expressed by these words than by any others, 
+no sooner do we turn our backs than the ideas so painfully 
+collected fly apart again.  No matter how often we go in search of 
+them, and force them into juxtaposition, they prove to have none 
+of that innate coherent power with which ideas combine that we 
+can hold as true and profitable.
+
+Yet if Linus had confined his statement to living things, and had 
+said that one sole energy governed all plants and animals, he 
+would have come near both to being intelligible and true.  For if, 
+as we now believe, all animals and plants are descended from a 
+single cell, they must be considered as cousins to one another, 
+and as forming a single tree-like animal, every individual plant 
+or animal of which is as truly one and the same person with the 
+primordial cell as the oak a thousand years old is one and the 
+same plant with the acorn out of which it has grown.  This is 
+easily understood, but will, I trust, be made to appear simpler 
+presently.
+
+When Linus says, "All things are unity, and each portion is All; 
+for of one integer all things were born," it is impossible for 
+plain people-who do not wish to use words unless they mean the 
+same things by them as both they and others have been in the 
+habit of meaning-to understand what is intended.  How can each 
+portion be all? How can one Londoner be all London? I know that 
+this, too, can in a way be shown, but the resulting idea is too 
+far to fetch, and when fetched does not fit in well enough with 
+our other ideas to give it practical and commercial value.  How, 
+again, can all things be said to be born of one integer, unless 
+the statement is confined to living things, which can alone be 
+born at all, and unless a theory of evolution is intended, such 
+as Linus would hardly have accepted?
+
+Yet limit the "all things" to "all living things," grant the 
+theory of evolution, and explain "each portion is All" to mean 
+that all life is akin, and possesses the same essential 
+fundamental characteristics, and it is surprising how nearly 
+Linus approaches both to truth and intelligibility.
+
+It may be said that the animate and the inanimate have the same 
+fundamental substance, so that a chair might rot and be absorbed 
+by grass, which grass might be eaten by a cow, which cow might be 
+eaten by a man; and by similar processes the man might become a 
+chair; but these facts are not presented to the mind by saying 
+that "one energy governs all things"-a chair, we will say, and a 
+man; we could only say that one energy governed a man and a 
+chair, if the chair were a reasonable living person, who was 
+actively and consciously engaged in helping the man to attain a 
+certain end, unless, that is to say, we are to depart from all 
+usual interpretation of words, in which case we invalidate the 
+advantages of language and all the sanctions of morality.
+
+"All things shall again become unity" is intelligible as meaning 
+that all things probably have come from a single elementary 
+substance, say hydrogen or what not, and that they will return to 
+it; but the explanation of unity as being the "unity of 
+multiplicity" puzzles; if there is any meaning it is too 
+recondite to be of service to us.
+
+What, again, is meant by saying that "the soul of the world is 
+the Divine energy which interpenetrates every portion of the 
+mass" ? The soul of the world is an expression which, to myself, 
+and, I should imagine, to most people, is without propriety.  We 
+cannot think of the world except as earth, air, and water, in 
+this or that state, on and in which there grow plants and 
+animals.  What is meant by saying that earth has a soul, and 
+lives?  Does it move from place to place erratically? Does it 
+feed? Does it reproduce itself? Does it make such noises, or 
+commit such vagaries as shall make us say that it feels? Can it 
+achieve its ends, and fail of achieving them through mistake? If 
+it cannot, how has it a soul more than a dead man has a soul, out 
+of whom we say that the soul has departed, and whose body we 
+conceive of as returning to dead earth, inasmuch as it is now 
+soulless? Is there any unnatural violence which can be done to 
+our thoughts by which we can bring the ideas of a soul and of 
+water, or of a stone into combination, and keep them there for 
+long together?  The ancients, indeed, said they believed their 
+rivers to be gods, and carved likenesses of them under the forms 
+of men ; but even supposing this to have been their real mind, 
+can it by any conceivable means become our own? Granted that a 
+stone is kept from falling to dust by an energy which compels its 
+particles to cohere, which energy can be taken out of it and 
+converted into some other form of energy; granted (which may or 
+may not be true) also, that the life of a living body is only the 
+energy which keeps the particles which compose it in a certain 
+disposition; and granted that the energy of the stone may be 
+convertible into the energy of a living form, and that thus, 
+after a long journey a tired idea may lag after the sound of such 
+words as "the soul of the world." Granted all the above, 
+nevertheless to speak of the world as having a soul is not 
+sufficiently in harmony with our common notions, nor does it go 
+sufficiently with the grain of our thoughts to render the 
+expression a meaning one, or one that can be now used with any 
+propriety or fitness, except by those who do not know their own 
+meaninglessness.  Vigorous minds will harbour [sic] vigorous 
+thoughts only, or such as bid fair to become so; and vigorous 
+thoughts are always simple, definite, and in harmony with 
+everyday ideas.
+
+We can imagine a soul as living in the lowest slime that moves, 
+feeds, reproduces itself, remembers, and dies.  The amoeba wants 
+things, knows it wants them, alters itself so as to try and alter 
+them, thus preparing for an intended modification of outside 
+matter by a preliminary modification of itself.  It thrives if 
+the modification from within is followed by the desired 
+modification in the external object; it knows that it is well, 
+and breeds more freely in consequence.  If it cannot get hold of 
+outside matter, or cannot proselytise [sic] that matter and 
+persuade it to see things through its own (the amoeba's) 
+spectacles-if it cannot convert that matter, if the matter 
+persists in disagreeing with it-its spirits droop, its 
+soul is disquieted within it, it becomes listless like a 
+withering flower-it languishes and dies.  We cannot imagine a 
+thing to live at all and yet be soulless except in sleep for a 
+short time, and even so not quite soulless.  The idea of a soul, 
+or of that unknown something for which the word "soul" is our 
+hieroglyphic, and the idea of living organism, unite so 
+spontaneously, and stick together so inseparably, that no matter 
+how often we sunder them they will elude our vigilance and come 
+together, like true lovers, in spite of us.  Let us not attempt to 
+divorce ideas that have so long been wedded together.
+
+I submit, then, that Pantheism, even as explained by those who 
+had entered on the outskirts only of its great morass, 
+nevertheless holds out so little hope of leading to any 
+comfortable conclusion that it will be more reasonable to occupy 
+our minds with other matter than to follow Pantheism further.  The 
+Pantheists speak of a person without meaning a person; they speak 
+of a" him" and a "he" without having in their minds the idea of a 
+living person with all its inevitable limitations.  Pantheism is, 
+therefore, as is said by Mr.  Blunt in another article, 
+"practically nothing else than Atheism; it has no belief in a 
+personal deity overruling the affairs of the world, as Divine 
+Providence, and is, therefore, Atheistic," and again, "Theism 
+believes in a spirit superior to matter, and so does Pantheism; 
+but the spirit of Theism is self-conscious, and therefore 
+personal and of individual existence-a nature per se, and 
+upholding all things by an active control; while Pantheism 
+believes in spirit that is of a higher nature than brute matter, 
+but is a mere unconscious principle of life, impersonal, 
+irrational as the brute matter that it quickens."
+
+If this verdict concerning Pantheism is true-and from all I can 
+gather it is as nearly true as anything can be said to be which 
+is predicated of an incoherent idea-the Pantheistic God is an 
+attempt to lay hold of a truth which has nevertheless eluded its 
+pursuers.
+
+In my next chapter I will consider the commonly received, 
+orthodox conception of God, and compare it with the Pantheistic.  
+I will show that it, too, is Atheistic, inasmuch as, in spite of 
+its professing to give us a conception of God, it raises no ideas 
+in our minds of a person or Living Being-and a God who is not 
+this is non-existent.  
+
+
+                            CHAPTER V
+         
+                         ORTHODOX THEISM
+         
+We have seen that Pantheism fails to satisfy, inasmuch as it 
+requires us to mean something different by the word "God" from 
+what we have been in the habit of meaning.  I have already said-I 
+fear, too often-that no conception of God can have any value or 
+meaning for us which does not involve his existence as an 
+independent Living Person of ineffable wisdom and power, 
+vastness, and duration both in the past and for the future.  If 
+such a Being as this can be found existing and made evident, 
+directly or indirectly, to human senses, there is a God.  If 
+otherwise, there is no God, or none, at any rate, so far as we 
+can know, none with whom we need concern ourselves.  No conscious 
+personality, no God.  An impersonal God is as much a contradiction 
+in terms as an impersonal person.
+
+Unfortunately, when we question orthodox theology closely, we 
+find that it supposes God to be a person who has no material body 
+such as could come within the range of any human sense, and make 
+an impression upon it.  He is supposed to be of a spiritual nature 
+only, except in so far as one part of his triune personality is, 
+according to the Athanasian Creed, "perfect man, of a reasonable 
+soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+Here, then, we find ourselves in a dilemma.  On the one hand, we 
+are involved in the same difficulty as in the case of Pantheism, 
+inasmuch as a person without flesh and blood, or something 
+analogous, is not a person; we are required, therefore, to 
+believe in a personal God, who has no true person; to believe, 
+that is to say, in an impersonal person.
+
+This, as we have seen already, is Atheism under another name, 
+being, as it is, destructive of all idea of God whatever; for 
+these words do not convey an idea of something which human 
+intelligence can understand up to a certain point, and which it 
+can watch going out of sight into regions beyond our view, but in 
+the same direction-as we may infer other stars in space beyond 
+the farthest that we know of; they convey utterly self-
+destructive ideas, which can have no real meaning, and can only 
+be thought to have a meaning by ignorant and uncultivated people.  
+Otherwise such foundation as human reason rests upon-that is to 
+say, the current opinion of those whom the world appraises as 
+reasonable and agreeable, or capable of being agreed with for any 
+time-is sapped; the whole thing tumbles down, and we may have 
+square circles and round triangles, which may be declared to be 
+no longer absurdities and contradictions in terms, but mysteries 
+that go beyond our reason, without being contrary to it.  Few will 
+maintain this, and those few may be neglected; an impersonal 
+person must therefore be admitted to be nonsense, and an 
+immaterial God to be Atheism in another shape.
+
+On the other hand, if God is "of a reasonable soul and human 
+flesh subsisting," and if he thus has the body without which he 
+is-as far as we are concerned-non-existent, this body must yet be 
+reasonably like other bodies, and must exist in some place and at 
+some time.  Furthermore, it must do sufficiently nearly what all 
+other "human flesh" belonging to "perfect man" must do, or cease 
+to be human flesh.  Our ideas are like our organisms; they have 
+some little elasticity and circumstance-suiting power, some 
+little margin on which, as I have elsewhere said, side-notes may 
+be written, and glosses on the original text; but this power is 
+very limited.  As offspring will only, as a general rule, vary 
+very little from its immediate parents, and as it will fail 
+either immediately or in the second generation if the parents 
+differ too widely from one another, so we cannot get our idea of-
+we will say a horse-to conjure up to our minds the idea of any 
+animal more unlike a horse than a pony is; nor can we get a well-
+defined idea of a combination between a horse and any animal more 
+remote from it than an ass, zebra, or giraffe.  We may, indeed, 
+make a statue of a flying horse, but the idea is one which cannot 
+be made plausible to any but ignorant people.  So "human flesh" 
+may vary a little from "human flesh" without undue violence being 
+done to our reason and to the right use of language, but it 
+cannot differ from it so much as not to eat, drink, nor waste and 
+repair itself.  "Human flesh," which is without these necessary 
+adjuncts, is human flesh only to those who can believe in flying 
+horses with feathered wings and bills like birds-that is to say, 
+to vulgar and superstitious persons.
+
+Lastly, not only must the "perfect man," who is the second person 
+of the Godhead according to the orthodox faith, and who subsists 
+of "human flesh" as well as of a "reasonable soul," not only must 
+this person exist, but he must exist in some place either on this 
+earth or outside it.  If he exists on earth, he must be in Europe, 
+Asia, Africa, America, or on some island, and if he were met with 
+he must be capable of being seen and handled in the same way as 
+all other things that can be called perfect man are seen; 
+otherwise he is a perfect man who is not only not a perfect man, 
+but who does not in any considerable degree resemble one.  It is 
+not, however, pretended by anyone that God, the "perfect man," is 
+to be looked for in any place upon the surface of the globe.
+
+If, on the other hand, the person of God exists in some sphere 
+outside the earth, his human flesh again proves to be of an 
+entirely different kind from all other human flesh, for we know 
+that such flesh cannot exist except on earth; if in space 
+unsupported, it must fall to the ground, or into some other 
+planet, or into a sun, or go on revolving round the earth or some 
+other heavenly body-or not be personal.  None of those 
+whose opinions will carry weight will assign a position either in 
+some country on this earth, or yet again in space, to Jesus 
+Christ, but this involves the rendering meaningless of all 
+expressions which involve his personality.
+
+The Christian conception, therefore, of the Deity proves when 
+examined with any desire to understand our own meaning (and what 
+lawlessness so great as the attempt to impose words upon our 
+understandings which have no lawful settlement within them?) to 
+be no less a contradiction in terms than the Pantheistic 
+conception.  It is Atheistic, as offering us a God which is not a 
+God, inasmuch as we can conceive of no such being, nor of 
+anything in the least like it.  It is, like Pantheism, an 
+illusion, which can be believed only by those who repeat a 
+formula which they have learnt by heart in a foreign language of 
+which they understand nothing, and yet aver that they believe it.  
+There are doubtless many who will say that this is possible, but 
+the majority of my readers will hold that no proposition can be 
+believed or disbelieved until its nature is understood.
+
+It may perhaps be said that there is another conception of God 
+possible, and that we may see him as personal, without at the 
+same time believing that he has any actual tangible existence.  
+Thus we personify hope, truth, and justice, without intending to 
+convey to anyone the impression that these qualities are women, 
+with flesh and blood.  Again, we do not think of Nature as an 
+actual woman, though we call her one; why may we not conceive of 
+God, then, as an expression whereby we personify, by a figure of 
+speech only; the thing that is intended being no person, but our 
+own highest ideal of power, wisdom, and duration.
+
+There would be no reason to complain of this if this manner of 
+using the word "God" were well understood.  Many words have two 
+meanings, or even three, without any mischievous confusion of 
+thought following.  There can not only be no objection to the use 
+of the word God as a manner of expressing the highest ideal of 
+which our minds can conceive, but on the contrary no better 
+expression can be found, and it is a pity the word is not thus 
+more generally used.
+
+Few, however, would be content with any such limitation of God as 
+that he should be an idea only, an expression for certain 
+qualities of human thought and action.  Whence, it may be fairly 
+asked, did our deeply rooted belief in God as a Living Person 
+originate? The idea of him as of an inconceivably vast, ancient, 
+powerful, loving, and yet formidable Person is one which survives 
+all changes of detail in men's opinion.  I believe there are a 
+few very savage tribes who are as absolutely without religious 
+sense as the beasts of the field, but the vast majority for a 
+long time past have been possessed with an idea that there is 
+somewhere a Living God who is the Spirit and the Life of all that 
+is, and who is a true Person with an individuality and self-
+consciousness of his own.  It is only natural that we should be 
+asked how such an idea has remained in the minds of so many - who 
+differ upon almost every other part of their philosophy-for so 
+long a time if it was without foundation, and a piece of dreamy 
+mysticism only.
+
+True, it has generally been declared that this God is an infinite 
+God, and an infinite God is a God without any bounds or 
+limitations; and a God without bounds or limitations is an 
+impersonal God; and an impersonal God is Atheism.  But may not 
+this be the incoherency of prophecy which precedes the successful 
+mastering of an idea? May we not think of this illusory 
+expression as having arisen from inability to see the whereabouts 
+of a certain vast but tangible Person as to whose existence men 
+were nevertheless clear? If they felt that it existed, and yet 
+could not say where, nor wherein it was to be laid hands on, they 
+would be very likely to get out of the difficulty by saying that 
+it existed as an infinite Spirit, partly from a desire to magnify 
+what they felt must be so vast and powerful, and partly because 
+they had as yet only a vague conception of what they were aiming 
+at, and must, therefore, best express it vaguely.
+
+We must not be surprised that when an idea is still inchoate its 
+expression should be inconsistent and imperfect-ideas will almost 
+always during the earlier history of a thought be put together 
+experimentally so as to see whether or no they will cohere.  
+Partly out of indolence, partly out of the desire of those who 
+brought the ideas together to be declared right, and partly out 
+of joy that the truth should be supposed found, incoherent ideas 
+will be kept together longer than they should be; nevertheless 
+they will in the end detach themselves and go, if others present 
+themselves which fit into their place better.  There is no 
+consistency which has not once been inconsistent, nor coherency 
+that has not been incoherent.  The incoherency of our ideas 
+concerning God is due to the fact that we have not yet truly 
+found him, but it does not argue that he does not exist and 
+cannot be found anywhere after more diligent search; on the 
+contrary, the persistence of the main idea, in spite of the 
+incoherency of its details, points strongly in the direction of 
+believing that it rests upon a foundation in fact.
+
+But it must be remembered there can be no God who is not personal 
+and material: and if personal, then, though inconceivably vast in 
+comparison with man, still limited in space and time, and capable 
+of making mistakes concerning his own interests, though as a 
+general rule right in his estimates concerning them.  Where, then, 
+is this Being? He must be on earth, or what folly can be greater 
+than speaking of him as a person? What are persons on any other 
+earth to us, or we to them? He must have existed and be going to 
+exist through all time, and he must have a tangible body.  Where, 
+then, is the body of this God? And what is the mystery of his 
+Incarnation?
+
+It will be my business to show this in the following chapter.
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VI
+
+                       THE TREE OF LIFE
+
+Atheism denies knowledge of a God of any kind.  Pantheism and 
+Theism alike profess to give us a God, but they alike fail to 
+perform what they have promised.  We can know nothing of the God 
+they offer us, for not even do they themselves profess that any 
+of our senses can be cognisant [sic] of him.  They tell us that he 
+is a personal God, but that he has no material person.  This is 
+disguised Atheism.  What we want is a Personal God, the glory of 
+whose Presence can be made in part evident to our senses, though 
+what we can realise [sic] is less than nothing in comparison with 
+what we must leave for ever unimagined.
+
+And truly such a God is not far from every one of us; for if we 
+survey the broader and deeper currents of men's thoughts during 
+the last three thousand years, we may observe two great and 
+steady sets as having carried away with them the more eligible 
+races of mankind.  The one is a tendency from Polytheism to 
+Monotheism; the other from Polytypism to Monotypism of the 
+earliest forms of life-all animal and vegetable forms having at 
+length come to be regarded as differentiations of a single 
+substance-to wit, protoplasm.
+
+No man does well so to kick against the pricks as to set himself 
+against tendencies of such depth, strength, and permanence as 
+this.  If he is to be in harmony with the dominant opinion of his 
+own and of many past ages, he will see a single God-impregnate 
+substance as having been the parent from which all living forms 
+have sprung.  One spirit, and one form capable of such 
+modification as its directing spirit shall think fit; one soul 
+and one body, one God and one Life.
+
+For the time has come when the two unities so painfully arrived 
+at must be joined together as body and soul, and be seen not as 
+two, but one.  There is no living organism untenanted by the 
+Spirit of God, nor any Spirit of God perceivable by man apart 
+from organism embodying and expressing it.  God and the Life of 
+the World are like a mountain, which will present different 
+aspects as we look at it from different sides, but which, when we 
+have gone all round it, proves to be one only.  God is the animal 
+and vegetable world, and the animal and vegetable world is God.
+
+I have repeatedly said that we ought to see all animal and 
+vegetable life as uniting to form a single personality.  I should 
+perhaps explain this more fully, for the idea of a compound 
+person is one which at first is not very easy to grasp, inasmuch 
+as we are not conscious of any but our more superficial aspects, 
+and have therefore until lately failed to understand that we are 
+ourselves compound persons.  I may perhaps be allowed to quote 
+from an earlier work.
+
+"Each cell in the human body is now admitted by physiologists to 
+be a person with an intelligent soul, differing from our own more 
+complex soul in degree and not in kind, and, like ourselves, 
+being born, living, and dying.  It would appear, then, as though 
+'we,' 'our souls,' or 'selves,' or 'personalities,' or by 
+whatever name we may prefer to be called, are but the 
+consensus and full- flowing stream of countless sensations 
+and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or 'selves,' who 
+probably no more know that we exist, and that they exist as a 
+part of us, than a microscopic insect knows the results of 
+spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer [sic] knows 
+the working of the British Constitution; and of whom we know no 
+more than we do of the habits and feelings of some class widely 
+separated from our own."-("Life and Habit," p.  110.)
+
+After which it became natural to ask the following question :- 
+"Is it possible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves 
+atoms, undesignedly combining to form some vaster being, though 
+we are utterly incapable of perceiving this being as a single 
+individual, or of realising [sic] the scheme and scope of our own 
+combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without 
+matter or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete 
+nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an 
+intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and 
+blood and bones, with organs, senses, dimensions in some way 
+analogous to our own, into some other part of which being at the 
+time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting 
+clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for ever from 
+age or antecedents.
+
+"'An organic being,' writes Mr.  Darwin, 'is a microcosm, a little 
+universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms 
+inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars in Heaven.'  As 
+these myriads of smaller organisms are parts and processes of us, 
+so are we parts and processes of life at large."
+
+A tree is composed of a multitude of subordinate trees, each bud 
+being a distinct individual.  So coral polypes [sic] form a tree-
+like growth of animal life, with branches from which spring 
+individual polypes [sic] that are connected by a common tissue 
+and supported by a common skeleton.  We have no difficulty in 
+seeing a unity in multitude, and a multitude in unity here, 
+because we can observe the wood and the gelatinous tissue 
+connecting together all the individuals which compose either the 
+tree or the mass of polypes [sic].  Yet the skeleton, whether of 
+tree or of polype [sic], is inanimate; and the tissue, whether of 
+bark or gelatine [sic], is only the matted roots of the 
+individual buds; so that the outward and striking connection 
+between the individuals is more delusive than real.  The true 
+connection is one which cannot be seen, and consists in the 
+animation of each bud by a like spirit-in the community of soul, 
+in "the voice of the Lord which maketh men to be of one mind in 
+an house"-"to dwell together in unity"-to take what are 
+practically identical views of things, and express themselves in 
+concert under all circumstances.  Provided this-the true unifier 
+of organism-can be shown to exist, the absence of gross outward 
+and visible but inanimate common skeleton is no bar to oneness of 
+personality.
+
+Let us picture to our minds a tree of which all the woody fibre 
+[sic] shall be invisible, the buds and leaves seeming to stand in 
+mid-air unsupported and unconnected with one another, so that 
+there is nothing but a certain tree- like collocation of foliage 
+to suggest any common principle of growth uniting the leaves.
+
+Three or four leaves of different ages stand living together at 
+the place in the air where the end of each bough should be; of 
+these the youngest are still tender and in the bud, while the 
+older ones are turning yellow and on the point of falling.  
+Between these leaves a sort of twig-like growth can be detected 
+if they are looked at in certain lights, but it is hard to see, 
+except perhaps when a bud is on the point of coming out.  Then 
+there does appear to be a connection which might be called 
+branch-like.
+
+The separate tufts are very different from one another, so that 
+oak leaves, ash leaves, horse-chestnut leaves, etc., are each 
+represented, but there is one species only at the end of each 
+bough.
+
+Though the trunk and all the inner boughs and leaves have 
+disappeared, yet there hang here and there fossil leaves, also in 
+mid-air; they appear to have been petrified, without method or 
+selection, by what we call the caprices of nature; they hang in 
+the path which the boughs and twigs would have taken, and they 
+seem to indicate that if the tree could have been seen a million 
+years earlier, before it had grown near its present size, the 
+leaves standing at the end of each bough would have been found 
+very different from what they are now.  Let us suppose that all 
+the leaves at the end of all the invisible boughs, no matter how 
+different they now are from one another, were found in earliest 
+budhood to be absolutely indistinguishable, and afterwards to 
+develop towards each differentiation through stages which were 
+indicated by the fossil leaves.  Lastly, let us suppose that 
+though the boughs which seem wanted to connect all the living 
+forms of leaves with the fossil leaves, and with countless forms 
+of which all trace has disappeared, and also with a single root-
+have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable evidence to 
+show that they once actually existed, and indeed are existing at 
+this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible to the 
+eye as air or electricity.  Should we, I ask, under these 
+circumstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by a 
+single name, and to think of it as one person, merely upon the 
+score that the woody fibre [sic] was invisible? Should we not 
+esteem the common soul, memories and principles of growth which 
+are preserved between all the buds, no matter how widely they 
+differ in detail, as a more living bond of union than a framework 
+of wood would be, which, though it were visible to the eye, would 
+still be inanimate?
+
+The mistletoe appears as closely connected with the tree on which 
+it grows as any of the buds of the tree itself; it is fed upon 
+the same sap as the other buds are, which sap-however much it may 
+modify it at the last moment-it draws through the same fibres 
+[sic] as do its foster-brothers-why then do we at once feel that 
+the mistletoe is no part of the apple tree? Not from any want of 
+manifest continuity, but from the spiritual difference-from the 
+profoundly different views of life and things which are taken by 
+the parasite and the tree on which it grows-the two are 
+now different because they think differently-as long as 
+they thought alike they were alike-that is to say they were 
+protoplasm-they and we and all that lives meeting in this common 
+substance.
+
+We ought therefore to regard our supposed tufts of leaves as a 
+tree, that is to say, as a compound existence, each one of whose 
+component items is compounded of others which are also in their 
+turn compounded.  But the tree above described is no imaginary 
+parallel to the condition of life upon the globe; it is perhaps 
+as accurate a description of the Tree of Life as can be put into 
+so small a compass.  The most sure proof of a man's identity is 
+the power to remember that such and such things happened, which 
+none but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is 
+the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it 
+may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate 
+truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he 
+is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was.  
+The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that 
+they possess-the memories of their common identity with a single 
+person in whom they meet-this is incontestable proof of their 
+being animated by a common soul.  It is certain, therefore, that 
+all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are in reality one 
+animal; we and the mosses being part of the same vast person in 
+no figurative sense, but with as much bona fide literal 
+truth as when we say that a man's finger-nails and his eyes are 
+parts of the same man.
+
+It is in this Person that we may see the Body of God-and in the 
+evolution of this Person, the mystery of His Incarnation.
+
+[In "Unconscious Memory," Chapter V, Butler wrote: "In the 
+articles above alluded to ("God the Known and God the Unknown") I 
+separated the organic from the inorganic, but when I came to 
+rewrite them I found that this could not be done, and that I must 
+reconstruct what I had written." This reconstruction never having 
+been effected, it may be well to quote further from "Unconscious 
+Memory" (concluding chapter): "At parting, therefore, I would 
+recommend the reader to see every atom in the universe as living 
+and able to feel and remember, but in a humble way.  He must have 
+life eternal as well as matter eternal; and the life and the 
+matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to 
+one another.  Thus he will see God everywhere, not as those who 
+repeat phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their 
+words taken according to their most natural and legitimate 
+meaning; and he will feel that the main difference between him 
+and many of those who oppose him lies in the fact that whereas 
+both he and they use the same language, his opponents only half 
+mean what they say, while he means it entirely...  We shall 
+endeavour [sic] to see the so-called inorganic as living, in 
+respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, 
+rather than the organic as non- living in respect of the 
+qualities it has in common with the inorganic."] 
+
+
+                           CHAPTER VII
+
+                       THE LIKENESS OF GOD
+
+In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living 
+being, whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a 
+component item of a single personality, in the same way as each 
+individual citizen of a community is a member of one state, or as 
+each cell of our own bodies is a separate person, or each bud of 
+a tree a separate plant.  We must therefore see the whole varied 
+congeries of living things as a single very ancient Being, 
+of inconceivable vastness, and animated by one Spirit.
+
+We call the octogenarian one person with the embryo of a few days 
+old from which he has developed.  An oak or yew tree may be two 
+thousand years old, but we call it one plant with the seed from 
+which it has grown.  Millions of individual buds have come and 
+gone, to the yearly wasting and repairing of its substance; but 
+the tree still lives and thrives, and the dead leaves have life 
+therein.  So the Tree of Life still lives and thrives as a single 
+person, no matter how many new features it has acquired during 
+its development, nor, again, how many of its individual leaves 
+fall yellow to the ground daily.  The spirit or soul of this 
+person is the Spirit of God, and its body-for we know of no soul 
+or spirit without a body, nor of any living body without a spirit 
+or soul, and if there is a God at all there must be a body of 
+God-is the many-membered outgrowth of protoplasm, the 
+ensemble of animal and vegetable life.
+
+To repeat.  The Theologian of to-day tells us that there is a God, 
+but is horrified at the idea of that God having a body.  We say 
+that we believe in God, but that our minds refuse to realise 
+[sic] an intelligent Being who has no bodily person.  "Where 
+then," says the Theologian, " is the body of your God?" We have 
+answered, "In the living forms upon the earth, which, though they 
+look many, are, when we regard them by the light of their history 
+and of true analogies, one person only." The spiritual connection 
+between them is a more real bond of union than the visible 
+discontinuity of material parts is ground for separating them in 
+our thoughts.
+
+Let the reader look at a case of moths in the shop-window of a 
+naturalist, and note the unspeakable delicacy, beauty, and yet 
+serviceableness of their wings; or let him look at a case of 
+humming-birds, and remember how infinitely small a part of Nature 
+is the whole group of the animals he may be considering, and how 
+infinitely small a part of that group is the case that he is 
+looking at.  Let him bear in mind that he is looking on the dead 
+husks only of what was inconceivably more marvellous [sic] when 
+the moths or humming-birds were alive.  Let him think of the 
+vastness of the earth, and of the activity by day and night 
+through countless ages of such countless forms of animal and 
+vegetable life as that no human mind can form the faintest 
+approach to anything that can be called a conception of their 
+multitude, and let him remember that all these forms have touched 
+and touched and touched other living beings till they meet back 
+on a common substance in which they are rooted, and from which 
+they all branch forth so as to be one animal.  Will he not in this 
+real and tangible existence find a God who is as much more worthy 
+of admiration than the God of the ordinary Theologian-as He is 
+also more easy of comprehension?
+
+For the Theologian dreams of a God sitting above the clouds among 
+the cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before 
+Him, and humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an 
+Oriental tale; but we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on 
+the petals of flowers, on the faces of our friends, and upon 
+whatever we most delight in of all that lives upon the earth.  We 
+then can not only love Him, but we can do that without which love 
+has neither power nor sweetness, but is a phantom only, an 
+impersonal person, a vain stretching forth of arms towards 
+something that can never fill them-we can express our love and 
+have it expressed to us in return.  And this not in the uprearing 
+of stone temples-for the Lord dwelleth [sic] in temples made with 
+other organs than hands-nor yet in the cleansing of our hearts, 
+but in the caress bestowed upon horse and dog, and kisses upon 
+the lips of those we love.  
+
+Wide, however, as is the difference between the orthodox 
+Theologian and ourselves, it is not more remarkable than the 
+number of the points on which we can agree with him, and on 
+which, moreover, we can make his meaning clearer to himself than 
+it can have ever hitherto been.  He, for example, says that man 
+has been made in the image of God, but he cannot mean what he 
+says, unless his God has a material body; we, on the other hand, 
+do not indeed believe that the body of God-the incorporation of 
+all life-is like the body of a man, more than we believe each one 
+of our own cells or subordinate personalities to be like a man in 
+miniature; but we nevertheless hold that each of our tributary 
+selves is so far made after the likeness of the body corporate 
+that it possesses all our main and essential characteristics-that 
+is to say, that it can waste and repair itself; can feel, move, 
+and remember.  To this extent, also, we-who stand in mean 
+proportional between our tributary personalities and God-are made 
+in the likeness of God; for we, and God, and our subordinate 
+cells alike possess the essential characteristics of life which 
+have been above recited.  It is more true, therefore, for us to 
+say that we are made in the likeness of God than for the orthodox 
+Theologian to do so.
+
+Nor, again, do we find difficulty in adopting such an expression 
+as that "God has taken our nature upon Him." We hold this as 
+firmly, and much more so, than Christians can do, but we say that 
+this is no new thing for Him to do, for that He has taken flesh 
+and dwelt among us from the day that He first assumed our shape, 
+some millions of years ago, until now.  God cannot become man more 
+especially than He can become other living forms, any more than 
+we can be our eyes more especially than any other of our 
+organs.  We may develop larger eyes, so that our eyes may come to 
+occupy a still more important place in our economy than they do 
+at present; and in a similar way the human race may become a more 
+predominant part of God than it now is-but we cannot admit that 
+one living form is more like God than another; we must hold all 
+equally like Him, inasmuch as they "keep ever," as Buffon says, 
+"the same fundamental unity, in spite of differences of detail-
+nutrition, development, reproduction" (and, I would add, 
+"memory") "being the common traits of all organic bodies."  The 
+utmost we can admit is, that some embodiments of the Spirit of 
+Life may be more important than others to the welfare of Life as 
+a whole, in the same way as some of our organs are more important 
+than others to ourselves.
+
+But the above resemblances between the language which we can 
+adopt intelligently and that which Theologians use vaguely, seem 
+to reduce the differences of opinion between the two contending 
+parties to disputes about detail.  For even those who believe 
+their ideas to be the most definite, and who picture to 
+themselves a God as anthropomorphic as He was represented by 
+Raffaelle, are yet not prepared to stand by their ideas if they 
+are hard pressed in the same way as we are by ours.  Those who say 
+that God became man and took flesh upon Him, and that He is now 
+perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh 
+subsisting, will yet not mean that Christ has a heart, blood, a 
+stomach, etc., like man's, which, if he has not, it is idle to 
+speak of him as "perfect man." I am persuaded that they do not 
+mean this, nor wish to mean it; but that they have been led into 
+saying it by a series of steps which it is very easy to 
+understand and sympathise [sic] with, if they are considered with 
+any diligence.
+
+For our forefathers, though they might and did feel the existence 
+of a Personal God in the world, yet could not demonstrate this 
+existence, and made mistakes in their endeavour [sic] to persuade 
+themselves that they understood thoroughly a truth which they had 
+as yet perceived only from a long distance.  Hence all the 
+dogmatism and theology of many centuries.  It was impossible for 
+them to form a clear or definite conception concerning God until 
+they had studied His works more deeply, so as to grasp the idea 
+of many animals of different kinds and with no apparent 
+connection between them, being yet truly parts of one and the 
+same animal which comprised them in the same way as a tree 
+comprises all its buds.  They might speak of this by a figure of 
+speech, but they could not see it as a fact.  Before this could be 
+intended literally, Evolution must be grasped, and not Evolution 
+as taught in what is now commonly called Darwinism, but the old 
+teleological Darwinism of eighty years ago.  Nor is this again 
+sufficient, for it must be supplemented by a perception of the 
+oneness of personality between parents and offspring, the 
+persistence of memory through all generations, the latency of 
+this memory until rekindled by the recurrence of the associated 
+ideas, and the unconsciousness with which repeated acts come to 
+be performed.  These are modern ideas which might be caught sight 
+of now and again by prophets in time past, but which are even now 
+mastered and held firmly only by the few.
+
+When once, however, these ideas have been accepted, the chief 
+difference between the orthodox God and the God who can be seen 
+of all men is, that the first is supposed to have existed from 
+all time, while the second has only lived for more millions of 
+years than our minds can reckon intelligently; the first is 
+omnipresent in all space, while the second is only present in the 
+living forms upon this earth-that is to say, is only more widely 
+present than our minds can intelligently embrace.  The first is 
+omnipotent and all-wise; the second is only quasi-omnipotent and 
+quasi all-wise.  It is true, then, that we deprive God of that 
+infinity which orthodox Theologians have ascribed to Him, but the 
+bounds we leave Him are of such incalculable extent that nothing 
+can be imagined more glorious or vaster; and in return for the 
+limitations we have assigned to Him, we render it possible for 
+men to believe in Him , and love Him, not with their lips only, 
+but with their hearts and lives.  
+
+Which, I may now venture to ask my readers, is the true God-the 
+God of the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in 
+whose presence we stand each hour and moment of our lives?  
+
+
+                           CHAPTER VIII
+
+                       THE LIFE EVERLASTING
+
+Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with 
+certainty after death, and the moral government of the world here 
+on earth.
+
+If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they 
+must die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having 
+ever been induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise 
+them for their peevishness more than we should pity them.  We 
+should tell them that though we could not see reason for thinking 
+that they would ever hang again upon the same-or any at all 
+similar-bough as the same individual leaves, after they had once 
+faded and fallen off, yet that as they had been changing 
+personalities without feeling it during the whole of their 
+leafhood, so they would on death continue to do this selfsame 
+thing by entering into new phases of life.  True, death will 
+deprive them of conscious memory concerning their now current 
+life; but, though they die as leaves, they live in the tree whom 
+they have helped to vivify, and whose growth and continued well-
+being is due solely to this life and death of its component 
+personalities.
+
+We consider the cells which are born and die within us yearly to 
+have been sufficiently honoured [sic] in having contributed their 
+quotum to our life; why should we have such difficulty in seeing 
+that a healthy enjoyment and employment of our life will give us 
+a sufficient reward in that growth of God wherein we may live 
+more truly and effectually after death than we have lived when we 
+were conscious of existence?  Is Handel dead when he influences 
+and sets in motion more human beings in three months now than 
+during the whole, probably, of the years in which he thought that 
+he was alive? What is being alive if the power to draw men for 
+many miles in order that they may put themselves en 
+rapport with him is not being so? True, Handel no longer 
+knows the power which he has over us, but this is a small matter; 
+he no longer animates six feet of flesh and blood, but he lives 
+in us as the dead leaf lives in the tree.  He is with God, and God 
+knows him though he knows himself no more.
+
+This should suffice, and I observe in practice does suffice, for 
+all reasonable persons.  It may be said that one day the tree 
+itself must die, and the leaves no longer live therein; and so, 
+also, that the very God or Life of the World will one day perish, 
+as all that is born must surely in the end die.  But they who fret 
+upon such grounds as this must be in so much want of a grievance 
+that it were a cruelty to rob them of one: if a man who is fond 
+of music tortures himself on the ground that one day all possible 
+combinations and permutations of sounds will have been exhausted 
+so that there can be no more new tunes, the only thing we can do 
+with him is to pity him and leave him; nor is there any better 
+course than this to take with those idle people who worry them
+selves and others on the score that they will one day be unable 
+to remember the small balance of their lives that they have not 
+already forgotten as unimportant to them-that they will one day 
+die to the balance of what they have not already died to.  I never 
+knew a well-bred or amiable person who complained seriously of 
+the fact that he would have to die.  Granted we must all some
+times find ourselves feeling sorry that we cannot remain for ever 
+at our present age, and that we may die so much sooner than we 
+like; but these regrets are passing with well-disposed people, 
+and are a sine qua non for the existence of life at all.  
+For if people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such 
+regret, there would be no growth nor development in life; if, on 
+the other hand, there were no unwillingness to die, people would 
+commit suicide upon the smallest contradiction, and the race 
+would end in a twelvemonth.
+
+We then offer immortality, but we do not offer resurrection from 
+the dead; we say that those who die live in the Lord whether they 
+be just or unjust, and that the present growth of God is the 
+outcome of all past lives; but we believe that as they live in 
+God-in the effect they have produced upon the universal life-when 
+once their individual life is ended, so it is God who knows of 
+their life thenceforward and not themselves; and we urge that 
+this immortality, this entrance into the joy of the Lord, this 
+being ever with God, is true, and can be apprehended by all men, 
+and that the perception of it should and will tend to make them 
+lead happier, healthier lives; whereas the commonly received 
+opinion is true with a stage truth only, and has little permanent 
+effect upon those who are best worth considering.  Nevertheless 
+the expressions in common use among the orthodox fit in so 
+perfectly with facts, which we must all acknowledge, that it is 
+impossible not to regard the expressions as founded upon a 
+prophetic perception of the facts.
+
+Two things stand out with sufficient clearness.  The first is the 
+rarity of suicide even among those who rail at life most 
+bitterly.  The other is the little eagerness with which those who 
+cry out most loudly for a resurrection desire to begin their new 
+life.  When comforting a husband upon the loss of his wife we do 
+not tell him we hope he will soon join her; but we should 
+certainly do this if we could even pretend we thought the husband 
+would like it.  I can never remember having felt or witnessed any 
+pain, bodily or mental, which would have made me or anyone else 
+receive a suggestion that we had better commit suicide without 
+indignantly asking how our adviser would like to commit suicide 
+himself.  Yet there are so many and such easy ways of dying that 
+indignation at being advised to commit suicide arises more from 
+enjoyment of life than from fear of the mere physical pain of 
+dying.  Granted that there is much deplorable pain in the world 
+from ill-health, loss of money, loss of reputation, misconduct of 
+those nearest to us, or what not, and granted that in some cases 
+these causes do drive men to actual self-destruction, yet 
+suffering such as this happens to a comparatively small number, 
+and occupies comparatively a small space in the lives of those to 
+whom it does happen.
+
+What, however, have we to say to those cases in which suffering 
+and injustice are inflicted upon defenceless [sic] people for 
+years and years, so that the iron enters into their souls, and 
+they have no avenger.  Can we give any comfort to such sufferers? 
+and, if not, is our religion any better than a mockery-a filling 
+the rich with good things and sending the hungry empty away?  Can 
+we tell them, when they are oppressed with burdens, yet that 
+their cry will come up to God and be heard?  The question 
+suggests its own answer, for assuredly our God knows our 
+innermost secrets: there is not a word in our hearts but He 
+knoweth it altogether; He knoweth our down-sitting and our 
+uprising, He is about our path and about our bed, and spieth out 
+all our ways; He has fashioned us behind and before, and "we 
+cannot attain such knowledge," for, like all knowledge when it 
+has become perfect, "it is too excellent for us."
+
+"Whither then," says David, "shall I go from thy Spirit, or 
+whither shall I go, then, from thy presence?  If I climb up into 
+heaven thou art there; if I go down into hell thou art there 
+also.  If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the 
+uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead 
+me, and thy right hand shall hold me.  If I say peradventure the 
+darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned into day: 
+the darkness and light to thee are both alike.  For my reins 
+are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.  My bones 
+are not hid from thee: though I be made secretly and fashioned 
+beneath in the earth, thine eyes did see my substance yet being 
+unperfect; and in thy book were all my members written, which day 
+by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.  Do I 
+not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am I not grieved with 
+them that rise up against thee? Yea, I hate them right sore, as 
+though they were mine enemies." (Psalm CXXXIX.) There is not a 
+word  of this which we cannot endorse with more significance, as 
+well as with greater heartiness than those can who look upon God 
+as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort, 
+therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of receiving 
+from these and kindred passages, we intensify rather than not.  We 
+cannot, alas! make pain cease to be pain, nor injustice easy to 
+bear; but we can show that no pain is bootless, and that there is 
+a tendency in all injustice to right itself; suffering is not 
+inflicted wilfully, [sic] as it were by a magician who could have 
+averted it ; nor is it vain in its results, but unless we are cut 
+off from God by having dwelt in some place where none of our kind 
+can know of what has happened to us, it will move God's heart to 
+redress our grievance, and will tend to the happiness of those 
+who come after us, even if not to our own.
+
+The moral government of God over the world is exercised through 
+us, who are his ministers and persons, and a government of this 
+description is the only one which can be observed as practically 
+influencing men's conduct.  God helps those who help themselves, 
+because in helping themselves they are helping Him.  Again, Vox 
+Populi vox Dei. The current feeling of our peers is what we 
+instinctively turn to when we would know whether such and such a 
+course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul clenches his 
+list of things that the Philippians were to hold fast with the 
+words, "whatsoever things are of good fame"-that is to say, he 
+falls back upon an appeal to the educated conscience of his age.  
+Certainly the wicked do sometimes appear to escape punishment, 
+but it must be remembered there are punishments from within which 
+do not meet the eye.  If these fall on a man, he is sufficiently 
+punished; if they do not fall on him, it is probable we have been 
+over hasty in assuming that he is wicked.  
+
+
+                            CHAPTER IX
+
+                         GOD THE UNKNOWN
+
+The reader will already have felt that the panzoistic conception 
+of God-the conception, that is to say, of God as comprising all 
+living units in His own single person-does not help us to 
+understand the origin of matter, nor yet that of the primordial 
+cell which has grown and unfolded itself into the present life of 
+the world.  How was the world rendered fit for the habitation of 
+the first germ of Life? How came it to have air and water, 
+without which nothing that we know of as living can exist? Was 
+the world fashioned and furnished with aqueous and atmospheric 
+adjuncts with a view to the requirements of the infant monad, and 
+to his due development?  If so, we have evidence of design, and 
+if so of a designer, and if so there must be Some far vaster 
+Person who looms out behind our God, and who stands in the same 
+relation to him as he to us.  And behind this vaster and more 
+unknown God there may be yet another, and another, and another.
+
+It is certain that Life did not make the world with a view to its 
+own future requirements.  For the world was at one time red hot, 
+and there can have been no living being upon it.  Nor is it 
+conceivable that matter in which there was no life-inasmuch as it 
+was infinitely hotter than the hottest infusion which any living 
+germ can support-could gradually come to be alive without 
+impregnation from a living parent.  All living things that we know 
+of have come from other living things with bodies and souls, 
+whose existence can be satisfactorily established in spite of 
+their being often too small for our detection.  Since, then, the 
+world was once without life, and since no analogy points in the 
+direction of thinking that life can spring up spontaneously, we 
+are driven to suppose that it was introduced into this world from 
+some other source extraneous to it altogether, and if so we find 
+ourselves irresistibly drawn to the inquiry whether the source of 
+the life that is in the world-the impregnator of this earth-may 
+not also have prepared the earth for the reception of his 
+offspring, as a hen makes an egg-shell or a peach a stone for the 
+protection of the germ within it? Not only are we drawn to the 
+inquiry, but we are drawn also to the answer that the earth 
+was so prepared designedly by a Person with body and soul 
+who knew beforehand the kind of thing he required, and who took 
+the necessary steps to bring it about.
+
+If this is so we are members indeed of the God of this world, but 
+we are not his children; we are children of the Unknown and 
+Vaster God who called him into existence; and this in a far more 
+literal sense than we have been in the habit of realising [sic] 
+to ourselves.  For it may be doubted whether the monads are not as 
+truly seminal in character as the procreative matter from which 
+all animals spring.
+
+It must be remembered that if there is any truth in the view put 
+forward in "Life and Habit," and in "Evolution Old and New" (and 
+I have met with no serious attempt to upset the line of argument 
+taken in either of these books), then no complex animal or plant 
+can reach its full development without having already gone 
+through the stages of that development on an infinite number of 
+past occasions.  An egg makes itself into a hen because it knows 
+the way to do so, having already made itself into a hen millions 
+and millions of times over; the ease and unconsciousness with 
+which it grows being in themselves sufficient demonstration of 
+this fact.  At each stage in its growth {he chicken is reminded, 
+by a return of the associated ideas, of the next step that it 
+should take, and it accordingly takes it.
+
+But if this is so, and if also the congeries of all the 
+living forms in the world must be regarded as a single person, 
+throughout their long growth from the primordial cell onwards to 
+the present day, then, by parity of reasoning, the person thus 
+compounded-that is to say, Life or God-should have already passed 
+through a growth analogous to that which we find he has taken 
+upon this earth on an infinite number of past occasions; and the 
+development of each class of life, with its culmination in the 
+vertebrate animals and in man, should be due to recollection 
+by God of his having passed through the same stages, or nearly 
+so, in worlds and universes, which we know of from personal 
+recollection, as evidenced in the growth and structure of our 
+bodies, but concerning which we have no other knowledge 
+whatsoever.
+
+So small a space remains to me that I cannot pursue further the 
+reflections which suggest themselves.  A few concluding 
+considerations are here alone possible.
+
+We know of three great concentric phases of life, and we are not 
+without reason to suspect a fourth.  If there are so many there 
+are very likely more, but we do not know whether there are or 
+not.  The innermost sphere of life we know of is that of our own 
+cells.  These people live in a world of their own, knowing nothing 
+of us, nor being known by ourselves until very recently.  Yet they 
+can be seen under a microscope; they can be taken out of us, and 
+may then be watched going here and there in perturbation of mind, 
+endeavouring [sic] to find something in their new environment 
+that will suit them, and then dying on finding how hopelessly 
+different it is from any to which they have been accustomed.  They 
+live in us, and make us up into the single person which we 
+conceive ourselves to form; we are to them a world comprising an 
+organic and an inorganic kingdom, of which they consider 
+themselves to be the organic, and whatever is not very like 
+themselves to be the inorganic.  Whether they are composed of 
+subordinate personalities or not we do not know, but we have no 
+reason to think that they are, and if we touch ground, so to 
+speak, with life in the units of which our own bodies are 
+composed, it is likely that there is a limit also in an upward 
+direction, though we have nothing whatever to guide us as to 
+where it is, nor any certainty that there is a limit at all.
+
+We are ourselves the second concentric sphere of life, we being 
+the constituent cells which unite to form the body of God.  Of the 
+third sphere we know a single member only-the God of this world; 
+but we see also the stars in heaven, and know their multitude.  
+Analogy points irresistibly in the direction of thinking that 
+these other worlds are like our own, begodded and full of life; 
+it also bids us believe that the God of their world is begotten 
+of one more or less like himself, and that his growth has 
+followed the same course as that of all other growths we know of.
+
+If so, he is one of the constituent units of an unknown and 
+vaster personality who is composed of Gods, as our God is 
+composed of all the living forms on earth, and as all those 
+living forms are composed of cells.  This is the Unknown God.  
+Beyond this second God we cannot at present go, nor should we 
+wish to do so, if we are wise.  It is no reproach to a system that 
+it does not profess to give an account of the origin of things; 
+the reproach rather should lie against a system which professed 
+to explain it, for we may be well assured that such a profession 
+would, for the present at any rate, be an empty boast.  It is 
+enough if a system is true as far as it goes; if it throws new 
+light on old problems, and opens up vistas which reveal a hope of 
+further addition to our knowledge, and this I believe may be 
+fairly claimed for the theory of life put forward in "Life and 
+Habit" and "Evolution, Old and New," and for the corollary 
+insisted upon in these pages; a corollary which follows logically 
+and irresistibly if the position I have taken in the above-named 
+books is admitted.  
+
+Let us imagine that one of the cells of which we are composed 
+could attain to a glimmering perception of the manner in which he 
+unites with other cells, of whom he knows very little, so as to 
+form a greater compound person of whom he has hitherto known 
+nothing at all.  Would he not do well to content himself with the 
+mastering of this conception, at any rate for a considerable 
+time? Would it be any just ground of complaint against him on the 
+part of his brother cells, that he had failed to explain to them 
+who made the man (or, as he would call it, the omnipotent deity) 
+whose existence and relations to himself he had just caught sight 
+of?
+
+But if he were to argue further on the same lines as those on 
+which he had travelled hitherto, and were to arrive at the 
+conclusion that there might be other men in the world.  besides 
+the one whom he had just learnt to apprehend, it would be still 
+no refutation or just ground of complaint against him that he had 
+failed to show the manner in which his supposed human race had 
+come into existence.
+
+Here our cell would probably stop.  He could hardly be expected 
+to arrive at the existence of animals and plants differing from 
+the human race, and uniting with that race to form a single 
+Person or God, in the same way as he has himself united with 
+other cells to form man.  The existence, and much more the 
+roundness of the earth itself, would be unknown to him, except by 
+way of inference and deduction.  The only universe which he could 
+at all understand would be the body of the man of whom he was a 
+component part.
+
+How would not such a cell be astounded if all that we know 
+ourselves could be suddenly revealed to him, so that not only 
+should the vastness of this earth burst upon his dazzled view, 
+but that of the sun and of his planets also, and not only these, 
+but the countless other suns which we may see by night around us.  
+Yet it is probable that an actual being is hidden from us, which 
+no less transcends the wildest dream of our theologians than the 
+existence of the heavenly bodies transcends the perception of our 
+own constituent cells.  
+
+                           THE END 
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of God the Known and God the
+Unknown, by Samuel Butler
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