Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/537

523 Mr. Seth's remarks shows that he means to affirm that God is in his real nature different in kind from us, and hence that he cannot be known by us at all. This impotency, in fact, is regarded as so inseparably bound up with the form of our consciousness, that it prevents us from having anything more than a symbolical apprehension of any being but ourselves. Nor can any other view be consistently maintained by one who starts from the presupposition that each human subject is limited to his own mental states; for, on such a presupposition, we must fall back upon the hypothesis of a correspondence between our own mental states and a reality lying beyond them—a correspondence which, from the nature of the case, can never be more than an unwarranted assumption. This separation of knowledge and existence, therefore, leads to much more than the denial of any knowledge of God as he really is: its only legitimate result is the denial of any knowledge of the existence of God. It is, therefore, not in the least surprising that Mr. Seth should speak of Kant's "conclusive" reasoning against "the ontological argument for the existence of God": 141 (149). If we cannot "lift ourselves out of the stream of ever-flowing time": 213 (224), most assuredly we can have no knowledge of God's existence. By what right, then, do we assert his existence? 2. Assume, however, that God does exist, and is so different in nature from ourselves that we cannot comprehend him, and we are forced to deny, not only a knowledge of God, but of anything whatever, including ourselves. For, if the 'specular consciousness' of God is such that it transcends the opposition of self and not-self, we can frame no conception whatever of its nature, and therefore the whole aspect of existence must be absolutely different from existence as it appears to us. This is virtually admitted by Mr. Seth, when he tells us that "the truth" is "for God alone" (unless, indeed, he falls back upon the absurd hypothesis of two kinds of 'truth'). Now, it is not possible to introduce a radical incapacity for truth into the very centre of consciousness without infecting every object of consciousness. Does Mr. Seth suppose that he can maintain