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525 be expressed in terms of time. But this last refuge of nescience can only convince those who refuse to follow a principle to its logical consequences. For, if the real manner of God's existence is absolutely unknown to us, how can we tell that persistence through time is a more adequate conception than momentary duration? If we have no way of comparing our symbol with that which it is supposed to symbolize, by what mysterious process do we come to know that the one corresponds to the other? The second assumption to which I referred above is, that, having a knowledge of God "as manifested in nature and history," we have somehow a knowledge of the 'essence' or nature of God. But surely the 'essence' of God must be for us the predicates or categories which we employ in thinking of God. Now, as none of these express the nature of God, how can it be said that he is 'manifested' at all? The 'manifestations' of other human beings, to take our author's own illustration, have a meaning for us, because we can reproduce in ourselves the form of their consciousness. This is not the case with the so-called 'manifestations' of God, who differs from us toto coelo. So that the 'manifestations' manifest nothing. They are in fact illusions which conceal God from us. Nor is the difficulty lessened when we consider that, on Mr. Seth's own showing, God is not presented in nature and history at all: nature being a mere 'collocation/ and 'history,' not "the development of God, but of man's knowledge of God." How Mr. Seth can continue to speak of God as 'manifested' at all, or to affirm that the world is 'constructed on a rational plan,' I fail to see. A God who is entirely beyond nature and history cannot be 'manifested' in either, and even if he were, a being like man, for whom the apprehension of reality is impossible, would not comprehend the 'manifestation' when it was given.

These are some of the difficulties that beset every theory which affirms that Reality is unknowable. If they have any force, they show that the primary assumption from which they proceed—the assumption that the subject is limited to his