Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/145

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Accordingly, let us look for a moment at the exact structure of that argument, and determine, if we can, precisely what it does make out. It may be put in two different ways, each brief and telling:

(1) Our human ignorance, once confessed to be real, brings with it the reality of an Absolute Wisdom, since nothing less than that can possibly declare the ignorance real; if the ignorance is real, then Omniscience is real.

(2) Our human knowledge, that indirect and organised experience which constitutes science, once admitted to be real, brings with it the reality of an Absolute Experience, since nothing less than that can possibly give sentence that one experience when compared with another is really fallacious, and this is exactly what science does; if the “verdict of science” is real, then an Absolute Experience is real.

Now, the question that unavoidably arises, on exactly considering these two unusual reasonings, is this: Whose omniscience is it that judges the ignorance to be real? — whose absolute experience pronounces the less organised experience to be really fallacious? Well, — whosesoever it may be, it is certainly acting in and through my judgment, if I am the thinker of that argument; and in every case it is I who pronounce sentence on myself as really ignorant, or on my limited experience as fallacious. Yes,