Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/45

8 prehend. But, for the present, let this selection of the attribute of Omniscience, as giving us a preliminary definition of God, appear, if you will, as just the arbitrary choice of this address. What we here need to see from the outset, however, is that this conceived attribute of Omniscience, if it were once regarded as expressing the nature of a real being, would involve as a consequence the concurrent presence, in such a being, of attributes that we could at pleasure express under other names; such, for instance, as what is rationally meant by Omnipotence, by Self-Consciousness, by Self-Possession — yes, I should unhesitatingly add, by Goodness, by Perfection, by Peace. For, consider for an instant what must be meant by Omniscience if one undertakes for a moment to view an Omniscient Being as real.

An Omniscient Being would be one who simply found presented to him, not by virtue of fragmentary and gradually completed processes of inquiry, but by virtue of an all-embracing, direct, and transparent insight into his own truth, — who found thus presented to him, I say, the complete, the fulfilled answer to every genuinely rational question. Observe the terms used. I say, the answer to every question. The words are familiar. Consider their meaning. We mortals question. To question involves thinking of possible facts, or of what one may call possible experiences, that are not now present to us. Thinking of these conceived or possible experiences that we do not now possess, we question in so far as we ask either what it would be to possess them, or whether the world is such that, under given