Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/48

Rh think. And he would experience. That is, he would have, in perfect fulness, what we call feeling — a world of immediate data of consciousness, presented as facts. This his world of feeling, of presented fact, would be richer than our fragments of scattered sensation, as I also need not say; but he would experience. Only, — herein lies the essence of his conceived Omniscience, — in him and for him these facts would not be, as they often are in us, merely felt, but they would be seen as fulfilling his ideas; as answering what, were he not omniscient, would be his mere questions.

But now, in us, our ideas, our thoughts, our questions, not merely concern what experienced facts might come to us through our senses, but also concern the value, the worth, the relations, the whole significance, ethical or aesthetic, of our particular experiences themselves. We ask: Shall I win success? And the question implies the idea of an experience of success which we now have not. We ask: What ought I to do? And the question involves the idea of an experience of doing, which we conceive as fulfilling the idea of right. Misfortune comes to us, and we ask: What means this horror of my fragmentary experience? — why did this happen to me? The question involves the idea of an experience that, if present, would answer the question. Now such an experience, if it were present to us, would be an experience of a certain passing through pain to peace, of a certain winning of triumph through partial defeat, of a certain far more exceeding weight of glory that would give even this fragmentary horror its