Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/51

14 possess an Absolute Experience; that is, a wholly complete or self-contained experience, not a mere part of some larger whole. Again, the Omniscient Being would be, as we have said, a thinker. But we, as thinkers, are limited, both in so far as there is possible thought not yet attained by us, and in so far as we often do not know what ones amongst our thoughts or ideas have a genuine meaning, or correspond to what an absolute experience would fulfil. But the Omniscient Being would not be thus limited as to his thinking. Accordingly, he would possess what we may call an Absolute Thought; that is, a self-contained thought, sufficient unto itself, and needing no further comment, supplement, or correction. As the union of such an Absolute Thought and Absolute Experience, our Omniscient Being is technically to be named simply the Absolute; that is, the being sufficient unto himself. Moreover, I should also say that the experience and thought of this being might be called completely or fully organised. For us, namely, facts come in a disjointed way, out of connexion; and our thoughts, equally, seek a connexion which they do not now possess. An Omniscient Being would have to have present to himself all the conceivable relations amongst facts, so that in his world nothing would be fragmentary, disunited, confused, unrelated. To the question: What is the connexion of this and this in the world? the Omniscient Being would simply always find present the fulfilled answer. His experience, then, would form one whole. There would be endless variety in this whole, but the whole, as such, would fulfil an all-