Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/490

Rh perfect can be different, that is, none that are perfect without immixture of imperfection, and that are wholly supra-temporal in their being. The conjunction of this unmixed perfection with eternity is what constitutes the proof for the soleness of God. Mr. McTaggart fails to get the force of it, I think, because he silently omits this divine differentia before the word “perfect” as I use it of God. And thus, contrasting God and other selves as the Perfect and the unrelieved imperfect, he draws the unwarrantable conclusion about “superiority” and “inferiority” which he seems so much to dislike. But I intend no relation of this sort between God and the souls. They are different, and unchangeably different; they are even different in species, God being perfection eternally fulfilled, the other selves having a time-world of unfulfilment and having to carry it on toward the goal of fulfilment evermore. Thus the difference between them, in this reference, is permanent, — to answer my reviewer’s question on this point. But I do not teach that it is a difference of ”inferior” and ”superior”; quite the contrary is the fact, as any one who rightly reads my pp. 243-256 will know beyond question.

(4) Finally, Mr. McTaggart objects to my calling this sole mind possessing absolute and eternal perfection, God. He insists that the traditional usage shall be absolutely venerated, which makes God the name of the one only self-existent Being, who brings all other beings into existence by creation ex nihilo. Here I am quite unable to agree with him. I not only do not think that this solitude of self-existence, conjoined with this universal efficient causality, is the central and essential thing in the traditional religious thought of Christendom, but I am sure that the most spiritually-minded Christians would at once declare that it is not such; they would say, on the contrary, that the essential thing in the being of God is his holiness, justice, and infinite love. Now, what I point out is, not only that the