Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/175

34 great misunderstanding ; personality is limitation. Man feels himself a personality only because he is in contact with other personalities. If he were alone, he would not be a person. These two conceptions — the external world (other beings), and our own personality, mutually define one another. If there were not the world of other beings, man would not be conscious of his own personality, nor realise the possibility of the existence of other beings. And therefore a man, in the world, cannot conceive himself otherwise than as a person.

But how can we say of God that He is a person? Herein lies the root of anthropomorphism. We can only say of God that which Mahomet and Moses said: that "He is One." But there can be no notion of number in relation, to God, therefore this implies not that He is one numerically, but that He is one — centred : not a conception, but a being — that which the orthodox call "the living God" in contrast to the pantheistic God; that is, the highest spiritual being who lives in all. He is one in the sense that He exists as a being who can be addressed; that is, that there is a relation between me, a limited personality, and God, unfathomable but existing.

We know God as a single being, we