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ideals change, no doubt, but in their changes they seem to become more,
not less, comprehensive. And there is nothing to suggest that we realise
those ideals to a smaller extent than our ancestors realised their own.
94. The effect which the abandonment of the belief in the personal-
ity of God would have on the satisfaction of our emotions is perhaps
even more interesting than its effect on morality. But it is even more
difficult to determine. Some people find all love for finite persons inad-
equate, and are unsatisfied if they cannot also regard the infinite and
eternal with that love which can only be felt for a person. Others, again,
would say that our love for finite persons was only inadequate in so far
as it fell below its own ideal, and that, if perfect, it would afford such an
utterly complete realisation of our whole nature, that nothing else would
be desirable or possible. It would be superfluous to add the love of God
to a love which, not in metaphor, but as a statement of metaphysical
truth, must be called God, and the whole of God.
Which of these is the higher? Is it the first class, because they de-
mand more objects of love than the second? Or is it the second, because
they find more in one sort of love than the first? I do not see how this is
to be answered. Or rather, I do not see how the answer which each of us
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/81
will give can be of interest except to himself and his friends. For there
are no arguments by which one side might convince the other.
95. But even if the belief that there was no personal God were disad-
vantageous to our morality and our feelings, would the belief that the Abso-
lute was personal be any better? I think it very improbable. For if there is
any reason to regard the belief in a personal God as essential in these re-
spects, it can only be the belief in a personal God as it has hitherto prevailed
among mankind. And this belief certainly does not refer to a personal Ab-
solute, but to a being who is not the only reality, though he is the supreme
reality. It regards us as the creatures of whom God is the creator, as the
subjects of whom he is the king, as the children of whom he is the father, but
emphatically not as the parts of which he is the whole, or as the differentia-
tions within his unity. Royalty and fatherhood are, indeed, only metaphors,
and admittedly not perfectly adequate. But then the fact that neither of the
related beings is part of the other does not seem to be a point in which the
metaphor is considered as inadequate. On the contrary, it seems rather one
of the points in the metaphor on which popular religion insists. However
much the dependence of the human being may be emphasised, there never
seems any tendency to include him in the deity. (Such tendencies indeed
appear from time to time among mystical thinkers, but they are no more
evidence of the general needs of mankind than the other systems which do
without a personal God at all.) And this is confirmed by the fact that the
common metaphors all agree on this point. Such relations as that of a cell to
an organism, or of a citizen to the state, have never been found to be appro-
priate expressions of the ordinary religious emotions. It seems to follow
that, if the conception of a personal God had shown itself indispensable to
our practical life, we should find no satisfaction in such an Absolute as
Hegel s, even if we had contrived to regard it as personal.
96. One question remains. Is it appropriate to call the Absolute by
the name of God, if we deny it personality? There is eminent authority
in philosophy especially that of Spinoza and of Hegel himself for
giving this name to the true reality, whatever that may be. But this seems
wasteful. We have three distinct conceptions, (a) the true reality what-
ever it may be, (b) a spiritual unity, (c) a spiritual unity which is a
person. We have only two names to serve for all three the Absolute
and God and, if we use them as synonymous, we wilfully throw away
a chance of combining clearness and brevity.
Then there is no doubt that God is not used in that sense in popular
phraseology. In popular phraseology God is only used of a spiritual
82/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
unity which is a person. In such a matter as this, I submit, philosophy
ought to conform its terminology to that of popular usage. It is impos-
sible to keep philosophical terms exclusively for the use of philosophi-
cal students. Whenever the subject is one of general interest and the
existence of a God is certainly one of these the opinions of great phi-
losophers will be reported at second hand to the world at large. And if
the world at large hears Spinoza described as a God-intoxicated man,
or as more truly an Acosmist than an Atheist, or if it finds that Hegel s
Logic is one long attempt to determine the nature of God, it will be very
apt to conceive that Spinoza and Hegel believed in God as a person.
Now it is universally admitted that Spinoza did nothing of the kind, and
I shall try to prove, in Chapter VIII, that Hegel did not do so either. At
any rate it is clear that his use of the word God proves, when we con-
sider his definition of it, nothing at all as to his belief in a personal God.
If the philosophical and the popular usage ought to be made identical,
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