ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relations which these two attributes, personality and reality, present to finite selfhood. For while the perfection and supremacy of Deity still constitute transcendence of such selfhood, this assumes a different character in accordance with the difference in the ruling conditions; so that in a certain sense, which must not, however, be pressed too far, transcendence may be said to become less absolute. For “the advance of personality implies the intensifying of the sense of its distinction from or within the environment”; and this is necessarily allied with the expansion of its dominance and freedom, limited though these must always be. The relation between Deity and man therefore, and the incessant influences to which personality is subject, find close and significant analogies even in the material world. For every self, therefore, communion with what shares its own nature and occupies its own level is a necessity.
