embracing unity, a single system of ideas. This is what I mean by calling his Experience, as we here conceive it, an absolutely organised experience, his Thought an absolutely organised thought.
And now our question returns. We have defined the Omniscient Being. The question is: Does such a being exist? We turn from the ideal to the hard fact that we mortals find ourselves very ignorant beings. What can such as we are hope to know of the Absolute?
II
FIRST DEFINITION OF HUMAN IGNORANCE, APPARENTLY EXCLUDING KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY
Yes, the vast extent of our human ignorance, the limitations of our finite knowledge, — these great facts, so familiar to the present generation, confront us at the outset of every inquiry into our knowledge about God, or about any absolute issue. So little am I disposed to neglect these great facts of our limitation, that, as perhaps you will remember from the book that you studied, philosophy seems to me, primarily, to be as much the theory of human ignorance as it is the theory of human knowledge. In fact, it is a small thing to say that man is ignorant. It is a great thing to undertake to comprehend the essence, the form, the implications, the meaning, of human ignorance. Let us make a beginning in this task as we approach the problem of Theism. For my thesis to-night will be that the very nature of human ignorance is such that you cannot conceive
