Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/262

C. HADDON, THE LARGER LIFE. 261 ing passage, from the same letter, identifies that defect, and that perception, in us, with the perception of self : " This experience of ours is God becoming conscious of Self (not himself, just that little difference is all that is wanted). The becoming conscious of self and death are one. And so we see, since the creature's existence is the Creator's in him, this death of man is God becoming conscious of self : just as Christ gave up His life in becoming physical. And the thought has an universal application. It is the same as the old thought, at least old to me, that creation is by a minus, and must be, to our thought, God limiting Himself ; and each act of creation i.e., each creature surely is rightly to be thought of as some particular form of limitation accepted by the Creator. In man He accepts this form of limitation of becoming conscious of self,, that is, of giving up life " (p. 154). The remarkable theory sketched in these words bears in one point, the identification of God's consciousness with man's, a. striking likeness to that which is elaborated by T. H. Green in his Prolegomena to Ethics, and there also serves, like Hinton's, as the basis of an ethical system. I allude more particularly to sec. 67 in book i., chap. 2 of that work, and am not suggesting any- thing as to the likeness or unlikeness of the two systems in other respects than this, which is probably due directly to their common Transcendentalism, if so it is to be named. For instance,, the great importance attached to the ideal of mutual service is common to both ; but, on the other hand, the note of mysticism which is apparently struck in the passage last quoted from Hinton, in which God apart from his creation is represented as self-less, that is, impersonal, would find, I think, no echo in Green, who lays great stress on the identification of spirit with personality, defin- ing both alike by the essential characteristic of distinct conscious- ness of Self. But the mysticism is apparent only, and vanishes when we consider that Hinton drew a strongly marked line between our apprehension of the " actual," the spiritual, the divine, by the intellect alone, and our apprehension of it by the moral faculties,, which in his view as far transcend the mere intellect as this transcends the mere senses (pp. 56-7, compared with p. 135). In other words, the moral faculties with Hinton have a similar place and function to those of the " practical reason " with Kant. When Hinton speaks of God apart from his creation as self-less,, he means that the mere intellect can conceive him only as a Self, and that his Being transcends that conception. Still it must be remembered, that these views remain with Hinton in the shape, or at the stage, of assertion of an insight, and are not supported, as in the case of Kant and of Green, upon any independent inquiry either into the ultimate analysis of con- sciousness, or into the ultimate constitution of the mental faculties. Kant's Critick of Practical Reason is based upon his great previous work, the Critick of Pure Reason ; but there is no corresponding substructure to Hinton's theology or ethic. Even the necessity