Infinite intelligence

“ Experience teaches us that to imagine an unextended point is not impossible; and to think it in the purely intellectual order, is only to conceive the possibility of this infinite divisibility, and to be suddenly placed at the last limit,—a limit which must still be far distant from that to which, not abstraction, but the sight of infinite intelligence can reach. ”

“ Is there really any special difficulty in supposing that the infinite intelligence can directly disclose His nature to a creature fashioned in His image, the disclosure quickening the latent power of intuition, which, thus touched from above, springs forth to meet its source and object? ”

“ And it is this recognition that solves the seemingly insoluble paradox. The only way to attain that knowledge of the Infinite Law which will change the Via Dolorosa into the Path of Joy is to embody in ourselves a principle of knowledge commensurate with the infinitude of that which is to be known; and this is accomplished by realizing that, infinite as the law itself, is a universal Intelligence in the midst of which we float as in a living ocean. Intelligence without individual personality, but which, in producing us, concentrates itself into the personal individualities which we are. ”

“ In just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the Infinite life and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the Infinite life, do we make ourselves channels through which the Infinite intelligence and power can work! ”

“ Instead of abandoning ourselves to similar suppositions, it would seem that we ought to recognize in the mind an innate activity, subject to the laws imposed upon it by its Creator, the infinite intelligence. ”

“ Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because, if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? ”

“ And the Infinite would be just as responsible to the smallest intelligence living in the infinite spaces—he would be just as responsible to that intelligence as that intelligence can be to him, provided that intelligence thinks as a necessity of his nature. ”

“ If it is asked, "Why, since finite intelligence begins in time to redeem the universe from contradiction, may not this be the whole rescue?" I answer, simply because we are prevented, by a necessity of thinking, from conceiving it to be the whole rescue. "We cannot suppose a time when time itself, and everything else, was in a condition of absolute nonsense, and therefore we must suppose something more than finite intelligence to rescue the universe from contradiction; and this is, and can be, nothing else than an infinite and all-ruling mind. ”

“ In dealing with this great impersonal intelligence, we are dealing with the infinite, and we must fully realize infinitude as that which touches all points, and if it does, there should be no difficulty in understanding that this intelligence can draw together the means requisite for its purpose even from the ends of the world ”

“ Beginning at this point, real necessary being is in itself the intelligible; we lay down first that which is most radical and ultimate in the conception of the living, personal God and Creator; namely, absolute, infinite intelligence.
The absolute intelligible being must be absolute intelligent being. The intelligible is only intelligible to intelligence. What is the idea, or ideal truth or being, without an intelligent subject? What is infinite idea, or infinite object of thought, without infinite intelligent subject? ”

“ The intelligence not only enables it to receive the impress of our thought, but also causes it to devise exactly the right means for bringing it into accomplishment. This is only the logical result of the hypothesis that we are dealing with infinite Intelligence which is also infinite Life. Life means Power, and infinite life therefore means limitless power; and limitless power moved by limitless intelligence cannot be conceived of as ever stopping short of the accomplishment of its object ”

“ It follows, then, from the regency of causation, that there is a determinate course already, as it were, traced out, which human events will certainly follow to the end of time; every step of which course, however remote, might now be foreseen and predicted by adequate, that is to say by infinite, intelligence. Infinite intelligence would do this, however, not by the aid of law, but by virtue of its own intrinsic and unassisted strength, wherewith it would perceive how each succeeding combination of causes would operate. ”

“ The real plausibility of this objection arises from a vague idea, often present to us when we speak of infinite wisdom or infinite intelligence, namely that the epithet infinite in some way alters the meaning of the attributes to which it is applied. But the truth is that the word infinite, when applied to wisdom or knowledge or any other intellectual or moral quality, can only properly have reference to the number of acts of wisdom or knowledge that we suppose to have been performed. ”

“ The Infinite never entered the finite, and Intelligence never passed into non-intelligence; so Mind never passed into matter, the unlimited into limits, the eternal into the temporal, and the immortal into mortality, therefore Mind was never in personal man or matter. ”

“ Given that an infinite intelligence in the world wished to realise purposes without instituting them as directly accomplished, but by letting them express themselves through a gradual “becoming,” the method would be exactly what is shown in the mechanical theory of life, that is, the primitive data and starting-points would have inherent in them a peculiar constitution and a rigidly inexorable orderliness of causal sequence. ”

“ And if the finite intelligence were to rejoin that this was waste on a yet larger scale, what should we have but one more illustration of how hopeless it is for the finite mind to grapple with the infinite and absolute? ”

“ If it were good, it would not be the world. The soul foolishly thinks of manifesting the Infinite in finite matter, Intelligence through gross particles; but at last it finds out its error and tries to escape. ”

“ This act must be the act of supreme, absolute, infinite intelligence. Whatever is in the creature, must be infinite in the creator. The world of finite, intelligent spirits can only proceed from an infinite, intelligent spirit, as first and eminent cause. ”

“ We shall then have a new infinite number in each one of the parts of the first infinite number; but as this series of infinities must be always known to the infinite intelligence, we must come to simple points, or else say that the infinite intelligence does not know all that there is in matter. ”

“ I could show you the monad or spirit, which with the organs of Newton displayed an intelligence almost above humanity, now in a higher and better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light from a purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind. But prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of those states which the highest intellectual beings that have belonged to the earth enjoy after death in their transition to now and more exalted natures. ”

“ The intelligence of God is infinite; and he cannot understand more than he now understands; all progress would suppose imperfection, because it would involve a change from a less to a greater intelligence. ”

“ While we create and withdraw organs at will, we have nothing to correspond to your five senses. We derive knowledge through one sense only, or, shall I say, a super-sense? We see and hear and touch and taste and smell and feel and know, not through any one organ, but through our whole structure. The homogeneous force of our omni-substance subjects the plural world to the processing of a powerful unity. [232]
e can dissolve our bodies at will, retaining only the permanent atom of our being, the seed of life dropped on the soil of our planet by Infinite Intelligence. ”

“ In this all agree; the difference is that some separate, with the greatest care, the finite from the infinite, the thing created from the creative power, unity from multiplicity, and maintain the necessary communication between the free will of the omnipotent agent and finite existences, between the wisdom of the sovereign intelligence and the fixed course of the universe: while others, affected with melancholy blindness, confound the effect with the cause, the finite with the infinite, the various with the one, and reproduce in the domain of philosophy the chaos of primeval times ”

“ "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances. ”

“ And it may be given to one created intellect to see more perfectly than another.
Do those who see God per essentiam, comprehend Him? No.
“To comprehend God is impossible for any created intelligence. To have any true thought of God is a great beatitude.... Since the created light of glory received by any created intelligence, cannot be infinite, it is impossible that any created intelligence should know God infinitely, and comprehend Him.” ”

“ Before we proceed to prove this proposition, we premise that in the argument we take intelligence and will in action, and not in potentiality; in other words, we take them as acts, and not as faculties.
The reason is because, as we shall prove, there can be no faculties or potentiality in the Infinite. This premised, we lay down the undoubted ontological truth that between intelligence in act and the conception or interior logos, the result of intelligencing, there is and must be a real distinction. ”

“ But considered apart from this outward finitude which characterises him in contrast with those infinite externalities, he is intelligence, is able to perceive, to form ideas, to know, to have cognition of things. The object on which he exercises his intelligence is the world, this aggregate of infinite particular things. How small is the number of these known by individual men—it is not Man who knows but the individual—as compared with the infinite mass which actually exists. ”

“ It aids us not so much by showing us marks of design in this or that particular thing as by showing the Infinite in the finite. Science does this office when it unfolds to us the unity of the universe, 194 which thus becomes the sign, the efflux of one unbounded intelligence, when it reveals to us in every work of Nature infinite connections, the influences of all-pervading laws—when it shows us in each created thing unfathomable, unsearchable depths, to which our intelligence is altogether unequal. ”

“ Why then should a rational creature necessarily desire to transcend its own proper and connatural mode of intelligence? The apprehension of the super-intelligible shows that the intellect cannot be satisfied with a limitation of itself to a mere knowledge of second causes and the contingent—that it must think about God, and apprehend in some way without infinite, eternal, necessary being and attributes of the creator and first cause of all things. ”

“ The finite cannot comprehend the infinite, the temporal the eternal. We need not, however, on that account be agnostics, for it is still true that, within the scope of our narrow powers and opportunities, the Supreme Intelligence reveals to us in nature His power and divinity ”

“ We have seen that the Idea of Infinity is a necessary result of our finite senses, that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here and the Now; that the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved by the Intellect but by that method which is employed by those who are earnestly following the "Quest of the Grail"—namely, by realising that our True Personality or Transcendental Ego is an emanation from the Absolute ”

“ I take hold of the first scientist I meet—my whole mind pummelling him. “What is it?” I say, “what is it you are doing with us and with the lives of our children? What is it you are doing with yourself? Truth is not a Thing. Did you think it? Truth is not even a Heap of Things. It is a Light. How dare you mock at inferring? How dare you to think to escape the infinite? You cannot escape the infinite even by making yourself small enough. It is written that thou shalt be infinitely small if thou art not infinitely large. Not to infer is to contradict the very nature of facts. ”

“ He who is beyond the senses, beyond all touch, beyond all form, beyond all taste, the Unchangeable, the Infinite, beyond even intelligence, the Indestructible — knowing Him alone, we are safe from the jaws of death. ”

“ The study of ancient and modern philosophic theories is useful as showing how impossible it is, for even the greatest thinkers of any age, to grasp the Absolute with our understanding or to measure the Infinite with our finite units. The propounders of all these theories seem to me to be, without exception, looking in the wrong direction for the "Reality of Being" ”

“ Without the Infinite Mind in the universe there could be no evolution. No man can be broadly and fully educated unless there is joined in his mind both the light of science and the light of revelation. ”