As it is felt that the treasure of the idea--that the full power of spiritual life--cannot be adequately stored in the earthen vessels of mortality, the consummation of personality is forced to recede into the invisible if it would be still conceived as attainable. 'True personality,' says Lotze, 'is with the Infinite,' What here is fragmentary, is there a rounded total, a perfect unity: He alone is absolutely self-determining, self-explaining: is all that He means to be, and means all that He is. In a sense, philosophy does not hesitate to countersign all this. But, in adopting it, philosophy must reserve the right of noting the danger and the ambiguity of such language. Religion does well, philosophy may say, in thus insisting upon the dependence of all appearance on one Absolute reality; but it is well also not to forget that all appearance is also the appearance of that reality or Absolute. And in so saying, be it added, philosophy assumes no essential superiority to religion. Religion in its fulness, and apart from any theories that may grow up under its wing, is more than theory, more than mere philosophy: it is the consummating unity of life--the enthusiasm and supreme power of life, its consecration and divinisation by its assured immanence in the eternal and universal. It is, in short, as was long ago said of it, the true life, the light which is the light and life of men; and its inspiring principles are faith, hope, and love. But when unassisted religion proceeds to set before itself the meaning and lesson of its life, when it proceeds to formulate a theory of the world and set out a scheme of world-history, it trespasses on the field of knowledge, and is amenable to the criticisms of the reflective spirit--the spirit of philosophy. And that criticism briefly is to the effect that the religious theory in its ordinary form is an imperfect interpretation of the religious experience. Nor is this to derogate from the prerogative of the friends of God. It is only to criticise the formulae and phrases of dogmatic theology--a theology, however, which is as old as religion itself, and which takes different forms from age to age, and from one level of thought to another, always in its measure translating religious reality, truth, or experience into the categories, naive or artificial, simple or complex, of the science (it may be the pseudo-science) of the time. Philosophy, therefore, is the criticism of the science of God--that is of theology--as it is the criticism of other sciences. For criticism philosophy always is: always the reflection upon fixed dogma, and the discussion of it till it becomes sensible of its defects, and stands upon another and higher plane. And to some it may seem that this is the sole function which philosophy can legitimately undertake. 'Yet,' as Aristotle remarked, 'the good critic must know what he criticises.' He must not merely reflect upon it from outside, but deal with it from the plenitude of experience, from the abundance of the heart. If he be a critic then, he cannot be a mere critic, but also an agent in the work of reconstruction. Or, if we put the thing otherwise; though, as Fichte said (p. 28), philosophy is a different thing from life, the true philosopher can never be a mere philosopher, but must, if he is to reach the height of his vocation, have also entered into the full experience of reality, into the whole truth of life. His philosophy will then not be outside of religion and aesthetic perception. In its comprehension of all grades and forms of reality and truth, goodness, holiness, beauty, will have their place. He also will be among the theologians.