rendering the word God without meaning, and therefore without
reality, and therefore non-existent to us. Our ideas are like
our organism, they will stand a vast amount of modification if it
is effected slowly and without shock, but the life departs out of
them, leaving the form of an idea without the power thereof, if
they are jarred too rudely.

Any being, then, whom we can imagine as God, must have all the
qualities, capabilities, and also all the limitations which are
implied when the word "person" is used.

But, again, we cannot conceive of "everything" as a person.
"Everything" must comprehend all that is to be found on earth, or
outside of it, and we know of no such persons as this. When we
say "persons" we intend living people with flesh and blood;
sometimes we extend our conceptions to animals and plants, but we
have not hitherto done so as generally as I hope we shall some
day come to do. Below animals and plants we have never in any
seriousness gone. All that we have been able to regard as
personal has had what we can call a living body, even though that
body is vegetable only; and this body has been tangible, and has
been comprised within certain definite limits, or within limits
which have at any rate struck the eye as definite. And every part
within these limits has been animated by an unseen something
which we call soul or spirit. A person must be a persona-
that is to say, the living mask and mouthpiece of an energy
saturating it, and speaking through it. It must be animate in all
its parts.

But "everything" is not animate. Animals and plants alone produce