20. Any effort on the part of finite beings to speak about the infinite will be in one or the other of two modes. One is the way of negation: that which is not finite, not mortal, not bounded, not changing, not relative, not in need of anything or anyone else, and so forth. At first, this seems to tell us nothing at all, but those who move deeply into it sometimes find it a way into an understanding of reality that is not the less real for being impossible to express clearly. In the words of Henry Vaughan:
There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.
The other is the way of metaphor, in which we speak of the infinite in terms drawn from our finite experience, though always under a reserve that reminds us that this is a gesture toward what we cannot actually grasp. Thus we call what is not finite "spirit," or "the muse," or "providence," or "fortune," or "justice," or "wisdom," or "love," or perhaps "god." Or any of a thousand other names.