82 THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS- 



when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, 

 and another shall gird thee." As man learns goodness he 

 gradually builds up around himself a system of obligations, 

 an unbroken ring of duties, whose imperatives are cate- 

 gorical and still free. They are built up by himself, 

 against himself. When the obligation is complete it 

 commands his heart as well as his will, and becomes an 

 enthusiasm. As his individual purposes become more 

 sane and effective, that is, as his practical personality 

 deepens, he finds his will more and more closely linked to 

 the trend of things. His recognition that he has come 

 not to be served but to serve is ever the more gladsome, 

 and his will ever the more invincible, for it is more at one 

 with the will of the whole. 



Thus, then, both on the theoretical and on the practical 

 side, there is the same double movement. As a man 

 possesses the truth and learns goodness, he finds the world, 

 more and more, to be just the content of his intelligence 

 and the means of his moral realisation. This is the subjec- 

 tive side which Idealism has rightly accentuated, and which 

 means that man finds everywhere nothing but his own 

 experience. But in the very same process man is enriching 

 his world. For he is bringing into light an objective 

 order, natural and moral, a not-self whose authority over 

 him is ever growing more complete. That objective order 

 is his ideal ; it is the larger reason of the world to which his 

 subjection is the more full, the wiser and the better he 

 grows. And the subjection, being the subjection of reason 

 to reason, is free. This is the objective side of the move- 

 ment to which Idealism has on the whole done so little 

 justice. 



There is not harm but good in insisting upon the pos- 



