324 ESSAYS I.V PHILOSOPHY 



cern, namely, that this free Definer, this legislator of 

 predestination upon his world of mere things, is, in 

 accordance with our initial reasoning, himself full of 

 definiteness ; he is not undefined, but is self-defining. 

 This is his essence; and so, just because he is free, 

 he is determined, though of course i-^//"-determined. 

 He is not and cannot be capricious, formless, whisk- 

 ing in infinitum, self-shattered to chaotic dust and 

 showered into the bottomless void, but is inherently 

 self-planned, purposeful, continuous, coherent, calcu- 

 lable, and thus knowable. So the free being, as self- 

 determined and taken in his whole contents, is defi- 

 nite in both senses of the word : he defines himself, 

 and thus has the definiteness of unpredestination ; he 

 defines his empirically real world of things, and thus 

 adds to himself a field of action having the definite- 

 ness of predestination, — in a manner arms himself 

 with it, inasmuch as he transcends and controls it. 



Our result thus far is, that determinism and free- 

 dom, when justly thought out, are in idea entirely 

 reconcilable. Determinism proves to need no fatalis- 

 tic meaning, but to be, possibly enough, simply the 

 definite order characteristic of intelligence ; while so 

 far from freedom's being indeterminism, chance, or 

 caprice, these are seen to be incompatible with it, and 

 freedom proves to be, like determinism, the sponta- 

 neous definiteness of active intelligence. And one 

 thing, of the highest importance, we must not over- 



