HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 325 



iook — our discovery that no free being can be the 

 product of processes in Nature, that on the other hand 

 none can exert freedom in an unpredestined natural 

 world, and that consequently every free being in rela- 

 tion with such a world must himself predestine it, 

 must impart arrangement (or "form ") to it from the 

 form of his own active intelligence. In fine, a con- 

 dition of our making freedom possible in a world or- 

 dered by the rigour of natural law is that we accept 

 an idealistic philosophy of Nature : the laws of Nature 

 must issue from the free actor himself, and upon a 

 world consisting of states in his own consciousness, 

 a world in so far of his own making. 



This principle of cosmic subjection has by theists 

 always been realised with reference to God : the natu- 

 ral world, they are always telling us, however full of 

 laws to which other conscious beings are subject, is 

 completely subject to the mind and will of God, and 

 its laws are imposed upon it from his mind in virtue 

 of his creating it. What we now learn, and need to 

 note, is that this is just as true of any other being 

 who can be reckoned free. If men are free, then, 

 they must be taken as being logically prior to Nature ; 

 as being its source rather than its outcome ; as deter- 

 mining its order instead of being determined by this. 

 Not God only, but also the entire world of free minds 

 other than God, must condition Nature ; and, as 

 we shall learn later in our inquiry, they must concli- 



