328 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



freedom and determinism than these, there plainly 

 can be none. But the solution is secure if God and 

 other spirits are alike rational, simply by their in7ier 

 and self-active nature ; in other words, if the solution 

 is by spontaneous harmony from zvitJiin, and not by 

 productive and executive domination from zvitJiont. If 

 the Sovereign is perfectly rational, if the whole of his 

 being is just perfect intelligence, and if the free sub- 

 jects are also essentially rational, while this ration- 

 ality defines the course of their being as a whole, 

 then the perfect definiteness of his realm and the 

 freedom of its members — his perfect possession of 

 it by complete knowledge, and their complete posses- 

 sion of their own lives, rationally self-determined — 

 will in the whole coincide, and the harmony is com- 

 plete. Each spirit other than God, let us suppose, 

 fulfils in its own way and from its own self-direction 

 the one universal Type, or Ideal. Then each in do- 

 ing its "own will," that is, in defining and guiding its 

 life by its own ideal, does the ultimate or inclusive 

 will of all the rest; and men realise the "will of 

 God," that is, fulfil God's ideal, by fulfilling each his 

 own ideal, while God fulfils the " will of man " by 

 freely fulfilling himself. 



This explanation, however, in presenting a uni- 

 versal World of Spirits, every one of whom is free, 

 — that is, independently self-active, self-moved from 

 within, and none operated either directly or in- 



