HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 359 



fallacy. It runs : The idea of every self and the 

 idea of God are inseparably connected, so that if 

 any self exists, then God also must exist ; but 

 any and every self demonstrably exists, for (as 

 apiid Cartesiimi) the very doubt of its existence 

 implies its existence ; and therefore God really 

 exists. In parting with it, let us not omit to 

 notice that the argument is nothing but the com- 

 mon one upon which we always proceed when we 

 conclude there is any real mind other than our 

 own — that we have fellow-spirits, like ourselves 

 distinct from God. The validity of the process, 

 which in the case of our fellow-men we all so 

 instinctively perform, and with such unhesitating 

 conviction, rests in every case alike upon the 

 same universal implication of each mind with a 

 world of others. Our self-thought being is intrin- 

 sically a social being ; the existence of each is 

 reciprocal with the existence of the rest, and is 

 not thinkable in any other way. We all put the 

 fact so, each in the freedom of his own self-defining 

 consciousness. The circle of self-thinking spirits 

 indeed has God for its central Light, the Cynosure 

 of all their eyes : lie is if tliey are, tJiey are if Jie 

 is ; but the relation is freely mutual, and he only 

 exists as primus inter pares, in a circle eternal and 

 indissoluble. 



