HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 363 



the absolutely perfect self-thinking God, and (2) from 

 every other soul, which, like himself, is differenced 

 from God by a deficiency absolutely peculiar.^ 



In fact, the personality of every soul lies precisely 

 in the relation — or ratio, if we please so to call it — 

 between that genuine infinity (self-activity) which 

 marks its organising essence, and the finitude, the 

 exactly singular degree of limitation and passivity, 

 to which the infinity subjects itself in defining 

 itself from God. Thus every soul, though indeed, 

 in the unifying whole of its nature, of the divine 

 kind, and of inextinguishable free-infinity, neverthe- 

 less carries in its being an aspect of negation to 

 its divine nature, and simply by the operation of its 

 self-thought idea must realise its eternal freedom in 

 a way that differs from God's way in kind. 



For the consequence of this individualising self- 

 definition by defect or negation is this : Embraced 

 within the total being of the soul there must be 

 a derivative life, which we call its experience, or 

 sensory being, arising from the reaction of the 

 primal freedom upon the negating limit, or Check.^ 

 Accordingly the soul's existence, in this sensory 



^ Here we come again upon the vast and unknown number of souls 

 not God : there must be a soul for every really possible degree of 

 divergence from the Perfect Ideal, and there is no present knowledge 

 of the number of these degrees. 



2 Compare p. 338, above. 



