366 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



here is the beginning, the terminus a quo, of effi- 

 ciency; here also is the germ of the material cause, 

 the "matter" upon which the further display of effi- 

 ciency is to act. But by the final causation in the 

 spirit's native contemplation of the Divine Ideal, the 

 infinity or freedom reacts upon the Check: this re- 

 active relation and its product constitute a matter or 

 contents more or Xq^s formed, bearing always in some 

 degree the impress of the original freedom that moves 

 toward its ideal. Here, then, and in the hence- 

 forth endless recurrence of the action and the re- 

 action, we have flowing from final cause — from the 

 free attraction of the free ideal — (i) material, or 

 object for the reaction of freedom ; (2) the reactive 

 efficiency, shown (3) in the appearance of fonn in the 

 material, the form exhibited by the interaction of 

 the spiritual and the natural. And we now recover, 

 in this new light, the doctrine set forth earlier in this 

 essay, that the whole natural world, or world of sense, 

 is embraced under the world of the self-active intelli- 

 gence — the world, as Kant has taught us to call it, 

 of the pure reason, or intelligence a priori. This 

 natural world, by the account of it we now get, must, 

 as noticed already,^ be a scene of ceaseless conflict 

 between its immediate or present form and the 

 eternal or ideal form of the spirit.^ 



1 See p. 364, above. 



2 The foregoing account of what and whence Nature is, will of 



