HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 369 



risk is therefore "original" in a sense even deeper 

 than that in which traditional theology makes sin to 

 be original, — though we too have to say that sin is 

 original, in the sense that it is a fact which comes 

 about by reason of this trait in our self-origination. 

 It is a fact, that is to say, directly connected with our 

 self-differencing reality ; it concerns the explanation 

 of our very existence, roots in the origin of the natu- 

 ral man, and follows from that as surely as that is 

 implied in the very nature of our free being. 



Here at length we find what is meant by tJie 

 union of freedom zvith detej'niinism in the life of 

 every spirit. The union consists in the fact that 

 both determinism and freedom mean the self-deter- 

 mination of the conscious being in the light of his 

 twofold ideal, — his eternal apprehension of the 

 Supreme Ideal in God, and his ideal of himself as 

 a thoroughly individuated being, inherently self- 

 differenced from the Divine Ideal, yet essentially 

 self-related to it, — in the great total of his existence 

 moving in response to his contemplation of it, and 

 therefore freely moving. 



In our union of the actual and the ideal, we find, 

 too, the explanation of that consciousness of alterna- 

 tive which prompts us to say of every event in our 

 moral experience, especially of any event of wrong- 

 doing, that it might have been otherwise — we 



2B 



