374 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



Still the undying free spirit goes, and will go, secure 

 in its own indestructible vision of its eternal Ideal, 

 secure in the changeless light shed on it by the 

 changeless God. 



For it is assured of immortality — an immortality 

 that some day, be the time here or be it in the here- 

 after, must attain to life eternal, to the established 

 dominance of the spiritual over the natural. Never- 

 theless, the perfection of the "creature" lies just in 

 this never-ending process of victory. Always it must 

 preserve its own identity ; must be everlastingly, as 

 it is eternally, divided from identity with God by 

 its own defining negative principle. Thus its life 

 shows its peculiar perfection by the mode in which — 

 or, if you will, the rate at which — it surely, though 

 slowly and with heavy toil, heals its own inherent 

 wound. Two forms of self-active being there are, — • 

 two only : that which is eternally without defect and 

 invulnerable ; and that which holds defect in its 

 very nature, but moves toward making itself whole 

 by its eternal power of "life in itself." The one is 

 God's infinity; the other is the infinity of man — 

 the infinity of the "creature," the infinity that em- 

 bosoms finitude and evermore raises this toward 

 likeness with the eternal. 



Here our inquiry comes in sight of its close. 

 While I hope that I have now answered your whole 



