HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 375 



question, and have shown how freedom and deter- 

 minism, reconciled in the universal presence of 

 rational activity, do surely lead toward universal 

 recovery from moral evil, it would be no more than 

 natural were you to ask, In just what does the recon- 

 ciliation after all consist ? In answer, I may sum 

 up the whole matter in the following way. 



Freedom and determinism are only the obverse 

 and the reverse of the two-faced fact of rational self- 

 activity. Freedom is the thought-action of the self, 

 defining its specific identity, and determinism means 

 nothing but the definite character which the rational 

 nature of the action involves. Thus freedom, far 

 from disjoining and isolating each self from other 

 selves, especially the Supreme Self, or God, in fact 

 defines the inner life of each, in its determining 

 whole, in harmony with theirs, and so, instead of con- 

 cealing, opens it to their knowledge — to God, with 

 absolute completeness eternally, in virtue of his per- 

 fect vision into all possible emergencies, all possible 

 alternatives ; to the others, with an increasing ful- 

 ness, more or less retarded, but advancing toward 

 completeness as the Rational Ideal guiding each ad- 

 vances in its work of bringing the phenomenal or 

 natural life into accord with it. For our freedom, 

 in its most significant aspect, means just our secure 

 possession, each in virtue of his self-defining act, of 

 this common Ideal, whose intimate nature it is to 



