376 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



unite us, not to divide us ; to unite us while it pre- 

 serves us each in his own identity, harmonising each 

 with all by harmonising all with God, but quenching 

 none in any extinguishing Unit. Freedom, in short, 

 means first our self-direction by this eternal Ideal 

 and toward it, and then our power, from this eternal 

 choice, to bring our temporal life into conformity 

 with it, step by step, more and more. 



And though in this real freedom which is inher- 

 ently rational there is that determinism, that definite- 

 ness, which issues from guidance by the universal 

 rational aim, this very determinism nevertheless, 

 matched as it is against the counter-definiteness in 

 the defective phenomenal side of our life, gives rise 

 to that ever-recurring Alternative, that chance for 

 the experience of choice, which is so often mistaken 

 for the whole of freedom, but is only a derivative 

 part of it. A greater part, even in this region of 

 experience, is the power in our consciousness of the 

 Ideal, the power of our eternal freedom, to decide the 

 temporal choice in its own direction. Thus every 

 sin is in its central nature a self-dishonour of our 

 freedom, a self-degradation and self-enslavement. 

 And still this freedom, as originative and whole, 

 is immortal, is imperishable, and has abiding might 

 to prevail and to rescue. 



So much for a summary of the solution. You must 

 not omit to notice, in parting, that it has not been 



