APPENDIX A 387 



conception of both Freedom and Determinism is set forth, 

 as the aspects, obverse and reverse, respectively, of the com- 

 plex conception Self-determination., when this is seen to 

 be simply the self-definition inseparable from self-conscious- 

 ness. It is then shown that moral autonomy, as such self- 

 definition by each mind, not only involves a contrast to 

 others, and therefore a recognition of them (in fine, the 

 essentially federal nature of a self, tlie presence of a public 

 and universal phase in every conscious life), but also the 

 distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, the 

 eternal and the temporal, aspects of being ; hence, the seat- 

 ing of every tnoral agent in the eternal world. The consist- 

 ency of this eternalising of the individual ( i ) with Theism, 

 and (2) with a purified Monotheism, — in fact, rather, its 

 necessity for both, — is then shown, by means of (^a) a new 

 argument for the reality of God, akin to the historic Onto- 

 logic Proof, but freed from its defects, and {b) a neiv and 

 rational interpretation of " creation,^'' as a metaphor sym- 

 bolising the eternal office of God as Final Cause {i.e. at 

 once Conditioning Standard and Goal) in the entire world 

 of minds. By the operation of this Final Causality, each 

 mind other than God involves in its self-definition a contrast 

 to God as well as an attraction toward him. Each non- 

 divine mind thus gives contributory rise to the phenomenal 

 world of changeful consciousness — the world of defect, of 

 natural evil, of possible moral misdeed. Here Freedom, 

 which in its eternal basis is simply spontaneity, the native 

 response to the eternal vision of God and the other intelli- 

 gences, takes on the added traits of ( i ) empirical alternative, 

 and (2) power to decide this iji favour of the eternal Good, 

 by a resort to the changeless fountain of reason which eve?y 

 spirit is at core. 



Thus the theme of Personal Idealism — of an eternal 

 world of many rational beings, all self-active, all arbiters of 

 their own destiny and so alike morally responsible, yet, in 



