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 DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM. 4^3 The only way to guard against the determinism and the lifeless God of Spinoza is to assume something in God which is not God himself, to distinguish between God as existent and that which is merely the ground of his exist- ence or " nature in God." In God also the perfect pro- ceeds from the imperfect, he too develops and realizes himself. The actual, perfect God, who is intelligence, wisdom, goodness, is preceded by something which is merely the possibility of all this, an obscure, unconscious impulse toward self-representation. For in the last anal- ysis there is no being but willing ; to willing alone belong the predicates of the primal being, groundlessness, eternity, independence of time, self-affirmation. This "ground of existence " is an obscure " longing " to give birth to self, an unconscious impulse to become conscious ; the goal of this longing is the " understanding," the Logos, the Word, wherein God becomes revealed to self. By the self-subordi- nation of this longing to the understanding as its matter and instrument, God becomes actual God, becomes spirit and love. The operation of the light understanding on the dark nature-will consists in a separation of forces, whence the visible world proceeds. Whatever in the latter is perfect, rational, harmonious, and purposive is the work of the understanding ; the irrational remainder, on the other hand, conflict and lawlessness, abortion, sickness and death, originates in the dark ground. Each thing has two principles in it : its self-will it receives from nature in God, yet, at the same time, as coming from the divine understanding, it is the instrument of the universal will. In God the light and dark principles stand in indis- soluble unity, in man they are separable. The freedom of man's will makes him independent of both principles ; going over from truth to falsehood, he may strive to make his selfhood supreme and to reduce the spiritual in him to the level of a means, or — with divine assistance — continuing in the center, he may endeavor to subordinate the particular will to the will of love. Good consists in overcoming resistance, for in every case a thing can be revealed only through its opposite. If man yields to temp- tation it is his own guilty choice. Evil is not merely