Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/547

 FIXITY OF CHAEACTEE : ITS ETHICAL INTEEPEETATION. 531 within a world of physical causation, yet the whole volitional and moral process, as regards its form and matter, is an essentially spiritual process, is still within the spiritual or free circle of his own being. That very present Form of the Will itself may, therefore, change or develop in the appreci- able or significant presence of a consciously conceived Ideal. It is precisely this free conception of an Ideal or conscious reference of an end to the Self, as its own possibility or future Selfhood, that leaves the Self with the free and incalculable power of Self-initiation ; and this is Freedom in the only sane and significant sense. For this power or privilege of Self -initiation, as implying the inhibition of the mechanical process, means or leaves room for a ' new beginning,' idealistic and teleological in its reference. With- out the possibility of this idealistic and teleological reference our Life would be as Nature's, under the negative and external bondage of constraint, or " according to law " : but with this possibility man's proper and characteristic Life is a " life ' according to the representation of law,' or in free obedience to a consciously conceived Ideal ". 1 Freedom now, in its proper significance, turns out to be an essential or inseparable aspect or function of Selfhood. The ethical interpretation of Freedom and of Fixity, as dis- tinguished from Finality, of Character is now seen to be an interpretation of Character as properly a Form of Will, and of Freedom as being necessarily involved in the Nature of Selfhood, in its Constitution or Self-initiative Function, or Personality. Our ethical ultimates are thus the Self and the Form of the Will to Live : they guarantee both Freedom and Fixity or inevitableness of Character. Altogether, therefore, we must interpret Effort and Spontaneity, Nature and Character with reference to the Self or the Will to Live : if, that is, we are to have a solution of the problem as to whether the relation of the new to the old may always be a relation of antithesis and revolt as well as of synthesis and continuity : and whether the psychological impossibility of the former can in any significant sense be said to be really a loss of Freedom. Animals and things have merely a first " nature," a definite fixed actuality, just because that nature has been finally determined for them a b extra. Any living organism that may have a second "nature" must originally be an indeterminate manifold of potentialities (8vvd/j,ei<; rwv evav- There" arises, therefore, the possibility of this second 1 J. Seth, op. cit. sup., p. 349.