Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/223

186 ence,” or of “a complete knowledge of all truth in the unity of a single moment,” in order to discover whether such a conception does not involve the presence of some generalised form of Will as a factor in the Absolute Experience itself.

To define the Absolute as the Omniscient Being, or as the All-knowing Moment, or Instant, is, as I hold, the best beginning for an idealistic doctrine. But I do not regard such a definition as other than a beginning. Our mode of progress must, however, be as follows: We must develope our already attained conception of the Absolute, not by arbitrary external additions, but by essentially immanent methods. As the implications of ordinary experience led us to the conception of an Absolute Experience, so the implications of this latter conception must lead us to look for factors or moments whereby we may complete the purely theoretical definition. As a fact, the conception of an experience wherein an absolute system of ideas gets a fulfilment, and wherein all truth forms the content of a single whole moment, demands, for its own completion, the presence of a factor whereby the Individual Whole of the Absolute Moment gets a more positive definition than we have yet given it. This new factor, whereby the unity of the Absolute Consciousness gets its positive definition and its individuality, we shall see reason to call the Absolute Will.