Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/240

Rh presence everywhere expresses, amid all the wealth of meaning which the whole embodies, an element of transcendent Freedom.

Our proposed supplement to our conception of the Absolute invites a fresh review of the whole argument in a somewhat new light. For the foregoing effort to introduce into our conception of the Absolute the element of Will differs from the customary effort in several noteworthy ways. No stress is laid, for instance, in this deduction, upon the ordinary forms of the category of Causation. That is, we do not regard the Absolute Will as primarily something that is required in order to explain the causal source or origin of the world of fact. All conceptions of source, of origin, and of causation are relative conceptions, which apply only to specified regions or spheres within the whole of reality. The conception of causation does not apply to the whole of reality itself. The same thing could be remarked as to the question whether the element of Will is an objectively necessary factor in the Absolute, i.e. whether the Absolute must will. For, from an absolute point of view, necessity, causation, determination, and all other forms of relative dependence appear as partial facts within the whole. In the last analysis, in fact, one cannot say: The world, or reality, or the Absolute, must be; but only: The reality, the Absolute, the world, is. Fact is always superior to necessity, and