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206 mediately conceived necessity. Precisely because we mean the Absolute Whole to be above mere mediation, we in our finite thoughts have to use expressions of mediation which involve, and in fact explicitly state on occasion, their own insufficiency, their inadequacy to their objects. Still otherwise put, our whole argument for the Absolute implies that just because every thought of an object involves a beyond, as well as its own inclusion in the unity of the experience which embodies the beyond, therefore every thought is a moment in a world of fact which, in its wholeness, transcends mere thinking. Or, again, thought in itself is a mere abstraction from and yet in the whole of experience. But all this means that there must be, above every must, that which includes, indeed, the necessity expressed by the must, but transcends such necessity. There must be what is beyond every must. The must is our comment. The is expresses the ultimate fact.

Wrong therefore, in so far, was that older metaphysics which defined God as the “absolutely necessary being.” Fact includes necessity, since necessity in its very relative and finite forms is part of the world of fact. But fact in its wholeness is above necessity, and the last word about the world would be, not “it must be,” but “it is.” Now the older definition for the Absolute Will, as the “cause of the world,” generally ended by making this cause, or Will, at once external to the world of facts which it produced, and, by itself, such as to have a necessary constitution; as, for instance, a necessary efficaciousness, frequently called Omnipotence. Our own theory