Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/249

212 data and the completeness of the system of ideas. This new aspect may be defined as an aspect of Arrest, of fulfilment by free limitation. That fulfilment could not otherwise be obtained, is our comment. The fact is, that fulfilment is thus attained, namely, by what we have to express as the choice, or attentive selection, of the present world of fact from the indefinite (or infinite) series of abstractly possible worlds, which, by virtue of this choice, are not actually possible. We cannot express this situation better than by saying: “The world forms a Whole because it is as if the Absolute said (or, in our former terms, attentively observed) that, since the absolute system of ideas is once fulfilled in this world, ‘There shall be no world but this,’ i.e. no other case of fulfilment; and therefore other abstractly possible fulfilments remain not genuinely possible.” It is this aspect of the ultimate situation which defines the world as a Whole, and which, without introducing an external cause, or a mere force, does as it were colour the whole unity of the Absolute Consciousness with a new character, namely, the character of Will. As psychology already knows, the will, even in us, is no third “power of the mind.” It is an aspect of our consciousness, pervading every fact thereof, while especially connected with and embodied in certain of the facts of our inner lives. Just so we now say, not: “The Absolute first thinks, then experiences, then wills in such wise as to fashion its experience.” We rather say: “The unity of the Absolute Consciousness involves immediate data, fulfilment of ideas in these data, consciousness of the adequacy