Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/343

306 of space; but I am still free to fill each part of that space by whatever individual bodies I please, independently of the filling of the rest of the space. If one conceives that the universal laws, such as the law of gravitation, are to predetermine the movement of whatever individual collection of material masses happens to be found in the material world, still there is in the unity of that law nothing that predetermines what bodies shall exist at all, or what system of bodies, as a collection of individuals, shall fulfil the law. The bodies, when once existent, must conform, by hypothesis, to the law — must exemplify it. But the individual whole which is to exemplify the law may be composed of members that, as to their mere existence, are separate individuals, equally and mutually contingent, so that neither the law nor the other individual bodies predetermine that any one individual body amongst those that are to conform to the law must exist. Here are cases where a system of ideas may be conceived as fulfilled by and in a contingent whole whose parts are also contingent, both with respect to one another, and with respect to the system of ideas that, taken singly and together, they are to fulfil in an individual case. Why might not our world of facts be of this sort, — an individual whole of mutually contingent parts, conforming to law in whole and in part, embodying universals, fulfilling ideas, yet with freedom not only for the whole but also for the parts? Why might not the Absolute Will be a complex of many wills in one unity of consciousness, and so its object be an Individual consisting of individuals, all expressive of