Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/349

 view depends. The Absolute, then, individuates the lives of A and B by virtue of interests, of forms of will and of self-consciousness, which are different for A and for B, and which, in case of each of them, are such as to include, in one interest, A’s will, in the other interest, B’s will. Our question now is, whether these two forms of will are so related to one another and to the Absolute Will in its wholeness, that an Absolute Will such as is expressed in the world which contains A is necessarily at once expressed in a world which contains B also, or whether the Absolute Will might be expressed in A without necessarily being expressed in a world which, on that sole account, must contain B precisely as he now is. In other words, we ask whether A and B, who by hypothesis are actually existent as individuals, are as such predetermined by any one act whereby the Absolute should choose to individuate this whole present world of fact, or whether, on the other hand, the Absolute in choosing A is in so far left free as to the choice of B, and vice versa.

Our answer is already suggested in part by the consideration of the general nature of all moral relationships. Suppose A and B to be in so far predetermined by the system of the absolute ideas, that some moral relationship — that of equal, of fellow-citizen, of friend, of enemy, of lover, of questioner and answerer, or of any other moral nature, vague or exact — is to exist between them, at any point in their lives. Then, whatever this relation may be, and however sharply it may be supposed to be defined, still, so long as it is a moral relationship, it is such that