Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/352

 self-conscious will of the finite person A himself, and, as such, free from all the rest of the universe of the Absolute Choice. In this way, without for one moment destroying the unity of our Absolute, without at any moment interfering with the purely theoretical considerations that have forced us to define this unity, we should have defined the personal or individuating will of A as free, as an individual will, and as an integral part of the Divine Will. This individuating will of A we should have defined as expressed in his own conscious will, precisely as he himself views it when he knows himself as this moral being. And thus the foregoing theses would have received, for our present purposes, their relatively sufficient vindication. The moral individual can say, “I am free,” and “I am part of the Divine Will.” The antinomy is solved.

It remains here to say a few things as to the temporal relations of the finite individual thus defined. Our general theory of reality has implied the thesis that all temporal sequences are included in the unity of the Absolute Moment. This is not the place for a closer study of the metaphysics of the time-process. It is enough here to point out that the act of choice expressed in the moral, or individuating, will of any finite person is neither to be identified with any of the particular acts of our passing lives, nor, in the