Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/353

 case of any finite individual, to be abstractly divorced from these acts, or to be conceived merely as a transcendent and non-temporal act, occurring, as it were, in another world; for instance, in a prenatal life. From my point of view, the individuating will of any person, as this person, is expressed, from moment to moment, in his more or less conscious intention to view his life as a struggle towards, and consequently as in contrast with, his ideal goal. Neither this goal, nor this intention, in order to be self-conscious, need be defined in abstract terms. It is not necessary to be a philosopher in order to be a person; and often enough, as human nature goes, abstract ideas may be permitted so much to stand in the way of concrete devotion, that a given individual may appear all the more doubtfully to be a person by virtue of the fact that he has let himself become a philosopher. He is not a person, who has abstractly said: “Thus and thus I define my ideal, and thus and thus I define the contrast between my experience and my goal.” He is a person, an individual in the foregoing sense, as self-conscious moral agent, who is aware, however vaguely, that some one aim illumines his life, gives it wholeness as a struggle through whatever difficulties, and at the same time lies so far beyond his reach that no lucky stroke of human fortune could make him say, “My soul hath here found her rest so absolute,” or, “Nothing else is worthy of me; there is nothing else that I could do or be that would fulfil me better.” All these things, to be sure, a finite individual might say, as Othello said one of them, in a moment of transient illusion. But as the