Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/354

 dying Othello conceived of a task yet to be done, which fortune forbade him to engage in, namely, the task of doing strict justice to his illusions and to their causes, so, in general, the moral person is such, in our life, because his goal is beyond, and obstacles lie between. He may despair, as profoundly as he pleases, of attaining his goal. Suicide, in such despair, only emphasises, in a somewhat abrupt fashion, the contrast between the real and the ideal self, and so the genuineness of the moral personality. In such cases the contrast-effect is grim, but the moral facts are none the less evident.

Now particular acts, inspired by such an ideal, are, in so far, metaphysically considered, the expression, and so, from the absolute point of view, the deeds, of the moral individual. That is, from the absolute point of view, the facts of experience, as individuated from the point of view of this personal will, include the contents of such temporal acts as express this will. To say this, is to prejudge in no wise the psychological point of view with regard to the predetermination, in the physical sense, of the temporal sequence of such acts. That, the world being what it is, temporal observers of phenomena are able to discover natural laws of the sequence of phenomena is a matter that has nothing whatever to do with either the metaphysical constitution or the ethical significance of the world. Metaphysically speaking, the whole world is there to express what we have called the Divine Will. And the Divine Will, as metaphysical fact, includes the self-conscious and free will of the moral individual. Both these wills,