Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/17

xiv by final causation, — that is, simply by being the impersonated Ideal of every mind.

IV. The members of this Eternal Republic have no origin but their purely logical one of reference to each other, including thus their primary reference to God. That is, in the literal sense of the word, they have no origin at all — no source in time whatever. There is nothing at all, prior to them, out of which their being arises; they are not “things” in the chain of eiificient causation. They simply are, and together constitute the eternal order.

V. Still, they exist only in and through their mutually thought correlation, their eternal “City,” and out of it would be non-existent. But through their thought-reciprocity with each other, God being included in the circle, they are the ground of all literally originated, all temporal and spatial existences.

VI. Hence, relatively to the natural world, they are free, in the sense of being in control of it: so far from being bound by it and its laws, they are the very source of all the law there is or can be in it. Relatively to God also, and to each other, all minds other than God are free, in the still higher sense that nothing but their own light and conviction determines their actions toward each other or toward God.