Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/385

324 cern, namely, that this free Definer, this legislator of predestination upon his world of mere things, is, in accordance with our initial reasoning, himself full of definiteness; he is not undefined, but is self-defining. This is his essence; and so, just because he is free, he is determined, though of course self-determined. He is not and cannot be capricious, formless, whisking in infinitum, self-shattered to chaotic dust and showered into the bottomless void, but is inherently self-planned, purposeful, continuous, coherent, calculable, and thus knowable. So the free being, as self-determined and taken in his whole contents, is definite in both senses of the word: he defines himself, and thus has the definiteness of unpredestination; he defines his empirically real world of things, and thus adds to himself a field of action having the definiteness of predestination, — in a manner arms himself with it, inasmuch as he transcends and controls it.

Our result thus far is, that determinism and freedom, when justly thought out, are in idea entirely reconcilable. Determinism proves to need no fatalistic meaning, but to be, possibly enough, simply the definite order characteristic of intelligence; while so far from freedom's being indeterminism, chance, or caprice, these are seen to be incompatible with it, and freedom proves to be, like determinism, the spontaneous definiteness of active intelligence. And one thing, of the highest importance, we must not over-