dewdrops into any sort of a shining sea. They are individuals, constitutive of an Individual. And the “City of God” is God, while its citizens are free and finite individuals. No finite individual possesses the wholeness, the grade of reality, which the Absolute possesses. But, on the other hand, the finite individuals are as real as the moral order requires or permits them to be.
II
PROFESSOR MEZES, AND THE CONTENTS OF REALITY
While I have not hitherto expressly mentioned, in this new discussion, my two other critics, I have throughout borne in mind their statements, and have anticipated, in the course of this paper, most of what it would otherwise be necessary here to state in answer to their comments.
Professor Mezes offers two objections to the definition of the Absolute given in my first paper. Both of these objections refer to the inadequacy of the contents of the conception, so far as I explicitly defined these contents. In one sense, I accept both these objections, and enter a plea of “confession and avoidance.” My statement of my conception was intended to be abstract. I was not concerned with the question: What finite beings exist? but only with the question: What ultimate unity has the world of knowledge? Moreover, in my first paper I consciously avoided considering the relation of the moral world, as such, to the Absolute. Hence I did not
