Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/252

attribute called the Divine Love, which it has opposed, on occasion, to the Divine Wisdom. Now just as Will may be generalised as the process, or aspect, of selective attention in consciousness, so Love also may be generalised as an affection or colouring of consciousness which involves a selection of some content as valuable for reasons which can no longer be abstractly defined in terms of this content, or in terms of its mere contrast to the contents to which it is preferred, be these contents actual or possible. A beloved object, as such, is experienced as a datum, is known as embodying ideas, but is preferred by virtue of characters that remain, despite all knowledge, undefined and, in some respects, undefinable. What is clear, to the loving consciousness, is that no other object fills just the place, or could fill just the place, occupied by the beloved object. Now, in viewing the world as the object of the love of an absolute being, one supposes the Absolute Consciousness to contain a moment or aspect that conforms to and exemplifies this generalised definition of Love. This world has a value from the absolute point of view such as no other world, conceived as an abstract possibility, would have. And while this value is, up to a certain point, explained and defined by the fact that the world fulfils these and these specific ideals, one aspect of the matter remains always unexplained, namely, why some other world, with a different sequence of data, might not fulfil, just as well, the same ideas. The selection of this world as the one fulfilment of absolute ideas and ideals would involve, then, an unexplained element. This element is precisely the