Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/355

as they are in their true nature, are facts of the eternal world, whereby I mean nothing transcendent of the totality of experience, and nothing essentially remote from this world, but merely the world as viewed in the unity of the Eternal Moment — the absolute Now. This Eternal Instant includes temporal processes, although we can never adequately conceive either its facts or its constitution in terms of merely temporal sequence. That is, from the absolute point of view, all temporal sequences are included in, and transcended by, some higher form of consciousness, into whose nature we have not further here to inquire. On the other hand, all temporal sequences given in finite experience are fragmentary facts from the midst of the unity of the One Moment. Ethically considered, the temporal sequences have a significance. In case of persons, this ethical significance comes into sight when we consider the relation of those particular processes which we call acts to the goal in the eternal world toward which they tend. From this point of view, we must rightly call these acts temporal and partial expressions of the freedom (and now of the individual freedom) which is expressed in those goals, and in the whole individual lives that strive towards them. We therefore say to the moral individual: “This your act, in so far as you meant it, that is, in so far as it expressed your striving toward your goal, is an embodiment of your freedom, and, in so far, nobody in the whole universe of God besides yourself is responsible for it, is expressed in it, or is to be judged for it. In so far, your acts show what you are.