lexity, is meant to be known; and his confession of moral
imperfection is made by reference to a good which is absolute, and which
yet may be and ought to be his. The good in morality is necessarily
supreme and perfect. A good that is "merely human," "relative to man's
nature," in the sense of not being true goodness, is a phantom of
confused thinking. Morality demands "_the_ good," and not a simulacrum
or make-shift. The distinction between right and wrong, and with it all
moral aspiration, contrition, and repentance, would otherwise become
meaningless. What can a seeming good avail to a moral agent? There is no
better or worse among merely apparent excellencies, and of phantoms it
matters not which is chosen. And, in a similar way, the distinction
between true and false in knowledge, and the common condemnation of
human knowledge as merely of phenomena, implies the absolute unity of
thought and being, and the knowledge of that unity as a fact. There is
no true or false amongst merely apparent facts.

But, if the ideal of man as a spiritual being is conceived as perfect,
then it follows not only that its attainment is possible, but that it is
necessary. The guarantee of its own fulfilment which an ideal carries
with it as an ideal, that is, as a potency in process of fulfilment,
becomes complete when that ideal is absolute. "If God be for us, who can
be against us?" The absolute good, in the language of Emerson, is "too
good not to be true." If such an ideal be latent in the nature of man,
it brings the order of the universe over to his side. For it implies a
kinship between him, as a spiritual being, and the whole of existence.
The stars in their courses fight for him. In other words, the moral
ideal means nothing, if it does not imply a law which is universal. It
is a law which exists already, whether man recognizes it or not; it is
the might in things, a law of which "no jot or tittle can in any wise
pass away." The individual does not institute the moral law; he finds it
to be written both within and without him. His part is to recognize, not
to create it; to make it valid in his own life and so to identify
himself with it, that his service of it may be perfect freedom.

We thus conclude that morality, and even the self-condemnation,
contrition, and consciousness of failure which it brings with it as
phases of its growth, are witnesses of the presence, and the actual
product of an absolute good in man. Morality, in