ecause he is free, and free because he is
rational.

"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
And, looks to God who ordained divorce
Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid._]

The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so
far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action.
Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free
himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to
an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.
Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle
of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of the
absolute.

Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence,
which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is only
the first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his own
individuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _in
order that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means of
knowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason is
potentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that in
it man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned."

"This is the honour,--that no thing I know,
Feel or conceive, but I can make my own
Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]

Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of the
world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, but
affinity between it and himself.

"This is the glory,--that in all conceived,
Or felt or known, I recognize a mind
Not mine but like mine,--for the double joy,--
Making all things for me and me for Him."[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]

That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as determined
by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no other
thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien or
foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination and
absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is lifted
above the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--

"To create man and then leave him
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
But able to glorify Him too,
As a mere machine could never do