The observation of a free action of the human personality upon the course of things, once more leads us back to a reflection on the _idea of God_. For if we have reason to acknowledge a _freedom_ of the determinations of human will--and the consciousness of ethical responsibility will be a proof of this freedom which cannot be invalidated by any contrary reflection--the question comes up: _how is this freedom of a creature reconcilable with the idea of God?_ Far be it from us to claim to have found a solution of these last and most important problems of the human mind. For all meditations on them but lead to antinomies in the presence of which we dare not churn to remove all difficulties of reflection still less to solve the difficulties by pursuing only one chain of reasoning and ignoring the other. The way of science leads rather to mere _compromises_, and these compromises consist in the fact, that on every side of our observations or arguments we look for and adhere to that which results for us in incontestable fact or indispensable postulate, and that we adhere to all results or postulates thus found even when we are no longer able to trace their unity and harmony back to their last sources. Now if, on the one hand, our idea of {357} God is established as a self-testimony of God to our ethical consciousness and as a result of our teleological reasoning, and if, on the other, is established the fact of the world and of its processes going on conformably to law, and likewise the fact of human freedom and its actions upon the course of things, and finally the fact of the admission of the human will and action into a higher teleology which is superior to human will, and which, in the history of mankind, of individuals, and nations, reaches its higher ends, now by affirming, now by denying, human will; then we have simply to account for all these facts as mere _facts_, and the scientific attempt at pursuing them into their inner connection is nothing else but a more or less successful compromise. We have to be satisfied with these indications, for the further discussion of them would lead us far beyond the task of the present publication. We shall only point out the fact, that precisely the knowledge of the image of God in man shows us the way to the knowledge of how it is conceivable that God can create personalities through whose freedom of will he relatively limits the absoluteness of his own will.