for therein the joy of the player consists.

As by the limits of law nature is separated from God, so it is
the limits of its egoism which separates the self from him. He
has willingly set limits to his will, and has given us mastery
over the little world of our own. It is like a father's settling
upon his son some allowance within the limit of which he is free
to do what he likes. Though it remains a portion of the father's
own property, yet he frees it from the operation of his own will.
The reason of it is that the will, which is love's will and
therefore free, can have its joy only in a union with another
free will. The tyrant who must have slaves looks upon them as
instruments of his purpose. It is the consciousness of his own
necessity which makes him crush the will out of them, to make his
self-interest absolutely secure. This self-interest cannot brook
the least freedom in others, because it is not itself free. The
tyrant is really dependent on his slaves, and therefore he tries
to make them completely useful by making them subservient to his
own will. But a lover must have two wills for the realisation of
his love, because the consummation of love is in harmony, the
harmony between freedom and freedom. So God's love from which
our self has taken form has made it separate from God; and it is
God's love which again establishes a reconciliation and unites
God with our self through the separation. That is why our self
has to go through endless renewals. For in its career of
separateness it cannot go on for ever. Separateness is the
finitude where it finds its barriers to come back again and again
to its infinite source. Our self has ceaselessly to cast off its
age, repeatedly shed its limits in oblivion and death, in order
to realise its immortal youth. Its personality must merge in the