 Green’s own conception of God is ambivalent. On the one hand, he identifies the eternal self-consciousness of absolute idealism with God. Green thinks that self-conscious minds are conditions of conscious experience and not themselves part of conscious experience, with the result that they are outside of space and time. What is true of individual minds is true of the corporate mind that Green thinks makes objectivity possible. This would make God a transcendent reality. On the other hand, Green has strong reason to regard God as immanent in the world. Self-consciousness expresses itself in the will, which is the cause of action. If so, self-consciousness cannot be outside of space and time. Moreover, Green saw God as immanent in individuals and in history. The higher principle of practical reason within each person that regulates his desires and makes him a moral agent is a divine principle, the common good is the proper object of the divine principle in humanity, and its progressive realization in human laws and institutions is how God manifests himself to the world (Works III 223–27). One cannot separate Green’s unorthodox form of Christianity from his idealist philosophy and his ethical demand that individuals subordinate their lower selves to the pursuit of a higher, common good.