thence it goes on with increasing individuation and self-activity to completion in man, — as in my view. The difference is unimportant. To use his mode of expression, God may be conceived as self-sundering his Energy, and setting over against himself a part as Nature. A part of this part, by a process of evolution, individuates itself more and more, and finally completes its individuation and self-activity in the soul of man. On this view, spirit — which is a spark of Divine Energy — is a potential in dead Nature, a germ in plants, a quickened embryo in animals, and comes to birth into a higher world of spirit-life in man. Self-consciousness — from which flows all that is distinctive of man — is the sign of birth into the spiritual world. Thus an effluence from the Divine Person flows downward into Nature to rise again by evolution to recognition of, and communion with, its own Source.
Now observe, and this is the main point: The sole purpose of this self-sundering of the Divine Energy is thereby to have something to contemplate. And the sole purpose of this progressive individuation of the Divine Energy by evolution is finally to have, in man, something not only to contemplate but also to love and to be loved by, and, in the ideal man, to love and to be loved by supremely. Thus God is not only necessary to us, but — we also to him. This part of God, self-separated and, as it were, set over against himself, and including every visible manifestation or revelation of himself, may well be called a Second Person of the godhead, which by eternal generation developes into sons in man, and finally into fulness of
