own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign.of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable and always with difficulty decipher- able, not to be really discovered except by that initiation into the mystery of our own being which distinguishes -a Godward from an earthward humanity. In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret God- head, the power of the life is that of the secret God- head, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature; the sign of the Godhead, an inner soul- sign, not outward not physical, stands out legible for all to read who care to see or who can see; for the Asuric nature is always blind to these things, it sees the body and not the soul, the external being and not the internal, the mask and not the Person. In the ordi- nary human birth the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity prevails; in the incarnation the God-aspect of the same phenomenon takes its place. In the one he allows the human nature to tgke posses- sion of his partial bemg and to dominate it; in the other he takes possession of his partial type of being and its nature and divinely dominates it. Not by evo- lution or ascent like the ordinary man, the Gita seems to tell us, not by a growing into the divine birth, but by a direct descent into the stuff of humanity and a taking up of its moulds.
But it is to assist that ascent or evolution the des- ceht is made or accepted; that the Gita makes very clear. Itis, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man
