AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 225 



than it has in reality, but especially because, as the world 

 of change,, it is a wholly vanishing world; nay, even 

 illusory in the deadliest sense, as being the special 

 medium of the anti-divine; * a view which, in spte of the 

 advances in science, still lingers in its crudest form in 

 many an unexpected corner. 



Such imperfect conceptions inevitably accompany the 

 unthinking representation of the Divine as a being lim- 

 ited in space and in time, and hence subject to change. 

 To the mere phantasy there is no contradiction in the 

 conception of limited space, nor in the vision of creation 

 as having a beginning in time. Similarly, the phantasy 

 finds no difficulty in picturing to itself a God who at one 

 time is engaged in reflection, at another is occupied with 

 the work of constructing a world, and at another is 

 simply taking His ease. 



It is only with the maturing of reason that the contra- 

 dictions involved in such a view are brought to light; 

 just as it is only by being made to pass through the 

 dialectic of mutual cancellation that those contradictions 

 give place in the mind to the complete, self-consistent 

 view of the World-Energy as its own infinite, self-meas- 

 ured substance, one and unchanging, at once the all- 

 including potentiality and the all-producing potency; 

 hence the absolute, eternally self-equal PROCESS OF CRE- 

 ATION. 



1). THE WORLD-ENERGY AS SELF-UNFOLDING SYSTEM. 



Such process of creation, however, is possible only as 

 an absolutely fixed system. For, otherwise, it would be 



* Wherein appears also an Eranian element familiar enough with those 

 acquainted with the Zend Aoesta. 



