236 THE WORLD-ENEBGY 



formative principle proves its truth, its concrete actuality, 

 through the multiplicity cf realized forms involved in its 

 own infinitely complex nature. 



These particularized phases, again, in the very fact 

 that they are such, show themselves to possess, in and for 

 themselves, no real independence, nor even existence. 

 They are ever only modes, vanishing phases of the one 

 indivisible Spirit, which thus proves to be the one all- 

 inclusive Individual. But the individual which is all- 

 inclusive is by that very fact also universal; and as that 

 universal in which all particularity is contained in vital, 

 organic union it is precisely the one individual Spirit now 

 seen to be universal through its own spontaneous self- 

 differentiation or self -par ticularizat ion. 



While, therefore, the World-Energy negates its own 

 abstract unity by self-separation into infinite manifold- 

 ness and particularity of existing and mutually exclusive 

 forms, it also negates this very negation in the fact of 

 showing itself to be the one sole substance of these infi- 

 nitely manifold forms, thus binding them forever into 

 one through what seem to be relations only of one to 

 another, but which are seen to be in reality the system 

 of the infinite self -relation of the all-creating One. All 

 possible phases of multiplicity forever in process of com- 

 ing forth from the one are equally in perpetual process 

 of returning into the one in the sense of vanishing into 

 the one universal substance. This is the central truth in 

 that magnificent symbol of emanation and absorption. 

 And it fairly represents the truth so far as the merely 

 physical forms of existence are concerned, save that true 

 science now recognizes that the vanishing of any given 

 form is not its merging into the one universal Substance 



