288 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



with its other phases, the less adequate ones constituting 

 the external, physical world. 



All possible forms and modes of existence, then, are 

 but so many phases of the self-objectification of the one 

 absolutely self-complete Subject. 



But the complete self-objectification of the World- 

 Energy as subject necessarily involves precisely this: 

 That the highest or most adequate phase of self-objec- 

 tification, shall itself as object still bear the character of 

 a subject. The objective itself must develop to subjec- 

 tivity and become reflective consciousness and contem- 

 plative knowing. The created must itself take on the 

 character of the creative. The external must become 

 once more explicitly internal. 



Now it is toward this very end that the successive 

 phases of the unfolding of the objective world thus far 

 considered have been seen to tend. Even centrality 

 implies some slight degree of vague subjectivity. In 

 affinity the phase of internality is more definitely devel- 

 oped; while in the life-process there are presented all the 

 phases of spontaneity from the automatic process of 

 selection and assimilation in the protozoan to the complex 

 preferences and voluntary movements of the most highly 

 developed organisms. Here as elsewhere the principle 

 of continuity remains unbroken. The widely extended 

 variations in degree constitute no exception to the law. 



The striking fact is that throughout the series there is 

 more and more complete blending of the inner and the 

 outer in the given object the object itself being " given" 

 as we have seen, through the entering of the inner. 



And now, more precisely, the "inner" is the uni- 

 versal, the pervasive, the spontaneous. As universal and 



