AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 293 



Thus the absolute spontaneity of the divine Spirit is 

 seen to return to itself in the culmination of its own 

 creative process of self-objectification. And this re- 

 turn again is but one aspect of the total process. For 

 the created subject must again, as spontaneous energy, 

 unfold itself into realized objectivity which it does in 

 all its creations, economic, social, civil, religious, artistic, 

 scientific. 



It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that man, as an 

 individual and also as a type in creation, is a manifes- 

 tation of Thought, which is primarily not his own indi- 

 vidual thought. Nor is he alone or unique in this 

 respect. Every other animal nay, every crystal and 

 every atom is also in its own degree a manifestation of 

 the same Thought that is, of the creative Thought 

 constituting the very Substance of the Universe. Every 

 man, animal, crystal, atom, is a particular form of 

 existence. And yet each is universal in the fact that it is 

 an embodiment or realization of a type, and as such pre- 

 sents the essential or universal characteristics of that 

 type. But these essential or universal characteristics 

 can exist as such only in and as thought. Each is, in 

 short, just one specialized phase of the perfect Thought 

 constituting the Method of the World-Energy. On the 

 other hand, the well-nigh immeasurable superiority of 

 man to these other manifestations of the perfect Thought 

 consists in the fact that man is something more than a 

 mere "manifestation" or outer form of Thought. He 

 is, besides this, nothing less than the progressive repro- 

 duction of the very Thought-Process whose one perfect 

 expression is the whole, eternal Creation. That is, man 

 is able progressively to make that universal, perfect 



