AND ITS SELF- CONSERVATION. 295 



ceptible differences, from the amoeba to that unit of the 

 organic world which is marked off from all the rest by 

 his power of comparing, of judging, of thinking, of 

 measuring all things by himself as the standard by his 

 power of ^//"-consciousness, which may be described as 

 consciousness raised, if not to the actual power whose 

 exponent is infinity, at least to infinite potentiality. In 

 short, Mind in its infinite nature, is the ultimate function 

 of whatever can be called Matter. Or, more precisely, 

 Mind unfolds itself into Matter as its own spontaneously 

 produced organic expression. The continuity of Matter 

 has its truth in the continuity of Mind as the original, 

 creative Fact, Deed, Activity, or Actuality. 



Evidently, then, the descent of man from successively 

 lower and lower orders of animals, which themselves con- 

 stitute a minutely graded series of thought-forms, and 

 even of thought-functions, is, after all, nothing else than 

 his ascent or evolution in the scale of godhood. And 

 always it is to be remembered that the descent of man 

 cannot possibly have been from animals, merely as ani- 

 mals, merely as physical, or material, or brute natures 

 (allowing that such " natures " were thinkable). On the 

 contrary, every step, every factor in this ascending scale 

 of his evolution is possible for man only because each step 

 and each factor is expressive simply of the method by 

 which Man, the Son, is born of God, the Father. Just 

 as Life can come only from the living, though it may be 

 through units which are in themselves not-living; so Man 

 the thinker can come only from God the Thinker, though 

 it may be through a marvelous series of complex, more 

 or less conscious forms, which in and of themselves can- 

 not be said to think. 



