Preliminary Considerations g 



from its very nature. Compulsory freedom would not 

 be freedom at all, and the creation of freedom would in- 

 volve compulsion, and so, a contradiction. 



If freedom is to emerge, it must emerge from deter- 

 mination, and hence the essence of creation must be 

 limitation. 



Now if all Reality is comprehended in the experience 

 of God, and if, for the sake of simplifying argument, and 

 fully recognising the contradictory and really meaning- 

 less 1 assumption involved, we imagine, not a time but 

 a state, when nothing existed save God only, that 

 creation, in so far as it is real, must be a limitation of 

 part of His experience, and so a self-limitation, since 

 His whole experience is Himself 8 . (Of the nature of this 

 self-experience of God we shall have more to say here- 

 after, and we shall further see that our argument holds 

 good, whether there be other beings sharing that experi- 

 ence, or God alone.) 



As freedom emerges in the creature and becomes more 

 and more perfected, the will of the creature becoming 

 in greater harmony with the Will of the Creator, the 

 self-limitation of God is done away. Thus it becomes 

 true in a sense to call the Universe the Body of God. For 

 a body is at once a limitation, a means by which freedom 

 is achieved, and a means of self -manifestation to others ; 

 the body is indwelt by the self or spirit ; yet it is not that 

 self, but rather the material through which the self works 

 the expression of the fact that the self is limited. 



But such a view is very incomplete. It is true that 

 the Universe may be conceived as the Body of God; 

 His limitation ; the means by which He regains freedom; 

 and His self-manifestation. But fragments of it are also 

 actually the bodies of other spirits men subserving 



1 Vide infra, p. 12 and ch. viii. pp. 239-240. 

 1 For a discussion of the reality of the cosmos see pp. 41-44, 

 et passim. 



