1 6 Preliminary Considerations 



will, of purposive control, but it is neither, but some- 

 thing far more God's very Self manifested under self- 

 imposed conditions of limitation, whose existence is the 

 guarantee of love and purpose. 



If, then, Absolute Reality is for God again the God- 

 before-creation the experience of the unity of self-con- 

 sciousness, what are we to say of the plurality that is 

 introduced by His creative activity? What is the rela- 

 tion of God to His Work? What is the connection 

 between being and becoming? Putting the problem in a 

 somewhat different form, is the equation / = / neces- 

 sarily true under all conditions? 



I think a rough analogy may help us here. When 

 Pygmalion set to work he had first to obtain the 

 necessary material. He then shaped out the statue ; this 

 was the expression of his purpose his work, in the 

 ordinary conception of the term. Last of all the legend 

 tells of the creation of Galatea herself in the perfect 

 guise he had framed for her ; a coming that was the final 

 triumph of the activity of his personal will. 



In a sense the marble was real, the statue was real, 

 and Galatea real ; but we instinctively recognise that we 

 have to deal with three very different kinds of reality 

 when we speak of the material, the work, and the 

 personal being. 



The analogy is a very rough one, but it serves its pur- 

 pose in helping us to define our terms. It fails in these 

 two respects; Pygmalion's marble the material is 

 taken for granted; and the entry of spirit into Galatea, 

 though led up to by the work of many gradations of 

 urgent desire, was itself effected in a moment. In con- 

 sidering the problem of Reality which is inseparable 

 from the problem of Immanence we have to face the 

 origin of the material universe and the gradual emer- 

 gence of the free spirits which crown the work in which 

 the work finds its fruition as well as the work itself. 



