22 Preliminary Considerations 



tation is not valid. This external activity involves the 

 creation of a work-material which is the expression 

 of God's self-limitation. But in the very idea of a 

 material lies the complete negation of reciprocity. The 

 material is a part of God's experience in which reci- 

 procity, and consequently Reality of the kind we have 

 called absolute, is absent. Yet the limitation, or 

 material, is real for God. We find thus two different 

 types of Reality, whose relations become clear as we con- 

 sider the work for which the material serves and exists. 

 This work is process or becoming, and with it space 

 and time appear as implications, for external material 

 involves extensity; process involves duration; and ex- 

 tensity and duration together produce what we call 

 space. The work is shared by God and men ; and there- 

 fore it is clear that God too is becoming. This is, after 

 all, the idea that lies at the root of the doctrine of im- 

 manence. Is this becoming in duration and extensity 

 real for Him? Unquestionably; if not, it is not real for 

 us either, and thought becomes impossible, action 

 valueless 1 . But it is real in a sense that obviously differs 

 from absolute Reality. The unity of perfect self-con- 

 sciousness is not there, both because there is limitation 

 and because there is plurality. We have already argued, 

 however, that, because persons are interpenetrating, 

 the process, the plurality, and the limitation, will cease 

 when all are perfected and transcendent. Reality will 

 then again be absolute for God, and for men as well ; for 

 it will be, once more, the unity of perfect reciprocity, 

 which is absolute Reality. (Of course, God has not 

 ceased to experience absolute Reality inasmuch as He 

 remains Transcendent; it is immanence, and all that 

 this implies, that is only relatively real for Him.) God 

 is Love; in those three words is the whole of ultimate 

 truth ; God ; the cause of all : God is ; the absolute of 

 1 See note on Degrees of Reality, ch. i. pp. 42-44. 



