AL

What is the Divine Ideal? At first it might appear hopeless to attempt to
answer such a question, but by adhering to a definite principle we shall
find that it will open out, and lead us on, and show us things which we
could not otherwise have seen--this is the nature of principle, and is what
distinguishes it from mere rules which are only the application of
principle under some particular set of conditions. We found two principles
as essential in our conception of the Originating Spirit, namely its power
of Selection and its power of Initiative; and we found a third principle as
its only possible Motive, namely the Desire of the LIVING for ever
increasing Enjoyment of Life. Now with these three principles as the very
essence of the All-originating Spirit to guide us, we shall, I think, be
able to form some conception of that Divine Ideal which gives rise to the
Fifth Stage of Manifestation of Spirit, upon which we should now be
preparing to enter.

We have seen that the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life is necessarily a
_reciprocal_--it must have a corresponding fact in manifestation to answer
to it; otherwise by the inherent law of mind no consciousness, and
consequently no enjoyment, could accrue; and therefore by the law of
continuous progression the required Reciprocal should manifest as a being
awakening to the consciousness of the principle by which he himself comes
into existence.

Such an awakening cannot proceed from a comparison of one set of existing
conditions with another, but only from the recognition of a Power which is
independent of all conditions, that is to say, the absolute Self-dependence
of the Spirit. A being thus awakened would be the proper correspondence of
the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life at a stage not only above mechanical motion
or physical vitality, but even above intellectual perception of existing
phenomena, that is to say at the stage where the Spirit's Enjoyment
consists in recognizing itself as the Source of all things. The position in
the Absolute would be, so to speak, the awakening of Spirit to the
recognition of its own Artistic Ability. I use the word "Artistic" as more
nearly expressing an almost unstatable idea than any other I can think of,
for the work of the artist approaches more closely to creation _ex nihilo_
than any other form of human activity. The work of the artist is the
expression of the self that the artist is, while that of the scientist is
the comparison of fac