into the Spirit of Life as it is _in itself_,
antecedently to all conditions. This is the widest of all
generalizations, and so opens the door to the highest of all
specializations; for it is a scientific fact that the more widely we can
generalize the principle of any Law, the more highly we can specialize
its working. It is only as our conception of it is limited that any Law
limits us.

A principle _per se_ is always undifferentiated, and capable of any sort
of differentiation into particular modes of expression that are not in
opposition to the principle itself; and it is true of the Principle of
Life as of all others. There is therefore no limit to its expression
except that which inverts it,--that is to say, anything which tends
towards Death; and, accordingly, what we have to avoid is the negative
mode of Thought, which starts an inverted action of the Law, logically
resulting in destructiveness instead of constructiveness. But the
mistake we make from not seeing the basic principle of the whole thing,
is that of looking to the conditions to form the Life, instead of
looking to the Life to form the conditions; and therefore what we
require is a _Standard of Measurement_ for our Thought, by which we
shall be able to form _The Perfect Word_ which will set in motion the
Law of Cause and Effect in such a manner as to fulfil that _Basic Desire
of Life_ which is common to all Humanity. The Perfect Word must
therefore fulfil two Conditions--it must have the essential Quality of
the Undifferentiated Eternal Life, and it must have the essential
Quality of "Genus Homo." It must say with Horace "Homo sum; nihil humani
mihi alienum puto" (I am Man; I regard nothing human as alien to
myself). When we think it out carefully, there is no escaping the
conclusion that this must be the essential Quality of the Perfect Word
we are in search of. It is the final logical inference from all that we
have learnt regarding the interaction between Law and Personality, that
the Perfect Word must combine in itself the Quality of each--it must be
at once both Human and Divine.

Of course all my readers know where the description of such a Word is to
be found; but what I want them to realize is the way in which we have
now reached a similar description of the Perfect Word. We have not
accepted it unquestioningly as the teaching of a scholastic theology,
but have arrived at it by a course of careful reasoning from the facts
of physical Nature