de uvidens-kabelige Efterskrift_); but
perhaps it is more exact to say with Mazzini, the mystic of the Italian
city, that "God is great because His thought is action" (_Ai giovani
d'ltalia_), because with Him to think is to create, and He gives
existence to that which exists in His thought by the mere fact of
thinking it, and the impossible is the unthinkable by God. Is it not
written in the Scriptures that God creates with His word--that is to
say, with His thought--and that by this, by His Word, He made everything
that exists? And what God has once made does He ever forget? May it not
be that all the thoughts that have ever passed through the Supreme
Consciousness still subsist therein? In Him, who is eternal, is not all
existence eternalized?

Our longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finality
to the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of a
supreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear the
voice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is that
the infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that our
souls may serve as nutriment to the Universal Soul. Yes, I enrich God,
because before I existed He did not think of me as existing, because I
am one more--one more even though among an infinity of others--who,
having really lived, really suffered, and really loved, abide in His
bosom. It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to
make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God,
to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him,
yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist.
For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He
first creates us.[37] It is He who in us is continually creating
Himself.

We have created God in order to save the Universe from nothingness, for
all that is not consciousness and eternal consciousness, conscious of
its eternity and eternally conscious, is nothing more than appearance.
There is nothing truly real save that which feels, suffers, pities,
loves, and desires, save consciousness; there is nothing substantial but
consciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in
order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know
the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it. Love is
a contradiction if there is no God.

Let us now consider this idea of