shall
be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto
him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all": _hina he
ho theos panta en pasin_--that is to say, that the end is that God,
Consciousness, will end by being all in all.

This doctrine is completed by Paul's teaching, in his Epistle to the
Ephesians, with regard to the end of the whole history of the world. In
this Epistle, as you know, he represents Christ--by whom "were all
things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and
invisible" (Col. i. 16)--as the head over all things (Eph. i. 22), and
in him, in this head, we all shall be raised up that we may live in the
communion of saints and that we "may be able to comprehend with all
saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to
know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" (Eph. iii. 18, 19).
And this gathering of us together in Christ, who is the head and, as it
were, the compendium, of Humanity, is what the Apostle calls the
gathering or collecting together or recapitulating of all things in
Christ, _anakephalaiosthai ta panta en Christo_. And this
recapitulation--_anakephalaiosis_, anacefaleosis--the end of the world's
history and of the human race, is merely another aspect of the
apocatastasis. The apocatastasis, God's coming to be all in all, thus
resolves itself into the anacefaleosis, the gathering together of all
things in Christ, in Humanity--Humanity therefore being the end of
creation. And does not this apocatastasis, this humanization or
divinization of all things, do away with matter? But if matter, which is
the principle of individuation, the scholastic _principium
individuationis_, is once done away with, does not everything return to
pure consciousness, which, in its pure purity, neither knows itself nor
is it anything that can be conceived or felt? And if matter be
abolished, what support is there left for spirit?

Thus a different train of thought leads us to the same difficulties, the
same unthinkabilities.

It may be said, on the other hand, that the apocatastasis, God's coming
to be all in all, presupposes that there was a time when He was not all
in all. The supposition that all beings shall attain to the enjoyment of
God implies the supposition that God shall attain to the enjoyment of
all beings, for the beatific vision is mutual, and God is perfected in
being better known, and His being is nourished and en