riched with souls.

Following up the track of these wild dreams, we might imagine an
unconscious God, slumbering in matter, and gradually wakening into
consciousness of everything, consciousness of His own divinity; we might
imagine the whole Universe becoming conscious of itself as a whole and
becoming conscious of each of its constituent consciousnesses, becoming
God. But in that case, how did this unconscious God begin? Is He not
matter itself? God would thus be not the beginning but the end of the
Universe; but can that be the end which was not the beginning? Or can it
be that outside time, in eternity, there is a difference between
beginning and end? "The soul of all things cannot be bound by that very
thing--that is, matter--which it itself has bound," says Plotinus
(_Enn._ ii., ix. 7). Or is it not rather the Consciousness of the Whole
that strives to become the consciousness of each part and to make each
partial consciousness conscious of itself--that is, of the total
consciousness? Is not this universal soul a monotheist or solitary God
who is in process of becoming a pantheist God? And if it is not so, if
matter and pain are alien to God, wherefore, it will be asked, did God
create the world? For what purpose did He make matter and introduce
pain? Would it not have been better if He had not made anything? What
added glory does He gain by the creation of angels or of men whose fall
He must punish with eternal torment? Did He perhaps create evil for the
sake of remedying it? Or was redemption His design, redemption complete
and absolute, redemption of all things and of all men? For this
hypothesis is neither more rational nor more pious than the other.

In so far as we attempt to represent eternal happiness to ourselves, we
are confronted by a series of questions to which there is no
satisfactory--that is, rational--answer, and it matters not whether the
supposition from which we start be monotheist, or pantheist, or even
panentheist.

Let us return to the Pauline apocatastasis.

Is it not possible that in becoming all in all God completes Himself,
becomes at last fully God, an infinite consciousness embracing all
consciousnesses? And what is an infinite consciousness? Since
consciousness supposes limitation, or rather since consciousness is
consciousness of limitation, of distinction, does it not thereby exclude
infinitude? What value has the notion of infinitude applied to
consciousness? What is a consciou