ida_, Act III. Scene 3.]

[Footnote 47: This idea of the world as a living being is found in
Plotinus: and Origen definitely teaches that "as our body, while
consisting of many members, is yet an organism which is held together
by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living
being which is upheld by the power and the Word of God." He also holds
that the sun and stars are spiritual beings. St. Augustine, too (_De
Civitate Dei_, iv. 12, vii. 5), regards the universe as a living
organism; and the doctrine reappears much later in Giordano Bruno.
According to this theory, we are subsidiary members of an
all-embracing organism, and there may be intermediate will-centres
between our own and that of the universal Ego. Among modern systems,
that of Fechner is the one which seems to be most in accordance with
these speculations. He views life under the figure of a number of
concentric circles of consciousness, within an all-embracing circle
which represents the consciousness of God.]

[Footnote 48: [Greek: psuches peirata ouk an exeuroio pasan
epiporeuomenos hodon outo bathyn logon echei], Frag. 71.]

[Footnote 49: J.P. Richter, _Selina_. Compare, too, Lotze,
_Microcosmus_: "Within us lurks a world whose form we imperfectly
apprehend, and whose working, when in particular phases it comes under
our notice, surprises us with foreshadowings of unknown depths in our
being."]

[Footnote 50: As Lotze says, "The finite being does not contain in
itself the conditions of its own existence." It must struggle to
attain to complete personality; or rather, since personality belongs
unconditionally only to God, to such a measure of personality as is
allotted to us. Eternal life is nothing than the attainment of full
personality, a conscious existence in God.]

[Footnote 51: J.A. Picton (_The Mystery of Matter_, p. 356) puts the
matter well: "Mysticism consists in the spiritual realisation of a
grander and a boundless unity, that humbles all self-assertion by
dissolving it in a wider glory. It does not follow that the sense of
individuality is necessarily weakened. But habitual contemplation of
the Divine unity impresses men with the feeling that individuality is
phenomenal only. Hence the paradox of Mysticism. For apart from this
phenomenal individuality, we should not know our own nothingness, and
personal life is good only through the bliss of being lost in God.
[Rather, I should say, through the bliss of finding