ity of the
world finds its true expression in the eternity of God. The ceaseless
movement of growth and change, which presents matter in form after form
as a continual search after a finality which in time and movement is not
and cannot be reached, represents only the aspect the world shows to the
physicist and to the senses. In the eye of reason the full fruition of
this desired finality is already and always attained; the actualization,
invisible to the senses, is achieved now and ever, and is thus beyond
the element of time. This transcendent or abstract being is that which
the world of nature is always seeking. He is thought or intellect, the
actuality, of which movement is but the fragmentary attainment in
successive instants of time. Such a mind is not in the theological sense
a creator, yet the onward movement is not the same as what some modern
thinkers seem to mean by development. For the perfect and absolute, the
consummation of movement is not generated at any point in the process;
it is an ideal end, which guides the operations of nature, and does not
wait upon them for its achievement. God is the unchanging essence of the
movement, and therefore its eternal cause.

A special application of this relation between the prior perfect, and
the imperfect, which it influences, is found in the doctrine of the
connexion of the abstract (transcendent) intellect with man. This
transcendent mind is sometimes connected with the moon, according to the
theory of Aristotle, who assigned an imperishable matter to the sphere
beyond the sublunary, and in general looked upon the celestial orbs as
living and intelligent. Such an intellect, named active or productive,
as being the author of the development of reason in man, is the
permanent, eternal thought, which is the truth of the cosmic and
physical movement. It is in man that the physical or sensible passes
most evidently into the metaphysical and rational. Humanity is the
chosen vessel in which the light of the intellect is revealed; and so
long as mankind lasts there must always be some individuals destined to
receive this light. What seems from the material point of view to be the
acquisition of learning, study and a moral life, is from the higher
point of view the manifestation of the transcendent intellect in the
individual. The preparation of the heart and faculties gives rise to a
series of grades between the original predisposition and the full
acquisition of actual