since their purpose is attained.

It is a part of the beauty and wisdom of the great Indian teachings, the
Vedanta and the Yoga alike, to hold that all life exists for the purposes
of Soul, for the making of the spiritual man. They teach that all nature
is an orderly process of evolution, leading up to this, designed for this
end, existing only for this: to bring forth and perfect the Spiritual Man.
He is the crown of evolution: at his coming, the goal of all
development is attained.

33. The series of transformations is divided into moments. When the
series is completed, time gives place to duration.

There are two kinds of eternity, says the commentary: the eternity of
immortal life, which belongs to the Spirit, and the eternity of change,
which inheres in Nature, in all that is not Spirit. While we are content
to live in and for Nature, in the Circle of Necessity, Sansara, we doom
ourselves to perpetual change. That which is born must die, and that
which dies must be reborn. It is change evermore, a ceaseless series
of transformations.

But the Spiritual Man enters a new order; for him, there is no longer
eternal change, but eternal Being. He has entered into the joy of his
Lord. This spiritual birth, which makes him heir of the Everlasting,
sets a term to change; it is the culmination, the crowning
transformation, of the whole realm of change.

34. Pure spiritual life is, therefore, the inverse resolution of the
potencies of Nature, which have emptied themselves of their value for
the Spiritual man; or it is the return of the power of pure
Consciousness to its essential form.

Here we have a splendid generalization, in which our wise philosopher
finally reconciles the naturalists and the idealists, expressing the crown
and end of his teaching, first in the terms of the naturalist, and then in
the terms of the idealist.

The birth and growth of the Spiritual Man, and his entry into his
immortal heritage, may be regarded, says our philosopher, either as
the culmination of the whole process of natural evolution and
involution, where "that which flowed from out the boundless deep,
turns again home"; or it may be looked at, as the Vedantins look at it,
as the restoration of pure spiritual Consciousness to its pristine and
essential form. There is no discrepancy or conflict between these two
views, which are but two accounts of the same thing. Therefore those
who study the wise philosopher, be they naturalist or