But the Spirit wants something more than mechanical motion, something more
alive than the preliminary Rota, and so the first step toward
individualized consciousness meets us in plant life. Then on the principle
that each successive stage affords the platform for a further outlook,
plant life is followed by animal life, and this by the Human order in which
the liberty of selecting its own conditions is immensely extended. In this
way the Spirit's expression of itself has now reached the point where its
polar complementary, or Reciprocal, manifests as Intellectual Man--thus
constituting the Fourth great stage of Spirit's Self-recognition. But the
Creative Process cannot stop here, for, as we have seen, its root in the
Self-contemplation of Spirit renders it of necessity an Infinite
Progression. So it is no use asking what is its ultimate, for it has no
ultimate--its word is "Excelsior"--ever Life and "Life more Abundant."
Therefore the question is not as to finality where there is none, but as to
the next step in the progression. Four kingdoms we know: what is to be the
Fifth? All along the line the progress has been in one direction, namely,
toward the development of more perfect Individuality, and therefore on the
principle of continuity we may reasonably infer that the next stage will
take us still further in the same direction. We want something more perfect
than we have yet reached, but our ideas as to what it should be are very
various, not to say discordant, for one person's idea of better is another
person's idea of worse. Therefore what we want to get at is some broad
generalization of principle which will be in advance of our past
experiences. This means that we must look for this principle in something
that we have not yet experienced, and the only place where we can possibly
find principles which have not yet manifested themselves is _in gremio
Dei_--that is, in the innermost of the Originating Spirit, or as St. John
calls it, "in the bosom of the Father." So we are logically brought to
personal participation in the Divine Ideal as the only principle by which