attributes of quantity, and becomes Secundo Prima. Subject to the
substantial changes of Nature, it becomes matter as we see it."

It is this "Materia Primo Prima," the term of God's creative activity,
that is eternally subjected to the regenerative process of spiritual
interpenetration, and the result is organic life.

What is spirit? The creative power of the Logos, in the sense in which
St. John interprets and corrects the early, partial, and therefore
erroneous theories of the Stoics and of Philo. God the Son, the Eternal
Word of the Father, "the brightness of His glory and the figure of His
Substance." "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten,
not made, being of one substance with the Father: by Whom all things
were made." Pure wisdom, pure will, pure energy, unconditioned by
matter, but creating life out of the operation of the Holy Spirit on and
through matter, and in the fullness of time becoming Incarnate for the
purpose of the final redemption of man.

Now since man is so compact of matter and spirit, it must follow that he
cannot lay hold of pure spirit, the Absolute that lies beyond and above
all material conditioning, except through the medium of matter, through
its figures, its symbols, its "phantasms." Says St. Thomas: "From
material things we can rise to some kind of knowledge of immaterial
things, but not to the perfect knowledge thereof." The way of life
therefore, is the incessant endeavour of man sacramentally to approach
the Absolute through the leading of the Holy Spirit, so running parallel
to the slow perfecting of matter which is being effected by the same
operation. So matter itself takes on a certain sanctity, not only as
something susceptible, and in process, of perfection, but as the vehicle
of spirit and its tabernacle, since in matter spirit is actually