principle, and the sign "-" (minus) the Passive principle. If the reader
will draw a little diagram as described, it will help to make what
follows clearer.

Necessarily the initiative must be taken by the Active principle; and
the taking of initiative implies selection and volition, that is to say,
the essential qualities of personality; and Passivity implies the
converse of all this, and therefore is Impersonality. The two principles
in no way conflict with one another, but are polar opposites, like the
positive and negative plates of a battery, or the two ends of a magnet.
They are complementary to one another, and neither can work without the
other. A little consideration will show that this is not a mere fancy,
but a self-obvious generalization, the contrary to which it is
impossible to conceive. It is simply the case of the box which cannot
come into existence without the activity of the carpenter and the
passivity of the wood.

From such considerations as this the deep thinkers of old times posited
the generating of a world-system by the interaction of what they named
Animus Dei, the Active principle, and Anima Mundi, or Soul of the
Universe, the Passive principle--the one Personal, and the other
Impersonal; and by the hypothesis of the case the only mode of activity
possible to Anima Mundi is response to Animus Dei. But the same
impersonal passivity must also make Anima Mundi receptive likewise to
lesser and more individualized modes of Personality, and it becomes, so
to say, fecundated by the ideas thus impressed upon it. In every case
"the word is the seed." We may picture this planting of an idea or
"word" in the Cosmic soul as acting very much like the initial impulse
that starts a train of waves in ether, and these thought-waves are
reproduced in corresponding forms; or, to recur to the simile of seed,