which passeth knowledge” (Eph. iii. 18, 19).  And this gathering of us together in Christ, who is the head and, as it were, the compendium, of Humanity, is what the Apostle calls the gathering or collecting together or recapitulating of all things in Christ, anakephalaiosthai ta panta en Christo.  And this recapitulation—­anakephalaiosis, anacefaleosis—­the end of the world’s history and of the human race, is merely another aspect of the apocatastasis.  The apocatastasis, God’s coming to be all in all, thus resolves itself into the anacefaleosis, the gathering together of all things in Christ, in Humanity—­Humanity therefore being the end of creation.  And does not this apocatastasis, this humanization or divinization of all things, do away with matter?  But if matter, which is the principle of individuation, the scholastic principium individuationis, is once done away with, does not everything return to pure consciousness, which, in its pure purity, neither knows itself nor is it anything that can be conceived or felt?  And if matter be abolished, what support is there left for spirit?

Thus a different train of thought leads us to the same difficulties, the same unthinkabilities.

It may be said, on the other hand, that the apocatastasis, God’s coming to be all in all, presupposes that there was a time when He was not all in all.  The supposition that all beings shall attain to the enjoyment of God implies the supposition that God shall attain to the enjoyment of all beings, for the beatific vision is mutual, and God is perfected in being better known, and His being is nourished and enriched with souls.

Following up the track of these wild dreams, we might imagine an unconscious God, slumbering in matter, and gradually wakening into consciousness of everything, consciousness of His own divinity; we might imagine the whole Universe becoming conscious of itself as a whole and becoming conscious of each of its constituent consciousnesses, becoming God.  But in that case, how did this unconscious God begin?  Is He not matter itself?  God would thus be not the beginning but the end of the Universe; but can that be the end which was not the beginning?  Or can it be that outside time, in eternity, there is a difference between beginning and end?  “The soul of all things cannot be bound by that very thing—­that is, matter—­which it itself has bound,” says Plotinus (Enn. ii., ix. 7).  Or is it not rather the Consciousness of the Whole that strives to become the consciousness of each part and to make each partial consciousness conscious of itself—­that is, of the total consciousness?  Is not this universal soul a monotheist or solitary God who is in process of becoming a pantheist God?  And if it is not so, if matter and pain are alien to God, wherefore, it will be asked, did God create the world?  For what purpose did He make matter and introduce pain?  Would it not have been better if He had not made anything?  What added glory does He gain by the creation of angels or of men whose fall He must punish with eternal torment?  Did He perhaps create evil for the sake of remedying it?  Or was redemption His design, redemption complete and absolute, redemption of all things and of all men?  For this hypothesis is neither more rational nor more pious than the other.