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, the cosmic soul acts like the soil and gives it nourishment.  Looking at it in this way the old exponents of these things regarded the Active principle as Masculine, and the Passive as Feminine, the one generating and the other nutritive, corresponding to the words rouah and hoshech, the expansion and compression principles in the Hebrew text of the opening verses of Genesis.

If then we posit this impersonal Soul of the Universe as the living principle dwelling in the substance of the etheric Universal Medium it will account for a good many things.  If it be asked why we should assume the presence of a living principle in the Universal Substance the answer is in the maxim “Quod ex Vivo Vivum,” what proceeds from Life is living.  Then as we see by our diagram, Anima Mundi equally with Animus Dei proceeds from the original Substantive of Life, and therefore, on the principle of the above maxim, that like produces like, Anima Mundi must also be a living thing whose vehicle is the Universal Substance.

We may picture then, the response of the indwelling Soul of the Universal Medium to our Thought, as starting corresponding vibrations in the Substance of the Medium, just as our own thought, acting through the vibratory system of our nerves, causes our body to make the movement we intend.  But perhaps you will say:  How can this be, seeing that by the hypothesis the Soul of the Universe is Impersonal, and therefore unintelligent?  Well, it is just this fact of having no thought of its own, that enables us to impress our thought upon it and cause it, so to say, to “take on” an intelligence relatively to the subject of our thought, much in the same way that the impersonal soul in the human subject “takes on” or reflects the thought of the hypnotist, and not infrequently develops it to a far greater extent than the original thought of the operator expressed.  Such a hypothesis—­and I think some such hypothesis is needed to account for any creation at all—­throws light on the modus operandi of the Bible Promises.  We plant the Word of the Promise in the womb of Anima