Each sample, seeks the new Idea. 
 Among so many images she hardly finds that
 Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears. 
 This form Noys herself brings to God for Him
 To form a soul to its pattern.  He takes the seal,
 And gives form to the soul after the model
 Of the form itself, stamping on the sample
 The figure such as the Idea requires.  The seal
 Covers the whole field, and the impression expresses the stamp.

The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one is permitted to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood the process; but in substance he meant that God contained a storehouse of ideas, and stamped each creation with one of these forms.  The poets used a variety of figures to help out their logic, but that of the potter and his pot was one of the most common.  Omar Khayyam was using it at the same time with Alain of Lille, but with a difference:  for his pot seems to have been matter alone, and his soul was the wine it received from God; while Alain’s soul seems to have been the form and not the contents of the pot.

The figure matters little.  In any case God’s act was the union of mind with matter by the same act or will which created both.  No intermediate cause or condition intervened; no secondary influence had anything whatever to do with the result.  Time had nothing to do with it.  Every individual that has existed or shall exist was created by the same instantaneous act, for all time.  “When the question regards the universal agent who produces beings and time, we cannot consider him as acting now and before, according to the succession of time.”  God emanated time, force, matter, mind, as He might emanate gravitation, not as a part of His substance but as an energy of His will, and maintains them in their activity by the same act, not by a new one.  Every individual is a part of the direct act; not a secondary outcome.  The soul has no father or mother.  Of all errors one of the most serious is to suppose that the soul descends by generation.  “Having life and action of its own, it subsists without the body; ... it must therefore be produced directly, and since it is not a material substance, it cannot be produced by way of generation; it must necessarily be created by God.  Consequently to suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent soul] is the effect of generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and simple substance, but corruptible like the body.  It is therefore heresy to say that this soul is transmitted by generation.”  What is true of the soul should be true of all other form, since no form is a material substance.  The utmost possible relation between any two individuals is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for a series of creations, and especially for the less spiritual:  “God is the first model for all things.  One may also say that, among His creatures some serve as types or models for others because there are some which are made in the image of others”; but generation means sequence, not cause.  The only true cause is God.  Creation is His sole act, in which no second cause can share.”  Creation is more perfect and loftier than generation, because it aims at producing the whole substance of the being, though it starts from absolute nothing.”