Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/364

 to live, and they fulfil their order. With man this knowledge greatly differs from that of animals, each having to learn all that he knows, and few fulfilling their order.

This may at first glance seem to be a misfortune, but it is an indispensable essential to the human being. If man were born into the knowledge and life proper to him, his responsibility, and consequently his individuality, would be destroyed, whereby he would become subject to the severest type of fatalism. Man is born in ultimates that he may come into interiors. He is born into no knowledge or fixed life that he may through his own voluntary effort gain knowledge of every kind, and make his life what he will. Though by nativity he has no knowledge, he has capacity to acquire learning, to elevate his character, and by truth and life be born again and from above through his own volition; for every one is born with the faculty to come into the understanding of the highest truth. The Psalmist rightly expresses this great spiritual fact, "My soul is continually in my hand." Man's likeness to God is that he should in freedom act as from himself, and form his mind and life, which could not be were he born into any particular knowledge or love; for in that instance his mind and quality would be predetermined by the knowledge and