10 GOD AS TRIUNE

only thing that Islamic scholastic theologizing amounts to.

But we go much further than this and point out how, in all things known to us, the higher the differentiation, the greater and more valuable the unity. If we can prove this, it will increase the force of our presumption that the highest Being of all—God—will display, in virtue of His transcendent unity, transcendent differentiation as well!

When we consider nature, wherein whoso reads may often see the shadow of God, we see that the things which possess a very low degree of differentiation can hardly be said to possess unity at all. Take a stone, for example. It has unity, it is true; it is one stone. But how valueless is that unity! Split it into two and you have not destroyed the thing itself, neither (except in the mathematical sense) have you destroyed its unity, for you have now two stones—two ones, each of which is now as much one as was the former thing. So much for the unity of a thing which is as nearly destitute of differentiation as an object can be.

But come up now to the kingdom of living things, to the organic world, the kingdom of life. We see a very different state of things; though here, too, we shall see a regular advance—an increase of the quality and value of the unity with the increase of differentiation.

Beginning low down in the scale, we find, in the vegetable kingdom, things where the differentiation is very low, and where, in consequence, the unity,

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the individuality, is nearly as low as that of a stone. Take moss, for example. You can cut it about without marring its essential character. One piece of moss does not differ in any important respect from another; there is no uniqueness about it.

But the higher you go in the vegetable kingdom you find that the more the internal differences increase the more essentially one the thing is: that is (1) you cannot divide it without destroying its life, in fact the 'it' itself; (2) each one differs more decidedly from every other, that is, is more unique. For these are the two marks of a real unity, indivisibility and uniqueness: these together making up individuality.

It is the same when you come to the higher stages of life, where consciousness has now entered in—I mean the animal kingdom.

At first the differentiation is extraordinarily low, and so, therefore, is the unity. Some animals can be severed, and the severed parts live and move for some time independently—their unity is low because their differentiation is low. And, again, the less differentiated the animal is internally, the less significant is the individuality of each individual, the less unique, the less does its destruction signify. But the higher up you come, the more consciousness develops and (afterwards) intelligence, the more you find, on the one hand, the internal differentiation enormously increased, and the essential unity enormously increased with it—a unity expressed (as we have said) by the twofold mark of indivisibility and