This text may be not so immediately applicable as it seems, if it be the utterance, not of God as God, ad intra, but of God made Man, communicator of a divine life to His elect, ad extra. See my notes on St John i, 3, 4; xi, 25; xiv, 6.

Be that application as it may, the conclusion of this chapter, and so many similar conclusions in this book, amount to this: that God is one self-conscious act, the realisation of the whole ideal order, of life, of wisdom, of power, of goodness, of necessary being, -- what Plato was groping after (Acts xvii, 27) in his theory of Ideas, -- gathered all in one, living, conscious, pure actuality.

Of God and His Creatures: 1.98