in the operation. This distinction between "the flesh", or the outermost principle, and "Water" should be carefully noted. The emphasis laid by the Master on the nothingness of "the flesh" and the essentialness of "Water" must mark a distinction of the most important kind, and we shall find it very helpful in unravelling the meaning of many passages of the Bible to grasp this distinction at the outset. The action of "Spirit" upon "Water" is that of an active upon a passive principle; and the result of any sort of Work is to reconstruct the material worked upon into a form which it did not possess before. Now the new form to be produced, whatever it may be, is a result and therefore is not to be enumerated among the causes of its own production.

Hence it is a self-obvious truism that any act of creative power must take place at a more interior level than that of the form to be created; and accordingly, whether in the Old or the New Testament, the creative action is always contemplated as taking place between the Spirit and the Water, whether we are thinking of producing a new world or a new man. We must always go back to First Cause operating on Primary Substance.

Light

We are told that the first product of the movement of Spirit upon Water was Light, thereby suggesting an analogy with the discoveries of modern science