Note 2 — Chapter VIII · THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.

The distinction between the world and God as the creator of the world is therefore only a formal one. The nature of God—for the divine understanding, that which comprehends within itself all things, is the divine nature itself; hence God, inasmuch as he thinks and knows himself, thinks and knows at the same time the world and all things—the nature of God is nothing else than the abstract, thought nature of the world; the nature of the world nothing else than the real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Hence creation is nothing more than a formal act; for that which, before the creation, was an object of thought, of the understanding, is by creation simply made an object of sense, its ideal contents continuing the same; although it remains absolutely inexplicable how a real material thing can spring out of a pure thought.2