est in anima quod est increatum et increabile; si tota anima esset talis, esset increata et increabilis. Hoc est intellectus." Eckhart certainly says explicitly that "as fire turns all that it touches into itself, so the birth of the Son of God in the soul turns us into God, so that God no longer knows anything in us but His Son." Man thus becomes "filius naturalis Dei," instead of only "filius adoptivus." We have seen that Eckhart, towards the end of his life, inclined more and more to separate the spark, the organ of Divine contemplation, from the reason. This is, of course, an approximation to the _other_ view of deification--that of substitution or miraculous infusion from _without_, unless we see in it a tendency to divorce the personality from the reason. Ruysbroek states his doctrine of the Divine spark very clearly: "The unity of our spirit in God exists in two ways, essentially and actively. The essential existence of the soul, _quæ secundum æternam ideam in Deo nos sumus, itemque quam in nobis habemus, medii ac discriminis expers est_. Spiritus Deum in nuda natura essentialiter possidet, et spiritum Deus. Vivit namque in Deo et Deus in ipso; et _secundum supremam sui partem_ Dei claritatem suscipere absque medio idoneus est; quin etiam per æterni exemplaris sui claritudinem _essentialiter ac personaliter in ipso lucentis, secundum supremam vivacitatis suæ portionem, in divinam sese demittit ac demergit essentiam_, ibidemque perseveranter secundum ideam manendo æternam suam possidet beatitudinem; rursusque cum creaturis omnibus per æternam Verbi generationem inde emanans, in esse suo creato constituitur." The "natural union," though it is the first cause of all holiness and blessedness, does not make us holy and blessed, being common to good and bad alike. "Similitude" to God is the work of grace, "quæ lux quædam deiformis est." We cannot lose the "unitas," but we can lose the "similitudo quæ est gratia." The highest part of the soul is capable of receiving a perfect and immediate impression of the Divine essence; by this "apex mentis" we may "sink into the Divine essence, and by a new (continuous) creation return to our created being according to the idea of God." The question whether the "ground of the soul" is created or not is obviously a form of the question which we are now discussing. Giseler, as I have said, holds that it was created with the soul. Sterngassen says: "That which God has in eternity in uncreated wise, that has the soul in time in created wise." But the author of the _Treatise on Love_, which belongs to this period, speaks of the spark as "the Active Reason, _which is God_." And again, "This is the _Uncreated_ in the soul of which Master Eckhart speaks." Suso seems to imply that he believed the ground of the soul to be uncreated, an emanation of the Divine nature; and Tauler uses similar language. Ruysbroek, in the last chapter of the _Spiritual Nuptials_, says that contemplative men "see that they are