Monarchians, and unfortunately we possess no apologetic writings of his. It cannot therefore he determined how he would have written, if he had had less occasion to avoid the danger of being himself led into Gnostic speculations about aeons. It has been correctly remarked that with Irenaeus the Godhead and the divine personality of Christ merely exist beside each other. He did not want to weigh the different problems, because, influenced as he was by the lingering effects of an early-Christian, anti-theological interest, he regarded the results of this reflection as dangerous; but, as a matter of fact, he did not really correct the premises of the problems by rejecting the conclusions. We may evidently assume (with Zahn) that, according to Irenaeus, "God placed himself in the relationship of Father to Son, in order to create after his image and in his likeness the man who was to become his Son;"[555] but we ought not to ask if Irenaeus understood the incarnation as a definite purpose necessarily involved in the Sonship, as this question falls outside the sphere of Patristic thinking. No doubt the incarnation constantly formed the preeminent interest of Irenaeus, and owing to this interest he was able to put aside or throw a veil over the mythological speculations of the Apologists regarding the Logos, and to proceed at once to the soteriological question.[556] Nothing is more instructive than an examination of Irenaeus' views with regard to the _destination of man_, the _original state_, the _fall_, and _sin_; because the heterogeneous elements of his "theology," the apologetic and moralistic the realistic, and the Biblical (Pauline), are specially apparent here, and the inconsistencies into which he was led are very plain. But these very contradictions were never eliminated from the Church doctrinal system of succeeding centuries and did not admit of being removed; hence his attitude on these points is typical.[557] The apologetic and moralistic train of thought is alone developed with systematic clearness. Everything created is imperfect, just from the very fact of its having had a beginning; therefore man also. The Deity is indeed capable of bestowing perfection on man from the beginning, but the latter was incapable of grasping or retaining it from the first. Hence perfection, i.e., incorruptibility, which consists in the contemplation of God and is conditional on voluntary obedience, could only be the _destination_ of man, and he must accordingly have been made _capable_ of it.[558] That destination is realised through the guidance of God and the free decision of man, for goodness not arising from free choice has no value. The capacity in question is on the one hand involved in man's possession of the divine image, which, however, is only realised in the body and is therefore at bottom a matter of indifference; and, on the other, in his likeness to God, which consists in the union of the soul with God's Spirit, but only comes about when