7. In fact, the Biblical verse, “God created man after the image of the divine beings” (_elohim_), was originally taken literally, in the sense that angels posed as models for the creation of man.(636) The phrase was referred to the spiritual, god-like nature of man only when the difference between material and spiritual things became better understood, and man obtained a clearer knowledge of himself. Man grew to feel that his craving for the perfect, whether in the field of truth and right, or of beauty, is the force which lifts him, in spite of all his limitations, into the realm of the divine. His soaring imagination and ceaseless longing for perfection disclose before his eyes a partial vista of the infinite. The human spirit carries mortal man above the confines of time and space into those boundless realms where God resides in lonely majesty.(637) Man did not emanate perfect from the hand of the Creator, but ready for an ever greater perfection. Being the last of all created beings, as the Midrash says, he can be put to shame by the smallest insect, which is prior to him. Yet before the beginning of creation a light shone upon his spirit that has illumined his achievements through untold generations.(638) 8. The resemblance of man to God is attributed also to his free will and self-consciousness, by which he claims moral dignity and mastery over all things.(639) Still, all these superior qualities which we call human are not ready-made endowments, free gifts bestowed by God; they are simply potentialities which may be gradually developed. Man must strive to attain the place destined for him in the scheme of creation by the exertion of his own will and the unfolding of the powers that lie within him. The impulse toward self-perfection, which is constantly stimulated by the desire to overcome obstacles and to extend one’s power, knowledge, and possessions, forms the kernel of the divine in man. This is the “spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”(640) Thus the teaching of modern science, of the gradual ascent of man through all the stages of animal life, does not impair the lofty position in creation which Judaism has assigned him. Plant and animal are what they have always been, children of the earth; man with his heaven-aspiring soul is the image of his Creator, a child of God. Giver of name and purpose to all things about him, he ranks above the angels; he “marches on while all the rest stand still.”(641) Chapter XXXIV. The Dual Nature of Man