comprehends diversity, so Pure Being is a unity but a unity which is the soul of diversity. The third movement of the Absolute Being is Simple Oneness--a step attended with external manifestation. The Absolute Oneness is free from all particular names and attributes. The Oneness Simple takes on names and attributes, but there is no distinction between these attributes, one is the essence of the other. Divinity is similar to Simple Oneness, but its names and attributes are distinguished from one another and even contradictory, as generous is contradictory to revengeful.[163:1] The third step, or as Hegel would say, Voyage of the Being, has another appellation (Mercy). The First Mercy, the author says, is the evolution of the Universe from Himself and the manifestation of His own Self in every atom of the result of His own self-diremption. Al-Jīlī makes this point clearer by an instance. He says that nature is frozen water and God is water. The real name of nature is God (Allāh); ice or condensed water is merely a borrowed appellation. Elsewhere he calls water the origin of knowledge, intellect, understanding, thought and idea. This instance leads him to guard against the error of looking upon God as immanent in nature, or running through the sphere of material existence. He says that immanence implies disparity of being; God is not immanent because He is Himself the existence. Eternal existence is the other self of God, it is the light through which He sees Himself. As the originator of an idea is existent in that idea, so God is present in nature. The difference between God and man, as one may say, is that His ideas materialise themselves, ours do not. It will be remembered here that Hegel would use the same line of argument in freeing himself from the accusation of Pantheism. [163:1] This would seem very much like the idea of the phenomenal Brahma of the Vedānta. The Personal Creator or the Prajāpati of the Vedānta makes the third step of the Absolute Being or the Noumenal Brahma. Al-Jīlī seems to admit two kinds of Brahma--with or without qualities like the Śamkara and Bādarayana. To him the process of creation is essentially a lowering of the Absolute Thought, which is Asat, in so far as it is absolute, and Sat, in so far as it is manifested and hence limited. Notwithstanding this Absolute Monism, he inclines to a view similar to that of Rāmānuja. He seems to admit the reality of the individual soul and seems to imply, unlike Śamkara, that Īśwara and His worship are necessary even after the attainment of the Higher Knowledge.