The four elementary forms were the expression of two fundamental laws: resistance and motion; the fixed state, or that inertia which resists, and active life, or the volatile; in other and more general terms, matter and spirit-matter being that nothingness which is formulated by passive affirmation, spirit being the principle of absolute necessity in that which is true. The negative action of material nothing on spirit was termed the evil principle; the positive action of spirit on this same nothingness, so that it might be filled with creation and with light, was called the good principle. To these conceptions there corresponded, on the one hand, humanity and, on the other, the rational and saving life, redeeming those who are conceived in sin—that is to say, in nothingness—because of their material generation. Such was the doctrine of secret initiation, such the admirable synthesis that the spirit of Christianity came to vivify, enlightening by its splendour, establishing divinely by its dogma and realising by its sacraments. Under the veil which was intended to preserve it, this synthesis has vanished. It is destined to be recovered by man in all its primitive beauty and all its maternal fecundity. BOOK III _DIVINE SYNTHESIS AND REALISATION OF MAGIA BY THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION_ ג—GIMEL CHAPTER I CHRIST ACCUSED OF MAGIC BY THE JEWS At the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John there is one sentence which is never uttered by the Catholic Church except in the bending of the knees; that sentence is: “The Word was made flesh.” The plenary revelation of Christianity is comprised therein. So also elsewhere the Evangelist furnishes the criterion of orthodoxy, which is the confession of Jesus Christ manifested in flesh—that is to say, in visible and human reality.