(ii.) But side by side with this tendency to individualize and hypostatize the separate elements or modes of the Divine Mind, there was a tendency to regard the mind of God as a unity existing either as a distinct element in His essence or objective to Him. On one theory, mind is the only-begotten of God.[522] He alone knows God and wishes to reveal Him. On another theory, mind is born from the unborn Father, and from Mind are born _Logos_ and Prudence, Wisdom and Force, and thence in their order all the long series of Powers by whom the universe was formed.[523] Another theory, that of Marcus, probably contains the key to some of the others; the meaning of the conception of Mind as the only-begotten of God, is that Mind is the revelation of God to Himself: His self-consciousness is, so to speak, projected out of Him. It is at once a revelation and a creation—the only immediate revelation and the only immediate creation. The Father, “resolving to bring forth that which is ineffable in Him, and to endow with form that which is invisible, opened His mouth and sent forth the _Logos_” which is the image of Him, and revealed Him to Himself.[524] The _Logos_, or Word, which was so sent forth was made up of distinct utterances: each utterance was an _æon_, a _logos_, a root and seed of being: in other words, each was a part and phase of God’s nature which expressed and reflected itself in a part and phase of the world, so that collectively the _logoi_ are equivalent to the _Logos_, who is the image and reflection of God.