The theory is not far distant from that which is found in the earlier Apologists, and which passed through more than one phase before it won its way to general acceptance. The leading point in both is the relation of the individual _logoi_ to the _Logos_. We have already become acquainted with the syncretism which had blended the Platonic _ideas_ with the Stoical _logoi_, the former being regarded as forces as well as forms, and the latter being not only productive forces, but also the laws of those forces; and which had viewed them both in their unity, rather than in their plurality, as expressions of a single _Logos_. We have also seen that the solution of the problem, How could God create? was found in the doctrine that He created by means of His _Logos_, who impressed himself in the innumerable forms of created things. The solution of the metaphysical difficulty, How can a transcendent God know and be known? was found to lie in the solution which had already been given to the cosmogonical difficulty, How could God come into contact with matter?[525] The Forces were also Reasons: they were activities and also thoughts: in men they woke to consciousness: and the mind of man knew the mind of God, as like knows like, by virtue of containing within it “a seed of the _Logos_,” a particle of the divine _Logos_ itself. That divine _Logos_ “of which the whole human race is partaker,” “which had at one time appeared in the form of fire, and at another in the form of angels, now by the will of God, on behalf of the human race, had become a man, and endured to suffer all that the dæmons effected that he should suffer at the hands of the foolish Jews.”[526] The difference between Christ and other men was thought to be, that other men have only a “seed of the _Logos_,” whereas in him the whole _Logos_ was manifest: and the difference between Christians and philosophers was, that the latter lived by the light of a part only of the divine _Logos_, whereas the former lived by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole _Logos_.[527] Within half a century after these tentative efforts,[528] and largely helped by the dissemination of the Fourth Gospel, which had probably at first only a local influence, the mass of Christians were tending to acquiesce not only in the belief of the transcendental nature of God, but also in the belief that, in some way which was not yet closely defined, Jesus Christ was the _Logos_ by whom the world had been made, and who revealed the unknown Father to men. The form in which the belief is stated by Irenæus is the following: