And for the full comprehension of this fundamental principle, we must remember that volition is something more than a simple efflux of power, something more than a mere developing tendency--an evolution or process without motive and without design. A voluntary act is a designed, an _intentional_ act, the act of a being who can previously contemplate the act in thought, who can have a reason or motive for the doing of the act, and who can determine and condition the deed. This conception of creation as a voluntary act is unmistakably presented in the oft-repeated language of the Mosaic record, "God said, _Let there be--and there was!_" "The speaking of God most certainly indicates the thinking of God, and it thence follows that all the works of creation are _thoughts_ of God (idealism). But it indicates also a will making itself externally known, an active operation of God; and thence it follows that all the works of creation are _deeds_ of God (realism). Thinking and operating, however, are one in the Divine speaking, the primal source of language--his personality making Himself known (personalism).... Through creating, speaking, making, forming, the world is ever and again denoted as the _free deed_ of God."[56] Furthermore, creation is a voluntary act in the most absolute sense--that is, it is an act of God to which He was not determined by any _inherent_ necessity or want of his own nature, and an act which was not conditioned, in a necessary manner, by any thing out of, distinct from, and extraneous to the Divine nature. 1. _Creation was an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature._ If God is the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, and self-sufficient Being, He is under no necessity to create other beings in order to realize perfect self-consciousness, or to secure his own perfect blessedness. He does not need "otherness"--that which is not Himself--in order to become manifest to Himself; neither does He "crave beings not Himself"[57] in order to his complete felicity. The antithesis of self and non-self--the _ego_ and the _non-ego_--may be a necessary condition of finite personality, but it can not be a necessary condition of Absolute Personality. God is eternally revealed to Himself in an unconditioned manner as self-conscious Love, self-conscious Reason, self-conscious Energy--the Father, the Word, the Spirit; and He is from all eternity "the ever-blessed God," who has in the Divine Triunity the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his Love, independent of every relation to the world and humanity--"Thou lovedst Me _before_ the foundation of the world" (John xvii. 24), "before the world was" (ver. 5).[58]