3. But if this Reason-Principle [Nature] is in act- and produces by the process indicated- how can it have any part in Contemplation?
To begin with, since in all its production it is stationary and intact, a Reason-Principle self-indwelling, it is in its own nature a Contemplative act. All doing must be guided by an Idea, and will therefore be distinct from that Idea: the Reason-Principle then, as accompanying and guiding the work, will be distinct from the work; not being action but Reason-Principle it is, necessarily, Contemplation. Taking the Reason-Principle, the Logos, in all its phases, the lowest and last springs from a mental act [in the higher Logos] and is itself a contemplation, though only in the sense of being contemplated, but above it stands the total Logos with its two distinguishable phases, first, that identified not as Nature but as All-Soul and, next, that operating in Nature and being itself the Nature-Principle.
And does this Reason-Principle, Nature, spring from a contemplation?
Wholly and solely?
From self-contemplation, then? Or what are we to think? It derives from a Contemplation and some contemplating Being; how are we to suppose it to have Contemplation itself?
The Contemplation springing from the reasoning faculty- that, I mean, of planning its own content, it does not possess.
But why not, since it is a phase of Life, a Reason-Principle and a creative Power?
Because to plan for a thing is to lack it: Nature does not lack; it creates because it possesses. Its creative act is simply its possession of it own characteristic Essence; now its Essence, since it is a Reason-Principle, is to be at once an act of contemplation and an object of contemplation. In other words, the, Nature-Principle produces by virtue of being an act of contemplation, an object of contemplation and a Reason-Principle; on this triple character depends its creative efficacy.
Thus the act of production is seen to be in Nature an act of contemplation, for creation is the outcome of a contemplation which never becomes anything else, which never does anything else, but creates by simply being a contemplation.