But, in reality and truth, it was out of love that God made the worlds ; and indeed out of a superabundant love. This we may well venture to assert, and even to call it a fact; and that the divine love is also the final cause, as well as the beginning of creation. A superabundance of love in God we must, however, call the final cause ground of creation, inasmuch as He stood in no need of it; no need of the love of the creature, nor absolutely of the world itself, or created things. For in His inmost essence, where one depth of eternal love responds fully and eternally to the other, He was perfectly sufficient for himself. And yet it is even so: there is in God this superabundance of love, for He has created the worlds, and it is the divine will to be loved by His creatures. For this end and purpose has He created them; and because He would have their love, He has created them free, and given both to the pure spirits and to men a free will. The whole secret in the relation subsisting between the creature, and man especially, and the Creator, lies even in this great fact, that He has created them out of love, and requires in return the service of their love. There is perhaps something awful in this requisition, and in the relation thus found to subsist between a weak and imperfect creature and the infinite and omnipotent Being. But it is even so: we are really free, and are really required by God to give him our love.
[Friedrich Schlegel, The Philosophy of Life, Lecture VI, p. 128.]
