The human being is created by God as not only a two-in-one entity — Adam and Eve, but also as a polyhypostatic entity, a family, as is clear from the blessing of God: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." This multiplication of hypostases, in keeping with God's determination, must be accomplished through the combination of the sexes: in the loins of the first human pair is found the principle of the single chain of human beings, linking them in one family. The progenitor of humanity himself, Adam, the father of all, and in him Eve too, the mother of every living thing, was born without the seed of an earthly father. He had only a Heavenly Father, although the seed of the whole human race was included in him. For his mother he had the Earth. Similar to him is the Second Adam, who came into the world to regenerate Adam's fallen nature, the true Son of God, and he was also born without an earthly father, and not from the seed of a man. He has an earthly Mother too, the all-immaculate Ever-Virgin, the glory of the Earth.

Let us, in conclusion, examine once more the generic principle in love. The generic principle, or the sentiment of family or kinship, qualifies love in a particular manner: as paternal, maternal, filial, fraternal, ecc. As a personal-generic, hypostatic-natural being, man at the same time needs personal eros and agapic love as well as generic, natural love. Here, in the relation between the personal and generic principles in man, there exists a kind of antinomy, insofar as personality, separating itself from the genus, strives to affirm itself in its selfhood, while the generic principle lulls personality to sleep. In conformity with God's creative determination, the human genus is a family, a multi-unity multiple according to hypostasis and unitary according to nature, in the image of the Holy Trinity. On the one hand there is luciferian individualism, which in its extreme rebellion strives to separace itself from genus and forebears; and on the other hand there is the sleepy and depersonalizing conservatism of the genus; and both of them oppose, in their one-sidedeness, the image of God in man, in which the day of personal consciousness is indissolubly united with the night of the maternal womb. This generic principle resembles the general muscular sensation of one's own body, about which it is said, "no man ever yet hateth his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church" (Eph 5:29). This principle represents love for one's own flesh, not only personal but also generic. The generic principle qualifies the personal principle, is the predicate of the latter, so to speak; it is the very life of personalicy in its primordial sources. One should not forget the exclusive significance that is ascribed to genus and genealogy both in the Old Testament (which is, after all, nothing else but a religion of genus, specifically of the chosen nation, whose God is "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob") and in the New Testament⁷⁵⁾.

The sentiment of family and genus, rooted in blood relation, belongs also to spiritual love. The principle of genus and nation is not only a psychical and fleshly but also a spiritual principle, as a creating and creative energy. Family and race constitute a spiritual reality, which is known not only in life but also in death, and perhaps more in the latter than in the former. In its authenticity, this principle contains the essential and natural grace of the Holy Spirit, reposing upon all proto-reality. When it passes into the spiritual consciousness and is spiritually transfigured, this principle receives the gift of gracious love from the Holy Spirit. The imprint of this gift clearly marks the love that the spiritual leaders and prophets of Israel have for the chosen nation (cf. the song of the Mother of God: "He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever" (Luke 1:54-55)). But the duty to love one's nation in spirit and grace is obligatory for all men. Or can we deny that the love of Sergius of Radonezh, the great Russian saint, for his parents and his nation had a spiritual quality? And, we dare to ask further, is our own grateful remembrance of and love for our dear departed ones, our fathers and brothers, completely deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit? And maternal love, is it without grace? It is sufficient to ask these questions to become convinced that this love for one's ancestors and race ("laws"), as it was personified in the consciousness of the pious pagans Socrates and Plato (see his Phaedo), receives or rather is worthy of receiving the gift of love from the Holy Spirit.

But this form of love differs both from personal and erotic love and from universal and agapic love, these forms of love in which the loving one goes out of himself, transfers his own center into the loved one or loved ones. Here, love is concentrated in the loving one himself, though not on his hypostasis but on his nature in the capacity of the genus. It is concentrated not on his proper being but in and through others. In the concreteness of his being, every man has his proper nature, possesses humanity not in indifferent abstraction or in fullness but in a specific form or part, joined to the whole the way a branch is joined to the tree or the way a member is joined to the body. Here, a part is dynamically equal to the whole. Love for genus, like God's love for His nature, Sophia, is personal in the loving one, but not personal in the loved one, i.e., the genus. But this genus represents for the loving one not only a being or nature, buc also the totality of persons qualified by this nature; and generic love is thus a principle that is both personal and natural. Generic love is the site of the feeling for humanity and then for Divine-humanity in the human personality. In a certain sense, the generic consciousness in man is even more profound and more essential than his personal consciousness.