CHAPTER X.
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.
Creation is the spoken word of God; the creative, cosmogonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To speak is an act of the will; thus, creation is a product of the Will: as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the Will: not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the imagination—the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of nothing.[1] As the eternity of the world or of matter imports nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness of the world. The commencement of a thing is immediately connected, in idea if not in time, with its end. “Lightly come, lightly go.” The will has called it into existence—the will calls it back again into nothing. When? The time is indifferent: its existence or non-existence depends only on the will. But this will is not its own will:—not only because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the prior reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus the nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will. The will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will—at least the possible will—that it should not exist. The existence of the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary, unreliable, i.e., unreal existence.
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations,
- ↑ “Quare fecit Deus coelum et terram? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei causa est coeli et terrae et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam coelum et terra. Qui autem dicit: quare voluit facere coelum et terram? majus aliquid quaerit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest.”—Augustinus (de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2).
