moves its merely natural and shifting being, in its effort after complete accord between the two phases of its nature, the eternal and the temporal, the rational and the sensuous.
Thus the system teaches that the two supreme Divine Offices celebrated in historic theology, Creation and Regeneration, have alike a most real meaning, though indeed not a literal but only a metaphorical one. It invites theology to realise the pressing need of now revising and correcting the conception of Creation, in a similar metaphorical sense to that in which the conception of Regeneration has now for some time been reformed: as the latter is now by leading theologians interpreted as the influence of a consciously apprehended ideal truth, the purely final causation by which the Holy Spirit gains its ends, so let the former be for the future read in the corresponding sense of a final causation alone. Between mind and mind, between God and all other minds, there is no causation but Final Cause; the sole realm of Efficient Cause is the realm of Nature, whether physical or psychic, objective or subjective; efficient causation operates from the non-divine minds to their natural (or phenomenal) and sensuous contents, or else, in a secondary manner, between the serial terms of these. Hence God is in no wise responsible for the evil, either natural or moral, that we find in the world of experience, but only for the good that gradually arises in it; and even for this good, only in chief, and not solely; for to every mind that promotes the good and helps to check the evil belongs indefeasibly the credit of his part in the increase of good and the decrease of evil. The evil in the world is the product of the non-divine minds themselves: the natural evil, of their very nature; the moral, the only real evil, of their failure to answer to their reason with their will.
This brief sketch of the view must suffice as preparation
for the main task which I here have in hand; namely, to
