exhibit, with some convincing detail, any advantages the system affords to the aims of moral life. To do this I must proceed from the foregoing outline in two directions: (1) I must clearly show the moral need for the system, by exposing the moral inadequacy of all the other current philosophical schemes, even of the many current idealisms, thus bringing out more exactly, on the way, the precise and pertinent points in which the system is new; and (2) I must then collect the several items in which the system displays its worth for those who care supremely for moral endeavour.
I
That the historic systems of philosophy, not only those which have been directly influenced by the historic systems of religion and theology, but also those which have originated more or less in opposition to these, or in correction of them, are unequal to meeting the conditions essential to the existence of a moral order and to the possibility of a moral life in individuals, will appear plainly upon a brief analysis of their leading conceptions.
They are every one of them (with the single exception named below) coloured through and through with creationism, — at least tacit, and generally conscious and deliberate, — a term by which, taken literally, I conveniently designate the reference of all realities to a single First Cause, conceived as explaining existence by being their efficient, or originating, or producing Source. In other words, from the fourfold system of causes set forth by Aristotle — Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final — they all select Efficient Cause as the category which is to be primordial in their scheme of explanation; then they have this Efficient Cause produce the Material, and mould and change it by the Formal, in answer to the Final as its purpose. In proceeding so, they no doubt follow a universal historic impulse of the human mind, unpurified by sufficient self-criticism; for this impulse
