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affirmation that God created the worlds out of nothing annihilates itself." The creation of the worlds out of nothing, he reasons, if we understand him, either was possible to God or it was not. If it was not, he could not have so created them, and the affirmation is false. If it was possible, the affirmation is still false, for their creation was then preceded by its possibility, and could have been only the bringing forth of that possibility into actuality. But, conceding the latter supposition, the conclusion does not follow. If the creation of the worlds out of nothing was not possible to God, the affirmation is false, we concede, for God cannot do what he cannot. If it was possible, then it was not possible? Not at all. Then, by the very terms of the supposition, it was possible; therefore the affirmation may be true, and does not annihilate itself.

The author asserts the contrary, because he conceives the possibility of creation is something, is res or reality, which, since it does and must precede creation, cannot but be something uncreated, necessary, and eternal. Therefore, since creation is nothing but the reduction of possibility to actuality, creation could not have been out of nothing, but, if at all, must have been out of this very something called possibility. We grant that creation must have been possible, or it could not have been created. We grant that the possibility of creation was itself uncreated, necessary, and eternal, and yet not therefore does it follow that God could not have created the worlds out of nothing; because this very possibility is an abstraction, and therefore in itself nothing. Grant, then, that God creates only by reducing potentiality to actuality, nothing is granted against the affirmation; for since abstract possibility is nothing, to "bring forth from it into actuality" is precisely to create out of nothing; as the author himself not only concedes, but even asserts, when he says, as he does, that the doctrine of a creation out of nothing "is equivalent to the doctrine, that all creation is effected by the leading forth of visible things, [why not of invisible things also?] through the energy of the Divine Will, from potentiality into actuality." Then the leading forth from potentiality into actuality must be equivalent to creation out of nothing.

The assertion of creation out of nothing does not mean that nothing creates, or that the Creator creates his own ability to create; that is, creates himself. It is intended, on the one hand, to deny that God creates out of preexisting matter, or that creation is merely impressing matter with form, as the Pla

tonists maintained, and, on the other, to assert that God creates by himself alone, from his own omnipotent energy or inherent ability to create. Creation certainly implies, or rather connotes, the uncreated possibility of creation, and we readily concede that the possibility of the creation of the worlds was not created, but eternal. Thus far we have no quarrel with the author. But the POSSIBILITY of creation is the ABILITY of the Creator, and the possibility of the creation of the worlds is the eternal, underived, inherent ability of the Creator to create them, as the author himself, apparently without being fully aware of the import of his language, asserts, when he tells us it "inheres in the very being of God." The possibility of creation inhering in the Divine Essence itself is precisely what all theologians and philosophers generally understand by the Divine ability to create. Understood in this sense, the author's reasoning amounts simply to this: The worlds could not have been created if God could not have created them, and God could not have created them if he had not been able to create them; but God was able to create them; therefore their creation was possible, and he may have created them. No Christian philosopher will find any difficulty in acceding to all this.

But, assuming the reality of abstractions, the author thinks he finds in the assertion, that the possibility of creation is itself uncreated, the assertion of a solid and indestructible basis of free agency, or the freedom and independence of the human will. The human will has the root of its activity in the soul's substance, and the soul's substance, since eternally possible, is itself eternal, uncreated, and therefore independent of the Divine Will, and therefore the human will must be independent of the Divine Will, and not controllable by it. God can neither will nor create a human soul, unless it be possible to him. The possibility, whether of an act of the Divine Will or of the creation of the human soul, is therefore anterior to either, and therefore uncreated. But this uncreated possibility inheres in the very being of God. Therefore the Divine Will depends, for its ability to operate, upon its possibility inhering in the very being of God, and the human will depends, for its ability to operate, upon its possibility, inhering in the same being of God." Therefore the human will depends on the being, but not on the will, of God. Therefore we are free agents, and God cannot control our actions by his will, because they have their origin in regions of Divine Essence as ancient and as remote as is the source of the Divine Will itself," "and because the

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Will of God is subsequent in the order of nature to the sublime ground which is the spring of the activity of the human soul."

This discovery, like most new discoveries in the fundamental principles of philosophy, is more specious than solid. The author has evidently thought long and hard to obtain his conclusion, but that conclusion rests on the supposition, that the soul which acts is identically the uncreated, eternal soul,—that is to say, the uncreated and eternal ability of God to create the soul, which is not true in itself, and is, moreover, contrary to the author's own doctrine. The soul that acts is the soul as "active existence"; but the soul, which the author asserts as eternal, which "could not have been created, and cannot be annihilated," is the essential soul, the soul "abstracted from its active existence," as we have already seen; that is to say, no soul at all, for abstractions are nothing. There are no abstractions in nature, or the ontological order; that is, in the order of being, of reality. But the soul, as actual or active existence, the author concedes, depends on the will of God; and since, then, it is only in the sense in which we depend on the will of God that we do or can act, it does not follow that our actions are independent of that will, and uncontrollable by it. Nay, on the author's own principles, it follows that they are controllable by it.

The author seems not to have considered, that to assert that the possibility of an existence inheres in the being of God is to assert, in regard to the existence itself, that it cannot exist without the intervention of the Divine creative act. To say that a being depends upon its possibility so inhering, is only saying that it cannot exist without God, and can be only what he has the inherent ability to make it; which is to assert its limitation, not its ability, and God's ability, not his limitation. Grant that the human soul depends upon its possibility inhering in the very being of God, what follows? Therefore the soul is eternal? Not at all; but therefore the soul is not eternal, is created, or else does not exist; because the possible does not exist till rendered actual, and to render the possible actual, the author himself tells us, is equivalent to creation out of nothing. The author has fallen into a slight mistake; he has made the soul's possibility God's inability, and the soul's want of existence its eternal and independent existence. The soul is possible in God, therefore God is unable to create it; therefore the soul is, and is eternal, capable of acting freely and independently of the Divine will. As much as to say, if the

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creation of the soul is possible, it is impossible. We can hardly believe that this logic has been borrowed from Aristotle.

The author protests against pantheism, and, we doubt not, with sincerity. He wishes, we presume, to distinguish, and fully believes that he does distinguish, between the human will and the Divine. Yet his doctrine, if he excludes the Divine creative act, makes the human will, physically as well as morally, the Divine will. "The Will of Man," he says expressly, depends, for its ability to operate, upon its possibility inhering in the very being of God." The possibility of a will inhering in the Divine Being must mean, either the ability of God to will, or his ability to create a will. If the author understands it in the latter sense, he loses his argument for the freedom of the will founded on the supposition that it is not created; if in the former sense, he makes it identically the Divine will itself, for the inherent ability to will is the will, and all that is ever meant by the will, ontologically considered. But to make the human will identically the Divine will, and on that ground to assert its freedom, is to assert its freedom by making it physically the will of God, and annihilating it as human, pure pantheism. Divest us of the substantive force that wills, and restore it to God, and what remains to be called we? It is not a little surprising that the author did not see this, for he is very careful to tell us that the Divine will and the human will are alike dependent, and in the same sense dependent, upon their respective possibilities inhering in the very being of God; and it is on the ground that they are so dependent, and that the activity of each is the inherent activity of the same Divine Essence, that he asserts one is independent of the other. But if so dependent, either both are the will of God, and then identical, or neither is. The author's mathematics should have taught him, that two things respectively equal to a third are equal to one another.

It is not difficult to seize the truth the author has in his mind, and which, interpreted by his doctrine that abstractions are real, may well seem to support his conclusion. "God," he says, "brings forth, according to his Will, from potentiality into actuality, just what he pleases; but when any human soul is brought into actual relations, it acts from itself, independently of God's Will, for it acts from an origin transcending God's Will. God may drive any human soul back into potentiality, that is, may destroy its life, but while he suffers it to live,

he cannot alter its will by any direct [how any more by indirect?] exertion of power." It is easy to see what the author is driving at, though he does not appear to have very distinctly apprehended it, and he is far from expressing it correctly. What he wishes to say appears to us very briefly and very accurately expressed by Vasquez:* - Essentia rerum ordine rationis sunt ante omnem Dei scientiam et voluntatem: quare licet possit cuilibet rei tribuere, aut non tribuere existentiam, non potest illius naturam intrinsicus immutare. "The essences of things, in the order of reason, are before all science and will of God; and hence, though God may or may not give existence to any thing he pleases, he cannot intrinsically change its nature." Here is evidently what the author has in view. The essences of things are what are also called the possibilities, forms, or ideas of things, and being prior, in the order of reason, not, by the way, in the order of nature, -to the science and the will of God, are uncreated, therefore necessary and eternal. God may or may not endow them with existence, bring them forth into actuality, actualize them, as he pleases, but if he wills to actualize or render actually existent any one of them, he must conform to its intrinsic nature. Thus, if he choose to actualize the manidea, to clothe it with actual existence, he must do so without altering, or in any respect impairing, the intrinsic nature of that idea, — what our author calls the possibility of a human soul. Hence, by virtue of this necessary and eternal man-idea, -our possibility inhering in the very being of God, we are rendered, as actual existences, free agents, and our actions are independent of the will of God. This is really the process, we suppose, by which the author obtains his startling conclusion. But his conclusion is invalid, because it is obtained only by reasoning a posse ad esse, which the logicians tell us is not allowable. We act not as possible, but as actual existences, and we cannot conclude what we actually are from what it was possible for God to make us. Before we can assert what

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we are, we must know, not only that God has actualized an idea, but what idea he has actualized in creating us. If the idea is that of free agents, or existences capable of free will, then we may say, God must, necessitate a suppositione, as it is called, treat us as such, because he cannot both do and not do the same thing at the same time; but not otherwise. The

* Apud Perrone, De Deo, Part II. Cap. 1, note.

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