ART. I. -- GOD THE CREATOR.
30. God has created, that is, drawn from nothing, all that exists, whether spiritual or corporeal. -- God being infinitely perfect, is eminently sufficient for Himself. Yet it was fitting His goodness that others, viz., creatures, participate in His perfections; and therefore He created, that is, He drew out of nothing, all that exists.{1} When God is said to have made the universe out of nothing, the meaning is, that He caused the universe, which was not yet existing, to receive existence. Therefore it is by no means to be inferred, as some philosophers maintain, that nothing is the source out of which God brought all creatures; for then we could well apply the axiom: "From nothing nothing comes." But although creatures did not always actually exist, yet they were from all eternity in the divine intellect, which knew them in their essence and their individuality. Therefore, when God wished to actualize these beings which He knew, the world, in virtue of the divine power, passed from the state of pure possibility to the state of actuality; it is precisely in this that creation consists. Hence by creation God does not, like man, bring about a mere modification of substances: by His infinite power He makes the substance itself. As to the time of creation, it would be vain to ask why God created the world so late; for time began with creation. In God there is no time, because there is no succession; there is no early, no late, no when, no before no after in the divine eternity, which is a single and indivisible now. Moreover, God alone can create; for as St. Thomas argues (Contra Gent., ii. 21): "Since the order of actions is according to the order of agents, because a nobler action is proper to a nobler agent, the primary action must be proper to the primary agent. But creation is the primary action, because it presupposes no other action, and all others presuppose it. Therefore creation is an action proper to God alone, for He is the primary agent."
Another proof may be drawn from God's absolute independence of all creatures. As He alone possesses an absolutely independent existence, to Him alone can that action be referred which requires no preexisting subject on which to operate for the production of an effect. But such action is creation. Therefore creation is proper to God alone.
31. The act of creation is an essentially free act of the divine will. As God is eminently sufficient for Himself, He is in this act bound by no necessity, whether external or internal. -- To hold that God made the world not by an act of His free will but from an irresistible impulse, is virtually to hold that God does not suffice for Himself, that He is not infinite, that He is not God. Moreover, this opinion would imply that every thing in the world is as necessary as the principle whence it emanated, and that, consequently, there is no liberty either in man or in God. The objection that it is impossible to reconcile a free creation with the simplicity and immutability of God is idle, for the impossibility exists only in appearance. The act by which God wills creatures may be considered either in regard to Him or to creatures. In reference to Him, the act is eternal; therefore it does not affect His immutability; and since this act exists in God before He creates, He receives no new quality on the passage of creatures from non-existence into existence. Creatures alone acquire a new perfection by creation.
32. The end which God proposes to Himself in creating the world is the manifestation of His perfections or His own glory. -- God, being infinite wisdom, must have had an end in the act of creation, and this end must be the manifestation of Himself and His perfections, particularly His power, His wisdom, and His goodness. But since God is infinite, He can acquire nothing further for Himself, and the glory that accrues to Him from creation is purely accidental and extrinsic. It is fitting, therefore, that in the series of created beings there be some that can recognize this manifestation of God in the world. Such creatures must be intelligent. Undoubtedly irrational creatures operate for an end, which, however, they cannot know; nor can they raise themselves to Him who leads them to that end. Only intelligent creatures can propose to themselves an end in their acts, and only they can know the end which God proposed to Himself in creating. From this it is evident that intelligent creatures should hold the foremost rank among created beings, all other creatures having been made for them. Man is, therefore, the true king of the visible creation; everything in the visible world was made for him, since he alone can refer all to God.
ART. II. -- PANTHEISM.
33. Pantheism is the negation of creation; it consists in recognizing no substance but God, and in identifying the world with Him. -- Those philosophers who, while rejecting the truth of creation, are yet unwilling to accept the absurd system of independent eternal matter, have been constrained to regard the world as an emanation from the very substance of God. This error, which is called pantheism, is as old as philosophy itself. It is the last term to which every philosophical and religious error necessarily and logically leads.
34. There are two principal forms of pantheism, realistic pantheism and idealistic pantheism. -- In the most distant times pantheism was professed in India, where it infected not only the minds, but likewise the religion and morals of a whole nation. Later on pantheism was openly taught by several schools of Greek philosophy -- by the Pythagorean, for example, and also by the Stoics, who declared that God was the soul of the world. In the first centuries of the Christian era it was propagated by many Neo-Platonic philosophers; in the twelfth and thirteeth centuries, by Arabian philosophers; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, by false mystics, and especially by Scotus Erigena (d. 875), and Giordano Bruno (d. 1600). In recent times it has been renewed and reduced to a system by Spinoza and the German philosophers, who have propagated it in Europe, where it infects a great number of minds. Although they teach oneness of substance in God and the world, yet pantheists, one and all, seek to reconcile their system with the variety of phenomena which nature presents, and have fabricated divers modes in which the world has emanated from God. The multiplicity of these modes has given rise to the different forms of pantheism, which may, however, be reduced to two: realistic pantheism, invented chiefly by Spinoza, and idealistic pantheism, taught by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
The pantheism of Spinoza originated in a false definition of substance. Descartes had said that substance is that which has need of nothing else in order to exist. Adhering to this definition Spinoza easily demonstrated that there can be no other substance than the divine substance, because that alone needs no other being for its existence. Whatever we now consider as existing outside of God is, according to Spinoza (1632-1677), only a mode of the divine attributes. And as all that is in the world manifests itself to us as endowed either with thought or extension, thought and extension are, in Spinoza's system, the essential attributes of the infinite substance. This substance, it is said, acts necessarily. As a thinking substance it produces the different series of intellectual operations which constitute the minds of men; as an extended substance it produces bodies with all their various modifications. Therefore the aggregate of finite things is, he asserts, a necessary development of the attributes, thought and extension, which belong to the infinite substance.
Fichte (1772-1814), applying certain principles of Kant to the pantheism of Spinoza, endeavored to prove a priori how mind and matter, which he calls the Ego and the non-Ego, originate in the successive development of a single substance. To reach this he rises by abstraction to the pure Ego, that is, to thought, having no relation either to the thinking subject or the object thought of. This pure Ego is the infinite, or God. But, says Fichte, the pure Ego is necessarily conscious of itself. In virtue of this necessity it thinks or posits itself, and in thinking or positing itself it distinguishes self as subject from self as object. As subject, it is the human mind; as object, it is matter. This development of the Absolute under the form of mind and matter is accomplished by an internal operation, and this is consciousness. Mind and matter are only the internal representation which the Absolute or the pure Ego makes of itself to itself. -- Schelling (1775-1854) adopted the pantheism of Fichte, and considering God as the sole substance from whom mind and matter emanate ideally, he defined it as the indifference of the differentiated. Lastly, Hegel (1770-1831) set forth the whole system with scientific method and with all the appurtenances of a theory rigorously demonstrated. He substituted the Idea for the pure Ego of Fichte, and explained the origin of all creatures by the ideal motion of the Absolute.
As is evident, realistic pantheism teaches that the world exists by a necessary emanation from the divine substance, in much the same way as the web comes from the spider. Idealistic pantheism considers the world as emanating from God by an internal and immanent action. The former admits an Absolute in act, containing in itself all the various beings of the world, which it produces by necessary and external evolution of itself. In the latter system, the Absolute is in potentiality, and, in developing and completing itself by an internal and necessary motion, it manifests itself now under the form of matter, and again under that of mind, and so begets the series of existing things, which are not realities, but mere appearances, pure phenomena. But, whatever may be the divergencies of the pantheistic systems, the essential characters may be reduced to two: (1) oneness of substance between God and the world; (2) negation of all liberty in the act by which God creates the world.{2}
35. Pantheism refutes itself, first, because the principle of a single substance is contradicted both by reason and experience; secondly, because the denial of the liberty of the creative act is the destruction of the very notion of the Absolute; and, lastly, because it leads to fatal consequences. -- The fundamental principle of pantheism is that there is but one substance, and that divine. Now, on the one hand, experience tells us that there are many substances; on the other, reason finds in the idea of substance nothing requiring it to be unique. Without doubt, he who admits, with Spinoza, that substance is that which depends on no cause for its being, must hold that there is no other substance than the divine. But this is not implied in the true idea of substance, which should be defined: "That which does not require another as subject in which to inhere." Thus the idea of substance does not imply independence of another subject, but excludes inherence in another as its subject. -- It may also be shown that if only one substance, God, the Absolute, exists, this substance necessarily entails a contradiction. For if the Absolute contains many beings in itself, it lacks that unity which we conceive to be an essential quality of an infinitely perfect being; if, on the other hand, it does not contain the collection of the various beings in the world, they could never have come forth from it. -- Finally, if God and the world are but one substance, it follows that God is the world and the world is God; or, in other words, that the infinite is the finite and the finite is the infinite. The contradiction is even more manifest in the Absolute as understood by the German philosophers. For this Absolute, which, as Absolute, should actually possess all perfections, has them only potentially, and acquires them by successive developments. Moreover, the manifestation which the Absolute makes of itself in creatures is deceitful, and these creatures are only appearances or phenomena. But an Absolute which deceives and a potential Absolute are pure contradictions. Therefore contradiction is the term to which every system of pantheism necessarily leads. And pantheists are far from denying it; for they admit as a principle the identity of contraries,{3} and make this principle the foundation-stone of their logic and of all their science.
The absurdity of regarding the world as a necessary emanation of the divine substance may from this be easily perceived, The Absolute, if Absolute, ought to be most perfect and wholly sufficient for itself. But to assert that the creation of the world is necessary, is to admit that the Absolute has need of the world; and thus the very idea of the Absolute is destroyed.
But the absurdity of pantheism is manifest not only from the falsity of the principles on which it rests, but also from the fatal consequences to which it leads. For the God of pantheists is an imperfect God, subject to blind necessity; therefore he is not God, and pantheism is atheism in disguise.
With equal logical consistency is fatalism deduced from pantheism. If man has no substance of his own, he has no liberty, no activity of his own; all his acts are illusory phenomena, which a blind Absolute fatally performs; there is no longer either good or evil, and the whole moral law is destroyed. Likewise, if the principle of the identity of contraries, the foundation of the logic of pantheists, be admitted, there is no longer either true or false, and the most complete scepticism becomes the sole rule of the human mind.{4}
ART. III. -- GOD THE PRESERVER.
36. The creatures of God stand in need of His continual active preservation. -- Every effect depends on its cause for all that it has from it. Now, the efficient cause either creates, or simply gives a new form to what is already existing. Therefore, if the effect is nothing but a new form informing pre-existing matter, it will be referred to the cause for this form only. But if the effect be the whole existence of a being, matter and form, it will depend on the cause for its whole existence, for both matter and form. But God is the first cause of all the beings of the universe, since He has given them existence by creating them; therefore they cannot cease to depend on Him for their existence; and they continue to exist only so long as He preserves it to them. For if creatures cannot come into existence of themselves, it is because they are contingent; as they do not cease to be contingent, they require for the continuance of their existence a divine act of the same nature as that which drew them forth from nothing. The necessity of this divine act is such that God Himself could not make creatures capable of preserving themselves by their own nature; because unless God created a contradictory being He could not make a creature not contingent.
37. God preserves His creatures by a positive act, which does not differ actually from that by which He created them; so that preservation may be called a continued creation. -- The preservation of a being is of two kinds: it is positive and direct, if the being continues in existence by a positive and direct act of God; it is negative and indirect, if the being merely continues to exist, inasmuch as God does not destroy it, and removes the causes that could effect this. Now as to the act by which God preserves creatures, only positive and direct preservation can be meant; and so all the great philosophers have understood it. Evidently it could not be otherwise, for creatures are always contingent, and consequently always in need of that which was needful at the first moment of their existence. God has drawn the world from nothing by an act of His will; He continues to will that the world exist, and so the world continues to exist. Therefore the act by which God created the world and the act by which He preserves it, are identical; and in all truth we can say that the divine preservation is a continual creation. The difference between the creation and the preservation of creatures consists not in the act but in the term of the act: by creation God draws things out of nothing; by preservation He keeps from nothingness the things He has made. If one were to accept the opinion of some philosophers, that God preserves creatures by a negative and indirect act, he would be obliged to admit that creatures could not return to nothing except by a positive act of God. But it is impossible for nothing to be the term of any act whatever. Therefore, to admit the indirect preservation of creatures is to deny to God the power of annihilating the things He has made. But in the doctrine of direct preservation the annihilation of creatures is easily explained by the cessation of the act which keeps them in existence.
38. Although God can annihilate creatures, yet it is certain that He will never annihilate even one of them. -- Since God has created freely, He can also, if He wills it, annihilate His creatures. But this is only a metaphysical possibility which will never be realized; for the gifts of God are without repentance, and having willed to give being to creatures, God, in a sense, owes it to His wisdom, His immutability, and His glory. to preserve them. The existence of creatures is a proof of the power of Him who made them; but that a thing after having existed should return into nothing, would be contrary to the manifestation of God's power, which shines forth especially in the preservation of creatures. The world will doubtless undergo transformations and does undergo them every day; but it will not cease to exist. It is certain also, as we daily see, that the accidents of things and the very forms of living beings other than man, do cease to exist; but these accidents and these forms are not complete beings, since they are not substances. The name of being is imperfectly applied to them; and yet, such as they are, they are not absolutely annihilated, not that any part of them subsists, but because there is always a potentiality in the subject or in the matter, from which they can be educed.
ART. IV. -- THE DIVINE CONCURRENCE WITH THE ACTIONS OF CREATURES.
39. God concurs directly in all the acts of creatures. -- God not merely exerts an influence on creatures inasmuch as He preserves their being; He also influences their operations. For just as the creature as second being depends on God as first being, so the creature as second cause depends on God as first cause.
40. There are two principal systems to explain the divine influence on the actions of creatures: the system of physical premotion and the system of simultaneous concurrence. -- Physical premotion or predetermination, is an influence by which God applies the cause to action, firstly, actively, and intrinsically. The divine influence on the actions of creatures as explained by physical premotion has been taught by the Scholastic philosophers generally, and particularly by St. Thomas. They regarded God as moving and applying secondary causes, actively and physically, by an internal inclination which determines them definitively to their action, as the heart gives to the other members of the body a predetermining force that stimulates them and makes them thoroughly capable of their functions.
Simultaneous concurrence is the influence by which God helps second causes, producing with them one and the same effect. This system originated with Molina (1535-1600) toward the end of the sixteenth century. He taught that the entire effect is to be ascribed to God and creatures; but that neither God nor second causes are the total cause of the effect, but each is a partial cause requiring the concurrence of the other -- just as a boat rowed by two men receives its entire motion from both together. In this system is also admitted, particularly in the order of grace, that concurrence of God called moral motion, which consists in a moral influence exercised on the will, either external, as by preaching and good example, or internal, as by inspiration and good thoughts. Still, in whatever way the divine influence upon the action of creatures be explained, it by no means destroys free will; for although God concurs with free acts, He never concurs with what is defective in them. Similarly, although the motion of a lame man's leg must be attributed to the soul, the defect in his walk is due to the defect in his leg.{5}
ART. V. -- OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD.
41. Omnipresence is an attribute by which God is present in all creatures. -- The attribute of omnipresence differs from that of immensity, for the latter is that perfection by which God is present by His infinite essence in all things that exist, and can be in all possible worlds; while the former is merely that perfection by which He is actually present in all places and in all creatures. This is, therefore, a relative attribute; the other is absolute.
42. God is in all creatures in three ways: by his power, by His presence, and by his essence. -- God is in all creatures by His power, for He acts in them; by his presence, for He actually knows them; by His essence, for His essence is not distinct from His power and His knowledge. -- God is in all beings by His power, because He has created them and continues the creative act by preserving them. God is in all creatures by His presence, for all that He produces outside Himself He produces freely according to eternal prototypes; therefore, as creative and preserving cause of all things, He must have them ever present to His intelligence. Lastly, God is in all beings by His essence. Wherever God's power is exercised, there is His essence whole and entire; but God is in all places by His power; therefore He is also there by His essence.{6} Our imagination, accustomed as it is to represent to itself material things, cannot represent the divine substance present in all things without picturing it as mingled with their substances; but reason rejects such a representation. The essence of God is no more confounded with the essences of creatures with which He is present than the soul is identified in its substance with that of the body to which it is substantially united.
ART. VI. -- PROVIDENCE OF GOD.
43. The Providence of God is the care that He takes of creatures, especially rational creatures. -- Considered in God, providence is the reason of the order by which all things are conducted to their end; and in this sense providence is exercised immediately over all things. Considered in its effects, providence is the execution of the order which God conceived in creating the world, and in virtue of which all things answer their end. In this sense providence is exercised only mediately, for it governs the inferior by the superior, not that it needs an intermediary, but that in the exercise of its goodness it may give the dignity of cause to creatures.
44. The existence of Providence is proved by an a priori argument drawn from the very idea of God. -- An intelligent and free agent must operate with a view to some end. God must have proposed some end in creating the world, and this can be no other than the manifestation of His goodness. But this end could not have been attained, if at the same time God had not put order into the world when He created it. And since order implies the disposition of beings in view of an end, the order of the world supposes a providential design. Therefore, if the idea of God as cause of the world be once admitted, the attribute of providence cannot be denied him. This attribute may also be deduced from the other divine perfections. For God is essential goodness; but it pertains to the goodness of a being to care for the effects that it has produced. Why, then, should the government of the world be denied to God? Not from want of power; if He could create the world and determine its end, with greater reason can He direct it to its end. Not from want of will; if He willed the end, it is absurd to say that He does not will the means. Not from want of wisdom; for what would then become of the infinite wisdom of God? To deny providence is therefore, to deny God Himself.
45. The existence of Providence is also proved by an a posteniori argument drawn from the admirable order that reigns in the umverse. -- The universe presents to us a multitude of beings which, though essentially different, are all governed by constant laws. It shows us also the ensemble of the particular ends of these beings conspiring toward a supreme, single, and universal end; so that each being taken separately pursues a particular end, which in turn is subordinate to another end, and so on to the supreme end toward which all others converge. But the admirable constancy of the world's physical laws, the subordination of particular ends to a general end, which gives so perfect a unity to the world, must be the effect of blind necessity, of chance, or of a supreme reason. But necessity cannot govern creatures, since they are evidently contingent; nor can chance direct them, for it cannot make constant and invariable laws. Therefore the order of the world must be the effect of an ordaining reason, and is nothing else than divine Providence, The evidence of this conclusion will be more striking when we bear in mind that many creatures are destitute of reason, others are of opposite natures, and yet all concur to the supreme end assigned to the world. How can beings destitute of intelligence tend to an end, if they are not directed by an intelligent cause? How can those whose particular ends are opposed to each other concur to the general order, if they are not subjected to a supreme Being who disposes all things at will? It is of no avail to object that we know but a small part of the creatures of the world. What we know suffices to demonstrate rigorously the necessity of Providence, and the necessity of Providence once shown, it is easy to infer order even in that portion that is unknown to us.
46. The existence of Providence is also proved by a moral argument drawn from the unanimous consent of all peoples in all ages. -- The truth of a Providence has, under one form or another, constituted a fundamental dogma in all ages. The greatest geniuses have proclaimed the truth, and not a few have written excellent works describing the admirable care that God takes of His creatures, and especially of man, the lord of creation.
47. The principal objection against God's providence is drawn from the existence of evil. -- If God is just and good, He cannot but detest evil; if He is infinitely wise, He knows how to prevent evil; if He is almighty, he can actually prevent evil. Believing it impossible to reconcile the existence of God with that of evil, some men have denied the existence of God, and are, therefore, atheists; while others have denied the existence of evil, and are fatalists. Others again have referred the evil to an evil principle distinct from God and independent of Him; of this class are the Manichees. And yet others, seeing that all these systems, far from settling the difficulty, only increased it and added glaring absurdities, believed it the wiser course to doubt the existence both of God and of evil; these are sceptics. -- All these errors spring from false notions of the nature and origin of evil, and of the divine plan in permitting it. If evil is not being, but a privation of being, evidently it cannot be found in God, who possesses being in all its plenitude. It has also been proved that there can be no absolute evil, no supreme principle of evil.{7} It is idle for fatalists and sceptics to deny or doubt the existence of evil in the world; it is, indeed, a fact that we cannot understand, but not all our negations and all our doubts together are able to destroy it.
48. The objection against Providence drawn from the existence of evil may be refuted indirectly by showing, first, that these two truths must be held as certain, even though they cannot be reconciled with each other; and secondly, that the existence of evil cannot be explained without admitting a divine Providence. -- When reason recognizes two truths as certain we may affirm, on the principle that truth never contradicts itself, that these two truths harmonize. Now, the existence of Providence is a truth demonstrated by reason; the existence of evil is a fact attested by experience. If, then, we are unable to discover their connecting link, we must ascribe it to the imperfection of our minds; for it would be as absurd to deny the one or the other as it would be foolish to deny the existence of a circle or a square, because one could not point out their common measure. Besides, it can be shown that the existence of evil in the world is so far from destroying divine Providence, that it can have no explanation without Providence. What, indeed, is evil? A privation of good, a deviation from order. Therefore evil is not possible unless the existence of good and of order be granted. But good is the effect of a good cause, and order presupposes Providence; therefore evil, far from militating against the goodness and providence of God, rather proves their existence. Therefore, instead of saying: Evil exists in the world, therefore there is no God; we should rather say: Evil exists in the world, therefore there is a God and a Providence.
49. The objection against Providence drawn from the existence of evil may be refuted indirectly by showing that evil only serves to manifest in a more striking way the wisdom and goodness of divine Providence. -- There are, according to some, three kinds of evil -- metaphysical, physical, and moral. But metaphysical evil cannot be an objection against Providence, for it is nothing but the necessary imperfection of every creature. Therefore, properly speaking, it is not evil at all, and is reduced to the axiom, "The finite is not infinite." Only pantheists have been able to deny this nominal evil. -- Physical evil has been denied by the Stoics. But the physical disorders that do not depend on the liberty of man are either a particular effect of the general laws that give harmony to the world, or they are destined to afford man an occasion of gaining merit, or, lastly, they are a consequence and a punishment of moral evil. -- The only difficulty, then, with regard to Providence, must come from moral evil. This evil consists in the inordinate act of a free agent, and is denied particularly by fatalists. The principle of this evil is liberty. But how can we suppose, some will ask, that a good God can have endowed His creatures with a privilege which for a great number results, on the one hand, in a resistance to the divine will, and consequently, in an attack upon the glory and holiness of the infinite Being; and, on the other hand, entails such chastisements that nothingness would be a benefit to the creatures subjected to them? Since God knew those who would break His law, why did He draw them from nothing and grant them a liberty that was to render them so guilty and so unfortunate?{8} These difficulties are such as to move the imagination and the sentiment, but they are not founded in reason. For that God has created a world in which free creatures are subjected to trial and personally merit their happiness, is not contrary to God's goodness. If in consequence of this trial evil becomes possible, God first in His goodness places limits to evil, and by His wisdom and His power triumphs over it, and even draws good out of it. If to this be added the teachings of faith on the dogma of original sin and on that of the Incarnation, the moral evil that abounds in the world is easily explained, and the good, in a sense infinite, that results from. the permission of evil, is better understood.
{1} "Creation is a production of a thing according to its whole substance, nothing being presupposed, whether created or increate." Sum. Th., i., q. 65, a. 3. c.
{2} "The historical development of pantheism shows that it was the product of religious imagination in the Orient, that it was abstract with the Greeks, and physical with the Roman stoics, was couched in the mysticism of mediaeval times, became ontological in Spinoza, ethical and subjective in Fichte, objective and ideal in Schelling, and attained its consummation in the dialectical processes of Hegelian metaphysics." -- American Encyclopaedia, sub. Pantheism.
{3} Or, as Kant expressed it, the doctrine of Antinomies (See note, p. 110).
{4} Pantheism is the real principle of rationalism, which in turn has given birth to positivism and agnosticism. Positivism, inaugurated by Comte, was propagated in the name of reason and science by Littré, Taine, Rénan, Sainte-Beuve in France, by Lewes and Harrison in England, by Emerson in America. Rejecting the supernatural as unknowable, it studies only positives. i.e., natural phenomena with Ibeir "relations of coexistence and succession." It may be traced to three causes: "metaphysical scepticism, due to the Critique of Kant," the "too exclusive use of the experimental method," and the "material tendencies of the age." Littré died in 1881, a convert on his bed of death.
{5} Cf. Zigliara, Summa Philosophica, T., § 30.
{6} "He is in all things by His power in that all depend upon Him, and by His presence, inasmuch as all things are naked and open to His eyes; He is in all by His essence, because He is with all as the cause of their existence." -- Sum. Th., i., q. 8, art. 8.
{7} See p. 156.
{8} This objection really comes from disguised anthropomorphism. It likens God to a bungling artisan, who begins a work but fails to fit it for its destined purpose, and then throws it aside to make another attempt with new material. Whoever says that God should create those only whom He knows will be saved, thereby limits His power, His knowledge even, and His wisdom. He supposes that God has decreed to create A, for instance, but foreseeing that his career will end in eternal misery, He changes His decree and determines to create B. If He foresees that B will not prove a failure, He will create B. The objection is then plausible and insidious, but if sharply scrutinized becomes most absurd. When God creates He sees not only the actual career that will be lived by His creature, but likewise all possible contingencies. To suppose that He can fail in His work is to assert that He is not God; to say that He changes His decrees is to deny that He knows from all eternity the whole life of creatutes, and to attack both His wisdom and His immutability. God gives to every creature the means to attain its end; more than this it cannot of right demand. The creative act, creatures, and the end of creatures are all good; eternal woe is the legitimate consequence of the creature's perversion of free will. See A Skeptical Difficulty against Creation, by R. F. Clarke, S.J., American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. ii., p. 278.