CHAPTER I The ideal, stable type of ever-moving progress.-Victor Hugo. IN outlining the "implications of being" we have proceeded from the perceived facts, being and dependence, to the recognition of love as the nature of that perfect action which is the independent ego. In this perfect ego we have found perfect altruistic freedom to objective activity. Hence, we have clear scope in which to trace the "implications of love" in its evolution. Such evolution brings us to consider the natural world as a creation, and God, in the capacity of his conditioned consciousness, as Creator. That our thoughts at this point may be entirely clear to the reader we use the term "creation" in order that we may not seem to entertain the idea that the Creator wrought the universe from assumed preëxisting matter. Nor do we take upon us to affirm anything of matter, substance, or reality further than to say it is force, or action, and what action unavoidably implies. Without possibility of doubt or gainsaying, action is real. This we can and must affirm. Hence, we affirm of substance that it is, at least, action-whether it is the action which merely exists or that which moves, is conscious, thinks, wills, feels. And all we affirm, or can affirm, of the nature of matter is that there are points and groups of points, greater or less, at which action, or force, is perceptible through our senses. The fact that we perceive persistence and a certain regularity, or fixed order, in these manifestations of force, or action, leads us to regard them as being permanent. This permanent order of persistent action we term “nature," or the natural world. True, we may suppose or imagine or even assume many things of the substance, properties, and phenomena of nature, but there is one thing which we can and must affirm as positive fact, and that thing is action. The term "creation," therefore, can certainly signify to our thought nothing more or less than those divine activities which consist as a system of conditions upon which spontaneous and self-determining actions that is, objective beings-may and do arise. And because these divine activities are put forth with reference to, and for the purpose of, conditioning the spontaneous rise of self-determining beings, they are termed the objective action of God. These classes of beings which arise spontaneously upon the conditions which the Creator thus posits and maintains constitute dependent being. They must be thought as objective to God in so far as they are without consciousness of God. If they are consciously self-determining, as is man, they are consciously other than God. Although this self-determining action arises in a nature which consists of the Creator's action, it is not conscious of that nature further than it is conscious of using it. By its conscious use of that nature it appropriates and incorporates it into the self-consciousness of its own being. The self-determination of a being who is thus free to use, select, modify, develop, repress, or pervert the elements. of his nature is what constitutes dependent personality, or a finite person. A definite conception of creation, or the natural world, may be stated thus: 1. Creation is a system of conditioned divine activities may arise and may determine their perfection, and so determine a perfect universe. 2. If the perfect universe is developed in essential harmony—that is, harmony of purpose, or intent-with the conditions posited in creation-notwithstanding the rise of errors and accidents-it is a natural universe, naturally developed. 3. If essential, intentional disharmony arise, modifying natural conditions, the world becomes thereby preternatural, that is, "aside from natural." 4. If thereupon divine love evolve further or other conditions upon which the perfect universe may be achieved -notwithstanding the existence of essential disharmony -this evolution is supernatural. 5. The line between the conditions posited in creation and those which may be added for recovery from essential disharmony is the line which distinguishes the natural from the supernatural. Correction of errors and irregularities must be thought attainable upon natural conditions, but intentional, self-determined antagonism to love and its purpose in nature, perverting natural conditions to malign ends, is essential disharmony, unnatural, preternatural, and may require extranatural, or supernatural, conditions to compass its correction or elimination. With the above view of the objective action of God, we may properly term the natural world a creation. Whether or not the method of creation is that of "evolution" as held or opposed by physical scientists, does not concern us here. For whether the method of God's objective action may have occupied millions of centuries, extended through numberless stages of nebulæ, organism, and life, building conditions upon which new forms of life arise to condition the rise of still succeeding forms sonal universe; or whether he directly posits the conditions upon which races of finite persons arise and determine their development; or whether he created dependent persons in a full-orbed finite perfection which they have degraded, cannot influence this question, the evolution of the nature of a self-existent reality. In any case these objective activities are but the goings forth of love's evolution devoted to the realization of an ideal universe, of which materialistic evolution upon any theory can be but a fragmentary part. But to return to the above statement of our conception of creation, its first item is of chief importance in this chapter: Creation is a system of conditioned divine activities which constitute conditions upon which dependent beings may arise and may determine their perfection, and so determine a perfect universe. This statement affirms that God conditions, and finite persons determine, the universe. It implies also that the creation is perfect in that it affords the conditions upon which finite persons may determine their own perfection, and a perfect universe. Hence, the fact and form of the natural world must be conditioned by the nature of the Creator and the dependent freedom of the creature. We will, therefore, consider: I. Love, as the nature of the conditioning action and purpose of creation. II. Dependent freedom, as the nature of the determining factor of the world. I. Under the first of these grand conditions we note that creation is chosen action, a step or movement in the evolution of love. The world is not a preexisting thing, but is the dependent, objective product of creative will. Nor is it a necessary step in God's self-determination. but must imply that the original agent, God, is dependent upon the universe as a means to his own self-conscious perfection. "Unconditioned being" is essential to any rational view of being; and the only view consistent with the unconditioned being of God and the fact of conditioned finite being is that the latter is the chosen product of God's objective effort. He is absolutely independent, the universe is dependent upon him. Having found, too, that the nature of the unconditioned, infinite, or independent being is love, we have been able to see that such nature is unconditioned in itself; and that there is in it infinite freedom to act objectively or not, as he may choose, without implying augmentation, impairment, limitation, or abrogation of his infinite egoistic consciousness. Therefore we view creation as simply the evidence that He who is infinitely self-sufficient chooses, in his perfect altruistic freedom, to put forth objective and eternal activities in establishing and maintaining finite being. This choice implies intention. Contemplated as an object of our thought, creation is a matter of choice with the Creator, which implies an intention which accounts for the existence of the universe. The evolution of love is the method by which the divine intention is disclosed and carried out. The fact that it is an evolution does not preclude the fact that it has a motive for its disclosures. We distinctly admit that this intention may comprehend much more than we can discern. Yet even we can recognize in love that which amply accounts for the creation of a system of dependent being. We are, indeed, compelled to recognize in love a motive to such a project. In a former chapter we have seen that infinite being must be thought as having the spirit, or prompting tendency, to realize all possible being which may subsist with |