364 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



aspect of it, has the form of an irrepressible conflict 

 between the free reason, moving in response to its 

 Ideal, and this actual antagonising Check. In other 

 words, within the rational (or spiritual) whole man, 

 lives the natural and partial, which is the product 

 of his formal and efficient causation as a self-active 

 life, operating in the light of his Ideal upon the 

 object-matter, or material cause, supplied in the 

 Check. But this union of two antagonistic natures 

 in one individual whole is absolutely foreign to God, 

 the eternal Sum of all Perfections. It belongs, on 

 the contrary, to that non-divine order of existence 

 which, for lack of a better conception and name, our 

 historical theologies have called the "creature," and 

 it therefore forms an inerasible distinction between 

 the one member of the World of Spirits who realises 

 its Ideal eternally, and all the other possible members. 

 We may render this matter clearer by a brief 

 reference to a most important step in the history 

 of philosophic thought. It is a notable remark of 

 Aristotle's when beginning the criticism of previous 

 Greek philosophy, that, while all philosophy must 

 be a research of causes, and preceding philosophy 

 had answered in a general way to this requirement, the 

 schools had yet not been aware of the whole system 

 of causes. This system, he adds, ought to include 

 (i)the material cause, the "raw stuff," so to speak, 

 or "contents," out of which reality is formed ; (2) the 



