APPENDIX B 393 



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 : 

 (i) 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 exist- 

 ence 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 creation- 

 ism, — 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, con- 

 ceived 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 pur[)ose. In proceeding so, they 

 no doubt follow a universal historic impulse of the human 

 mind, unpurified by sufficient self-criticism j for this impulse 



