394 ESSAYS m phtlosophy 



displays itself in all the various systems of religion and their 

 accordant theologies. 



This theme of literal creation is so inwrought into the 

 structure of historic thinking, that it will recjuire a long 

 struggle on the part of criticism to get rid of it. Through 

 the influence of the Church and the philosophical schools, 

 it may be said to have become in fact institutional, so that 

 combating it is like fighting organised civilisation itself. Yet 

 one can make the truth clear, that only by the dislodgment 

 of it is the success of the deeper principle possible which is 

 the real soul of civilisation, — ■ I mean the principle of moral 

 life, the life of duty freely followed. 



If we examine the great historic systems, we see that with 

 reference to this creationism they may be thrown into the 

 following four main groups : 



First, those that are either (i) the direct theological 

 expressions of the post-exilic Hebraism which, taking occa- 

 sion from the Eternal Dualism of the Parsees, and correcting 

 it by a modified recognition of the Supreme Being of the 

 older Orientalisms, taught a dualism of a monarchotheistic 

 sort — of a Creator, and a creation summoned into existence 

 at a certain date by his sheer fiat {e.g., the systems of Augus- 

 tine, Aquinas, and Scotus), or else are (2) philosophical 

 enterprises, undertaken in all rational good-faith, but silently 

 engendered by the influence of this Hebraic doctrine even 

 when they greatly modify it {e.g., the systems of Descartes, 

 Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley, the Deists, and, with all his pro- 

 tests, at the last pinch even Kant). 



Second, those that for this dualistic and miraculous exer- 

 cise of efficient causation, for creation ex nihilo, substitute 

 the older but more mtionally continuous view of the imma- 

 nence of the creation in a monistic Creator or Eternal Source, 

 and thus carry us back into the current of pantheistic emana- 

 tionism dating from ])rimeval times. E.g., the systems of 

 Erigena, Nicolas Cusanus, Malebranche, Spinoza, Fichte, 



