CHAPTER X. 



MAN AND GOD. 



§ I. The subject of this chapter is that of the 

 relation of man to his cause, or his past, and if we 

 denominate the supposed First Cause of the world 

 God, it will possess two main connections with the 

 preceding inquiries. In the first place, the concep- 

 tion of a first cause of the world requires to be 

 vindicated against the criticism stated in chapter 

 ii. (§ lo). In the second place, we were led in the 

 last chapter to explain the material cosmos as an 

 interaction between God and the Ego, and to sug- 

 gest positions which require further elucidation- 

 It was shown by an examination of the contradic- 

 tion of causation in chapter ii. that a first cause of 

 existence in general is an irrational conception, in 

 chapter iii. (§ ii) that causation is a thoroughly 

 anthropomorphic conception, derived from, and ap- 

 plicable to, the phenomenal world. On both these 

 grounds, therefore, to say that God is the First Cause 

 of the world is to say that God is the First Cause of 

 the phenomenal world, i.e., the cause of the world- 

 process. For the category of causation does not carry 

 beyond the process of Evolution or the phenomenal 

 world (cp. ch. ii. § 9). But if so interpreted, there is 

 no absurdity in the conception of a First Cause. Our 

 reason impels us to ask for a cause of the changes 

 we see, and at the same time forbids us to say that 



