WHY THE WORLD IS IN PROCESS. 



and Pluralism should have largely brought out also 

 the nature of God's finiteness. The finlteness of 

 God depends on the very attributes that make Him 

 really God, on His personality, on His being, like 

 all real beings, an Individual existence. God Is one 

 among the Many, their supreme ruler and aim, and 

 not the One tmderlying the Many. The latter 

 theory makes the Many inexplicable and the One 

 Indifferent. God therefore must nol be Identified 

 with Nature. For if by Nature we mean the All 

 of things, then Nature Is the possibility of the in- 

 teraction of the ultimate existences, and of these 

 God Is one. And the existence of these ultimate 

 existences explains also how God can be finite ; He 

 is limited by the co-existence of other individuals. 

 And from His relations to these other existences, 

 which we have called spirits (ch. Ix. § 31), arise all 

 the features of our world which were so insoluble a 

 puzzle to Monism — its Becoming, its process, and 

 its Evil — and in them also must be sought the ex- 

 planation of the arrangement of the world down to 

 its minutest detail. For as the existence of these 

 spirits is an ultimate fact, God has no power to 

 annihilate them ; the most that can be done Is to 

 bring them into harmony with the Divine Will. 

 And this Is just what the world-process is designed 

 to effect, this Is just the reason why the world is in 

 process. For if the divine power were infinite, It 

 would be unnecessary to produce the harmony with 

 the divine will by a long and arduous process. As 

 it is not Infinite, occasion arises for the display of 

 intelligence and economy, for that adaptation of 

 means to ends which has always been justly 

 esteemed the surest ground of a belief In God. 

 And this same limitation is also the general ex- 



