434 CONCLUSION. 



little difficulty In picturing It, and that It can claim 

 little support from previous philosophy. But then 

 we recognized that for various reasons the concep- 

 tion of a time-process and of a real history of things 

 was alien to philosophy,^ until the scientific doctrine 

 of Evolution boldly affirmed the reality of history 

 (ch. vii. § 2). On the other hand, it is interesting 

 to find that our account of the pre-cosmic receives 

 substantial confirmation from religious tradition, 

 which in preserving its memory has shown no less 

 superiority over profane thought than when it was 

 the first to assert the reality of the world's beginning. 

 For only the preconceptions of a mistaken ex- 

 egesis can blind us to the fact that though the first 

 chapter of the Book of Genesis professes to give an 

 account of the creation of the world, it does not 

 assert its creation out of nothing. It does not pro- 

 fess to give the origin of all existence, but only of 

 our material and phenouienal world. It clearly re- 

 cognizes the pre-existence of good and evil and of 

 spiritual beings, which were presumably uncreated, 

 and certainly pre-cosmic, like our ultimate spirits. 

 The tree of the knowledge of Qfood and evil demon- 

 strates that even before the Fall evil v^diS potentially 

 existent in the world, and the obvious inference Is 

 that the world was created in order to remedy this 

 pre-existent and pre-cosmic defect. And the nature 

 of this defect is further elucidated by the religious 

 tradition of the fall of Satan and his angels. Their 



^ Ancient philosophy lacked the evidences of progress (ch. vii. 

 § 16) ; modern philosophy rested on an epistemological basis, and 

 so was congenitally incapacitated from asserting the reality of tlie 

 process (ch. ii. § 17; iii. § 15), although Hegel made a bold effort 

 to transcend the limitations of his standpoint — by confusing the 

 logical with the real process and identifying the connexions of 

 logical categories with the development of real existences. 



