240 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



production of its various parts, in harmony with 

 Spinoza's idea of substance (the universe) and accidents 

 (or modes, the individual phenomena of substance). 

 This distinction is of great importance, because there 

 are many eminent philosophers who admit the one 

 and reject the other. 



According to this creationist theory, then, God has 

 " made the world out of nothing." It is supposed 

 that God (a rational, but immaterial, being) existed 

 by himself for an eternity before he resolved to create 

 the world. Some supporters of the theory restrict 

 God's creative function to one single act ; they believe 

 that this extramunclane god (the rest of whose life 

 is shrouded in mystery) created the substance of the 

 world in a single moment, endowed it with the faculty 

 of the most extensive evolution, and troubled no 

 further about it. This view may be found, for 

 instance, in the English Deists in many forms. It 

 approaches very close to our monistic theory of 

 evolution, only abandoning it in the one instance in 

 which God accomplished the creation. Other crea- 

 tionists contend that God did not confine himself to 

 the mere creation of matter, but that he continues 

 to be operative as the " sustainer and ruler of the 

 world." Different modifications of this belief are 

 found, some approaching very close to pantheism and 

 others to complete theism. All these and similar 

 forms of belief in creation are incompatible with the 

 law of the persistence of matter and force ; that law 

 knows nothing of a beginning. 



It is interesting to note that E. du Bois-Beymond 

 has identified himself with this cosmological crea- 

 tionism in his latest speech (on " Neo vitalism," 1894). 

 "It is more consonant with the divine omnipotence," 



