As furthermore we regard everything stimulating us as an object of the pious consciousness, it follows that not even the least and most unimportant thing should be excluded from the relation of absolute dependence. But here it should be remarked that frequently, on the one hand, an undue value is placed on expressly tracing back the least detail to this relation; while on the other hand, with no greater justice, we often oppose such a relation. The first mistake appears in the view that, because the greatest events often arise from small, the smallest detail must be expressly ordained by God. For it appears to be only an empty, and by no means trustworthy, play of the fantasy, when we so often hear people describing great events as arising from small causes, and thereby drawing away our attention from the universal relatedness in which the true causes really lie hidden. A clear judgment can only be formed on the principle of the similarity of cause and effect in the domain of history or of nature, and it is only under definite conditions that individual changes with their causes can be severed from the universal interrelatedness and taken separately. But as soon as the pious feeling combines with such a view, thought has no choice but to recur to the universal interdependence of nature; otherwise an isolated and separate activity would be ascribed in too human fashion to God. The second point, i.e. that the application of absolute dependence to the smallest matters is felt to be objectionable, has its origin in the fear that religion might be drawn into blasphemy, if, say, our free choices in little things were to be traced back to divine appointment: for instance, the point which foot shall be put forward first, or chance in matters of no serious importance such as winning or losing in sports and contests. Still, the incongruity here does not lie in the object, but in our way of thinking about it: that is, in the isolation of single events, because in cases of the first kind the apparent free choice is sometimes only an individual instance of a general situation, from which many similar events follow, and sometimes it is the expression of a more general law by which many similar events are controlled; while in cases of the second kind, the issue can always be regarded as submission to a universal will. Neither of these can be regarded as insignificant, and thus no reason can be found against treating both as subsumed under absolute dependence on God.

2. If now we examine our proposition purely in itself, it must be directly evident in its wider scope to everyone who accepts it as a general principle of experience that the feeling of absolute dependence can be aroused through stimulations of our sensuous self-consciousness. For that feeling is most complete when we identify ourselves in our self-consciousness with the whole world and feel ourselves in the same way as not less dependent. This identification can only succeed in so far as in thought we unite everything that in appearance is scattered and isolated, and by means of this unifying association conceive of everything as one. For the most complete and universal interdependence of nature is posited in this ‘All-One’ of finite being, and if we also feel ourselves to be absolutely dependent, then there will be a complete coincidence of the two ideas—namely, the unqualified conviction that everything is grounded and established in the universality of the nature-system, and the inner certainty of the absolute dependence of all finite being on God. From this follows, on the one hand, the possibility of pious self-consciousness in every moment of the objective consciousness, and on the other the possibility of complete world-consciousness in every moment of pious self-consciousness. For with regard to the latter, where a pious feeling is actually existent, there the interdependence of nature is always posited; and therefore the effort to extend the idea of the latter and perfect it in a world-representation will not be detrimental to the former, but can be effected just in so far as the tendency towards knowledge is predominant. And as regards the former, wherever there is an objective idea, there is always a stimulated self-consciousness; and from this the pious self-consciousness can develop without prejudice to the objective idea (with its world-conception, which is more or less clearly co-posited), in proportion as the tendency in each towards feeling is dominant. Now if we conceive both tendencies as fully developed in a given man, then each would with perfect ease call forth the other, so that every thought, as part of the whole world-conception, would become in him the purest religious feeling, and every pious feeling, as evoked by a part of the world, would become a complete world-conception. On the contrary, if the one did not call forth the other, but in some way limited it, then the more completely the one developed, the more would it destroy the other. It has been always acknowledged by the strictest dogmaticians¹ that divine preservation, as the absolute dependence of all events and changes on God, and natural causation, as the complete determination of all events by the universal nexus, are one and the same thing simply from different points of view, the one being neither separated from the other nor limited by it. If anyone should detect in this an appearance of Pantheism, he ought to bear in mind that so long as philosophy does not put forward a generally accepted formula to express the relation of God and the world, even in the province of Dogmatics, directly we begin to speak not of the origin of the world but of its co-existence with God and its relatedness to God, we cannot avoid an oscillation between formulas, on the one hand, which approach to the identification of the two, and formulas, on the other, which go near to putting them in opposition to one another. Moreover, in order not to confuse ourselves in this way, we ought to observe more carefully the difference between a universal and an individual cause. For in the totality of finite being only a particular and partial causality is given to each individual, since each is dependent not on one other but on all the others; the universal causality attaches only to that on which the totality of this partial causality is itself dependent.

Postscript.—In Dogmatics the analytical method originating with the Scholastics has led to a division of our simple proposition in a number of different ways into many elements and sections, and it will not make much difference which of these divisions we select in order to show its relation to our statement. Some have divided the conception of preservation, which is expressed in our proposition as referring both to the whole and the parts, into the following: the general, which is related to the whole world as a unity; the special, which is concerned with species; and the most special, which is concerned with individuals (generalis, specialis et specialissima). This classification does not appear to be made in the interest of religion (from which here everything should start), for the simple reason that it leads to a question which is purely one for natural science, i.e. whether there is anything in the world which cannot be brought under the idea of a species. But supposing this question must be answered in the affirmative and the division be made complete, nevertheless universal preservation must include everything, and the division thus becomes quite superfluous to us, since our fundamental feeling rests solely on the finiteness of being as such. But a further purpose of this division may be surmised, if we take into account the addition usually made to the third member of it—namely, that God sustains individual things in their existence and their powers as long as He wills. For in that case the species, as reproductions of individual things, are in a sense immortal, but the individual is mortal; and the wish arose to establish a difference between the preservation of what endures and of what is mortal.

For those, however, who accept a beginning and an end of the world there is absolutely no reason to differentiate between the world and individual things. But in any case the proposition must cover equally the beginning and the end; and we know fairly certainly of our earth that there have been species on it which are no longer extant and that the present species have not always existed; so that our proposition must be stretched to embrace these also. It really affirms nothing except that the temporality or the duration of the finite is to be conceived solely in absolute dependence upon God. But since the duration of individual as well as of universal things is simply an expression for the degree of their power as each coexists with all the rest, it follows that the addition taken in itself contains nothing which our statement had not expressed already. But the way in which the addition is framed might easily give rise to the idea that the sustaining will of God began or ended at some particular time, and in anticipation of this it must be said that God, in sustaining as in creating, must remain apart from all means and occasions of time.

Another similar division is to discriminate between the work of God as preserving and as co-operating; but the distinction is not made in the same way by all teachers of doctrine, for some connect the expression ‘preservation’ only with matter and form, and ‘co-operation’ with powers and actions; others again connect preservation with the existence and powers of things, and co-operation only with activity. The fact, however, that the expression ‘co-operation’ contains a hidden meaning should not be overlooked, as if there were in the finite an activity in and for itself and thus independent of the sustaining divine activity. This tendency must be entirely avoided and not merely covered over by indefiniteness.² If, however, such a distinction ought not to be drawn, and if the powers of things are something as little separated from the divine sustaining activity as their being itself (the latter we only divide into matter and form by an abstraction which has no place here), then the difference between preservation and co-operation rests also on a similar abstraction. For being posited for itself can only exist where there is also power, just as power always exists only in activity; thus a preservation which did not include the placing of all the activities of any finite being in absolute dependence on God would be just as empty as creation without preservation. And in the same way, if we conceived co-operation without conceiving that the existence of a thing in its whole duration was dependent on God, then this thing might be independent of God even at its first moment of existence, and this would be equivalent to conceiving preservation in such a way that it did not include creation and positing it without creation. It should be added here that even theologians who have treated the subject quite correctly on the whole have allowed themselves to be led into describing co-operation as something more immediate than preservation,³ so that deeds, as distinct from the preservation of powers, proceed from a divine activity. The result of this would be, if we took it seriously, to reduce the preservation of power to nothing, for in the system of nature power is always dependent on the activity of the rest of things. Thus we can only say that, in the region of absolute dependence on God, everything is equally direct and equally indirect, some in one relation and some in another.

Some combine the idea of divine government immediately with these two ideas. But if by that is meant the fulfilment of divine decrees⁴ or the guidance of all things to divine ends, and if it be taken as signifying anything else than that everything can happen and has happened only as God originally willed and always wills, by means of the powers distributed and preserved in the world—this is already included in our proposition, and we cannot consider it here. For here we are concerned in general with the description of the feeling of absolute dependence, and must set completely aside a view which is based upon the distinction between means and end without reference to the question whether this distinction can exist for God. On the one hand, for our Christian consciousness it could only be the Kingdom of God, established by means of redemption (i.e. something quite foreign to our present purpose), to which everything else is related as its goal: and on the other, if our self-consciousness is to represent finite existence in general, and end and means are related to one another as that which is posited for its own sake and that not posited for its own sake, or more exactly as what is willed by God and what is not willed by God, then we must take up into our religious self-consciousness an antithesis of which our present discussion knows nothing. The only thing then that this conception [divine government] could suggest to us at this point would be that so far as the divine preservation relates, as co-operation, to powers and activities taken separately, we require a counterpart to it to cover the passive state of finite things; but since these are just as essential parts for the attainment of the divine purpose, their absolute dependence is included in the conception of government. Even this is, however, superfluous so far as we are concerned. For since preservation has as its object the being of things, and in this, so far as they are centres of power, the antithesis of self-activity and susceptibility is included, the passive states are already subsumed under absolute dependence; and particularly when they also belong to that which affects our self-consciousness, whether in the form of perception or of sympathy, they are included in our general proposition. But, in addition, the passive states of one thing are only the result of the active states of others; while, on the other hand, the way in which the active states emerge successively and the strength which they display depends not only on each thing’s peculiar mode of existence. but also on its concurrence with other things, hence on the influence of others and on its own passive states. From this we may think that perhaps we should differentiate better if we said that what proceeds from the intrinsic characteristics of each individual thing and what proceeds from its co-existence with all other things are both alike to be placed in absolute dependence upon God. But even this would be an abstraction without importance for our religious self-consciousness, for which the two are not distinguished from one another as stimulating objects; and thus we should do better to include everything which stimulates our consciousness together in the idea of finite being which is only relatively individual and is conditioned in its individuality by the universal co-existence. And this is wholly identical with what our proposition denotes by the term interdependence of nature.

§ 47. It can never be necessary in the interest of religion so to interpret a fact that its dependence on God absolutely excludes its being conditioned by the system of Nature.

1. This proposition is so much a direct consequence of what went before that there would be no reason to make an express statement of it, but that ideas which have still a circulation in the Christian Church must be considered in their appropriate place in any Dogmatic. Now there is a general idea that the miracles which are interwoven with the beginnings of Christianity or at least in some form are reported in the Scriptures, should be regarded as events of the kind described: and yet if the idea itself is inadmissible, it cannot be applied to this or that particular fact. It is in this way that theologians from of old have generally treated the question. We have not to pass judgment here on its inherent possibility, but only on the relation of the theory to the feeling of absolute dependence. If, then, this relation is what our proposition declares it to be, we must in our field try, as far as possible, to interpret every event with reference to the interdependence of nature and without detriment to that principle.

Now some have represented miracle in this sense as essential to the perfect manifestation of the divine omnipotence. But it is difficult to conceive, on the one side, how omnipotence is shown to be greater in the suspension of the interdependence of nature than in its original immutable course which was no less divinely ordered. For, indeed, the capacity to make a change in what has been ordained is only a merit in the ordainer, if a change is necessary, which again can only be the result of some imperfection in him or in his work. If such an interference be postulated as one of the privileges of the Supreme Being, it would first have to be assumed that there is something not ordained by Him which could offer Him resistance and thus invade Him and His work; and such an idea would entirely destroy our fundamental feeling. We must remember, on the other hand, that where such a conception of miracles is commonly found, namely, in conditions where there is least knowledge of nature, there, too, the fundamental feeling appears to be weakest and most ineffectual. But where a knowledge of nature is most widely spread, and therefore this conception seldom occurs, more is found of that reverence for God which is the expression of our fundamental feeling. It follows from this that the most perfect representation of omnipotence would be a view of the world which made no use of such an idea.

Other teachers⁵ defend the conception in a more acute but scarcely more tenable way, by saying that God was partly in need of miracles that He might compensate for the effects of free causes in the course of nature, and partly that He might generally have reasons for remaining in direct contact with the world. The latter argument presupposes, for one thing, a wholly lifeless view of the divine preservation, and for another, an opposition in general between the mediate and immediate activities of God which cannot be conceived without bringing the Supreme Being within the sphere of limitation. The former sounds almost as if free causes were not themselves objects of divine preservation, and (since preservation includes in itself the idea of creation) had not come into being and been maintained in absolute dependence upon God. But if, on the contrary, they are in this condition there can be just as little necessity for God to counteract their influences as to counteract the influences which a blind natural force exercises in the domain of another natural force. But none of us understands by ‘the world’ which is the object of the divine preservation a nature-mechanism alone, but rather the interaction of the nature-mechanism and of free agents, so that in the former the latter are taken into account just as in the latter the former is reckoned.

Moreover, the Biblical miracles, on account of which the whole theory has been devised, are much too isolated and too restricted in content for any theory to be based on them which should assign them the function of restoring in the nature-mechanism what free agents had altered. That one great miracle, the mission of Christ, has, of course, the aim of restoration, but it is the restoration of what free causes have altered in their own province, not in that of the nature-mechanism or in the course of things originally ordained by God. Nor does the interest of religion require that the free cause which performs the function of restoration in the sphere of phenomena should have a different relation to the order of nature from that of other free causes.

Two other reasons may be put forward why an absolute suspension of the interrelatedness of nature by miracles may be held to be in the interests of religion. And it cannot be denied that it is mostly for these reasons, even though they may never have been formulated as actual Church doctrine, that this conception of miracle has maintained its practical hold over many Christians. The first is that of answer to prayer; for prayer seems really to be heard only when because of it an event happens which would not otherwise have happened: thus there seems to be the suspension of an effect which, according to the interrelatedness of nature, should have followed. The other is that of regeneration, which, represented as a new creation, in part requires some such suspension and in part introduces a principle not comprised in the system of nature. Neither subject can be discussed in this place; but it may suffice to remark in relation to the first, which more concerns piety in general, that our statement places prayer, too, under divine preservation, so that prayer and its fulfilment or refusal are only part of the original divine plan, and consequently the idea that otherwise something else might have happened is wholly meaningless. With regard to the second we need only refer here to what was said above. If the revelation of God in Christ is not necessarily something absolutely supernatural, Christian piety cannot be held bound in advance to regard as absolutely supernatural anything that goes along with this revelation or flows from it.

2. The more accurate definitions by which the acceptance of such miracles is brought into connexion with the propositions and concepts which indicate the complete dependence of the system of nature on God show very clearly how little that idea is demanded by our religious emotions. For the more they try definitely to fix an absolute miracle, the further off they are from making it the expression of a religious emotion, and, instead of genuine dogmatic material, something of quite a different character⁶ comes in. Speaking generally, the question can most easily be considered if we start from the point that the event in which a miracle occurs is connected with all finite causes, and therefore every absolute miracle would destroy the whole system of nature. There are, therefore, two ways of looking at such a miracle—a positive way when we consider the whole future, and a negative way when we consider it as affecting in some sense the whole of the past. Since, that is, that which would have happened by reason of the totality of finite causes in accordance with the natural order does not happen, an effect has been hindered from happening, and certainly not through the influence of other normally counteracting finite causes given in the natural order, but in spite of the fact that all active causes are combining to produce that very effect. Everything, therefore, which had ever contributed to this will, to a certain degree, be annihilated, and instead of introducing a single supernatural power into the system of nature as we intended, we must completely abrogate the conception of nature.

From the positive point of view we must consider that some event follows which is not to be explained by the totality of finite causes. But as this event now enters into the interrelatedness of nature as an active member, throughout the whole future everything will be different from what it would have been had this single miracle not occurred. Thus every miracle not only suspends the entire continuity of the original order for all future time, but every later miracle annuls all earlier ones, in so far as they have become part of the continuity of active causes. But now, in order to describe the origin of the effect, we have to allow for the entrance of a divine activity apart from natural causes.⁷ Yet at whatever point we admit the entrance of this particular divine activity, which must always seem like magic, in each case there will always appear a number of possibilities according to which the same result could have been attained by natural causes if they had been opportunely directed towards this end. In this way we shall be driven to hold either that miracles have a purely epideictic tendency in view of which God purposely did not so order the system of nature that His whole will should be accomplished in it (a view against which we directed our earlier discussion of the relation between omnipotence and this conception of miracle), or if the totality of finite causes could not have been so directed, then what can be explained by the order of nature can never rightly evoke in us the feeling of the absolute dependence of all finite being.

Now, if others think it would be easier to establish this conception of miracles by first dividing the divine co-operation into ordinary and extraordinary (which, however, is only ostensibly different from the unordered), and then attributing the former to the natural and the latter to the supernatural, so that the negative aspect of a miracle would be the withdrawal of the ordinary co-operation,⁸ but the positive aspect the entrance of the extraordinary, this means, on the one hand, that the ordinary co-operation is no longer ordinary if it can be withdrawn, and is not to be definitely distinguished from the extraordinary; only that we call that which occurs more frequently the ordinary, and what seldom occurs, the extraordinary, a relation which might equally well be reversed. On the other hand, the miracle is effected in the first instance by finite causes, even if by means of extraordinary divine co-operation; but since thereby something comes into existence which according to its natural character would not have come into existence, it follows that in this case either they are not causes, and the expression ‘co-operation’ is inaccurate, or they have become something different from what they were formerly. In that case, every such extraordinary co-operation is really a creation, on which afterwards the re-establishment of actual things in their original state must follow as a further creation cancelling the former one. Moreover, it should be recognized with regard to these explanations that the one corresponds more closely to the one class of Biblical miracle⁹ and the other to the other class, and therefore the different characteristics of these events have had an important influence on the development of these different formulae. If, however, anyone finds it difficult to accept this view, yet it must be admitted that although the older theologians on the whole¹⁰ still maintain this conception of miracle, the younger ones¹¹ do not maintain its exclusive validity, but also admit the legitimacy of another hypothesis—namely, that God has prepared miracles in nature itself in some way incomprehensible to us; and this, in the interests of religion itself, we must admit to be pure gain.

3. On the whole, therefore, as regards the miraculous, the general interests of science, more particularly of natural science, and the interests of religion seem to meet at the same point, i.e. that we should abandon the idea of the absolutely supernatural because no single instance of it can be known by us, and we are nowhere required to recognize it. Moreover, we should admit, in general, that since our knowledge of created nature is continually growing, we have not the least right to maintain that anything is impossible and also we should allow, in particular (by far the greater number of New Testament miracles being of this kind), that we can neither define the limits of the reciprocal relations of the body and mind nor assert that they are, always and everywhere, entirely the same without the possibility of extension or deviation. In this way, everything—even the most wonderful thing that happens or has happened—is a problem for scientific research; but, at the same time, when it in any way stimulates the pious feeling, whether through its purpose or in some other way, that is not in the least prejudiced by the conceivable possibility of its being understood in the future. Moreover, we free ourselves entirely from a difficult and highly precarious task with which Dogmatics has so long laboured in vain,¹² i.e. the discovery of definite signs which shall enable us to distinguish between the false and diabolical miracle and the divine and true.

§ 48. Excitations of self-consciousness expressing a repression of life are just as much to be placed in absolute dependence on God as those expressing an advancement of life.

1. This statement deals more particularly with the contrast between the serene and the sad moments of life, but it follows so directly from our principal proposition,¹³ or rather is so completely involved in it, that we should have had no reason for putting it specially forward if long experience had not taught us that imperfect piety has always found it difficult to harmonize the existence of sad and unhappy experiences with the God-consciousness, whether because it is overwhelmed by life’s repressions or led astray by sceptical and unbelieving arguments. On this account almost every religious doctrine, and particularly the Christian doctrine of faith, must make it a special duty to show their compatibility. This has generally involved, however, a false complacency towards these imperfect emotions, partly by way of vindicating the Supreme Being with respect to the existence of such experiences and partly by admitting a variation in the absolute feeling of dependence in relation to them. It is sufficient here to enter a protest against both, as much against the counterfeit emotion itself as against the weak and obscure treatment of it, in order that the simple and complete apprehension of the fundamental feeling may not be endangered. Now if sad experiences only occurred separately, although frequently, and were such that we could trace no connexion between them, then they would hardly have been able to produce such an effect; but it is dependent on the fact that there are conditions which bring a persistent and regularly renewed consciousness of life’s obstacles. These, then, are what we usually characterize by the term evil: and it is to be maintained that all evil, in the full meaning of that word, is just as much wholly dependent upon God as that which is in opposition to it, i.e. good. But clearly we must reckon moral evil under the term ‘evil,’ since where it exists it always shows itself to be an inexhaustible source of life’s difficulties; only here we have not to consider it as a human activity but as a state. Therefore, just as later we shall have to treat more fully the connexion of evil with moral evil and from a different standpoint, here, in the reverse order, moral evil is to be included under the term ‘evil.’ Thus it is to be considered now apart from ethics, and only as it appears and is given as a state affecting the self-consciousness as one of life’s obstacles; and after the present discussion it will not later be treated separately. There is, however, a further division of evil which we need only consider in order to make clear that, just as (we maintain) evil and good are alike rooted in universal dependence on God, from this point of view there is no difference between these two types or classes of evil. To the one belong those conditions which we call natural evil, in which human existence is partially negated. To the other, which we name social evil, belong those conditions in which human activity is in conflict with another activity and is partially overcome and depressed; and here the influence of moral evil specially comes in. But clearly these two kinds of evil not only give rise to each other (since where there is diminution of being activity will more easily be depressed, and a depressed activity which is always decreasing reacts again on the whole being), but they also overlap in thought, for the being of man consists only in the totality of his activities, and vice versa. The difference consists then principally in this, that the one is much more determined by the total forces of nature, and the other by the collective conditions of human activity.

2. In order to solve our problem within the prescribed limits we do not at all require to enter deeply into teleological speculations or, in addition to evil itself, to consider what has resulted from it; for it can never be proved that the results might not have been caused in some other way. It is just as unnecessary for us to work back from the idea of Preservation to that of Creation or beyond it, to show that evil was unavoidable. But remaining strictly within our province, we have only to show that apparent oppositions come together under the universal dependence. And here two points arise with regard to both kinds of evil. First, the relation of the fluctuating and transitory to the permanent in all finite being. Individual beings belong to the transitory in the form primarily of a vital activity that takes a progressive development up to a certain climax, from thence gradually decreasing until death. Since, regarded as a whole, every relation which determines development arouses the consciousness of life as stimulated, and conversely what tends to bring death nearer is interpreted as an arrest of life, there is throughout the whole course a casual fluctuation between these two. Clearly then, on the one hand, it is the same entire relatedness of men with nature which determines both progress and arrest, so that the one cannot be apart from the other. It is just the same, again, in the sphere of social life, where, for example, a later formation of community life cannot grow and expand without the earlier formation being repressed and brought to decay; and thus there are here again two modes of life, progress and limitation, each conditioning the other. The second point is the relation of what is only relatively self-existent and the corresponding and mutual limitations of the finite. That is to say, there is no absolute isolation in the finite: each is only self-existent as it conditions another, and is in turn only conditioned in so far as it is self-existent. But another thing is only conditioned by me if I can in some way cause it to progress; but then this equally implies that I can be a hindrance. The whole relation can only be presented to consciousness in so far as both terms (in both forms, that of self-existence and that of conditionedness) are presented; and consequently both obstacles and progress are equally ordained by God. This is equally valid of personal feeling and of sympathetic and social feeling. So that without a very far-reaching misunderstanding, no one can find difficulty in the fact that even what appears to him an evil (be it his own, someone else’s, or one common to many) exists as a consequence of absolute dependence, and therefore is to be regarded as ordained by God. Otherwise we should in general be neither willing nor able to think of the transitory and finite as existing through God—that is, we could not think any world at all as dependent on God; and in this way our fundamental proposition would be denied.

Now this misunderstanding is due, on one side, to the fact that we look at states themselves apart from their natural conditions; and it is increased by the fact that we wrongly represent these influences which produce permanent life-repressions as if they were a separate self-contained province and thus could be isolated and eliminated—in short, that the world could exist apart from evil. The fact is rather that the very same activity or condition of a thing by which it enters on the one hand into human life as an evil, on the other hand is a cause of good, so that if we could remove the source of life’s difficulties the conditions of life’s progress too would disappear. This is true even of moral evil which only functions as evil in so far as it appears in external action: and it holds good not only accidentally because sin produces good effects sometimes in individuals and sometimes as a great historical lever, but as a general truth since sin only comes to be done by reason of that capacity of man to express his inner nature outwardly which is the source of all good. On the other hand, since in the same way it can be held as a general truth that in the universal system that which is the source of most of life’s advancement, from some point of view has an aspect of evil, and that in virtue of the very characteristic which makes it helpful (as indeed all forces of nature and all social relations which originate in intelligence, with the single exception perhaps of intelligence itself, may be said to have this twofold aspect of good and evil), it is absolutely correct to say in another sense that evil as such is not ordained by God, because evil in isolation is never found, and the same is true of good, but each thing or event is ordained by God that it should be both.

There is an important point for us here—that it is an imperfection of self-consciousness when a limitation, as such, completely and exclusively engrosses a moment of experience, whether this imperfection be that of immediate self-consciousness or of that which accompanies the activities of the objective consciousness; and in the same way it is an erroneous view when its being the source of difficulties is regarded as the essence of any object that exists in absolute dependence on God. And even this imperfection is one which disappears with the increasing development of the good, like every evil vanishing into the good itself—that is, in the susceptibility of the sensuous consciousness in general for union with the God-consciousness.

3. The usual dogmatic definitions which try under the headings of preservation and co-operation to throw light on this subject, certainly appear to have the same solution in view but to reach it very inadequately. Thus, for this purpose they sometimes differentiate a divine co-operation that is helpful from one that is not, and sometimes a merely material co-operation from one that is also formal. These terms seem to have been originally thought out with special reference to the antithesis between good and evil, and to the latter was assigned the co-operation which is not helpful or only material. But apart from the fact that co-operation and help are inseparable ideas, and no definite conception can be formed of a co-operation which is not helpful, we must observe that if co-operation with activity is in question there is no activity without form, so that there can be no co-operation with an activity which is not also a co-operation with the form of that activity, and a merely material co-operation would be nothing more than preservation without co-operation. The consequence of this would be that all activity so described would be placed outside the relation of absolute dependence. Hence, according to both these formulas, evil seems to be stronger and more powerful than good, since the latter can only be accomplished with the helpful or (in addition) formal co-operation, while the former needs neither of them. But, apart from this, I say that there can be no question in this place of treating evil as a purely inward disposition prior to all activity, because it could not then stimulate the self-consciousness of the individual, much less could it stimulate the self-consciousness of someone else. But, if we consider evil as active, then all sinful actions are performed not only by means of the material powers of men, but just like good actions, in a way appropriate to them; so that there is no ground for making such a distinction.

Suppose now that all social evil was in some way bound up with moral evil, this distinction would no longer be applicable. But how about natural evil? Since destructive events are precisely the strongest expressions of natural forces, they are thus less able to take place without helpful co-operation than other events, and just as little without formal co-operation, since no specific form can be ascribed to them. Thus if the intention is to maintain that in so far as co-operation is admitted, evil, too, comes within the absolute dependence on God, but that in so far as the co-operation is not helpful or only material, God cannot be the originator, this intention has, strictly speaking, not been fulfilled. Consequently, it appears to be a better expedient if we say that everything real without exception is the result of divine co-operation, so that this can suffer no diminution: but all evil, including moral evil as such, has its ground in a mere defect; and, a mere defect being a partial non-ens, divine co-operation cannot be concerned with it. If then each finite thing is ordained simultaneously by God as an entity with its own dimensions, this does not mean that it exerts activities outside this limit; on the contrary, the divine co-operation would be lacking to these, and consequently it could not resist external influences beyond this limit. But difficulties or obstacles do not arise from the circumstance that no opposition can be offered because divine assistance is lacking, but because an attack is made in a manner which is beyond the finite thing’s power of resistance, whereas divine co-operation is available for the attack. Nothing remains but on the one hand to attribute the divine co-operation equally to everything that happens, and on the other to maintain that evil as such is not ordained by God, but only as related to the good and as one condition of it.

§ 49. Whether or not that which arouses our self-consciousness and consequently influences us, is to be traced back to any part of the so-called nature-mechanism or to the activity of free causes—the one is as completely ordained by God as the other.

1. The proposition is in itself only the expression of the undoubtedly generally admitted fact that we do not feel ourselves less absolutely dependent on God when anything happens to us through the actions of other men than in other cases. Also it is completely contained in the principal proposition of this Second Doctrine, and is only put forward in explanation in order to prevent a not infrequent misunderstanding, namely, that the consciousness of our free-will is in opposition to the feeling of absolute dependence. The question first of all is as to the effect of free actions, primarily on the lives of others but also on our own. But however much freedom resides in determination of will and resolution, action, emerging as it does under influences beyond itself, is always so conditioned that it only becomes what it is because it belongs to the very same universal system which is the essential indivisible subject of the feeling of absolute dependence; and this would lose its significance in the whole province of history if we should think of free causes as excluded from this system. Indeed, what was put incidentally above must here be brought out in its full significance.¹⁴ Just because free causes form a part of the general system, we must be able to assert the same of the moment of activity itself and of the accompanying self-consciousness. It was in this sense that in our first elucidations of the fundamental feeling we explained how the relative feeling of freedom and the absolute feeling of dependence each involves and pervades the other, so that the latter cannot exist apart from the former.¹⁵

Let us consider now the moment of action, starting from the point that every other free agent in the same position would have acted differently, just as the same free agent would have acted differently in another position, and that this position, whatever it may be, is within the universal system. Then no one can doubt that the results of free activity take place in virtue of absolute dependence. What is certain, moreover, about the accompanying self-consciousness is that we are only capable of the feeling of absolute dependence as freely acting agents—that is to say, that we are conscious of our freedom as something which is received and is gradually developed in a universal system. Therefore in every religious experience of free self-activity the self-consciousness must contain both the feeling of absolute dependence and the relative feeling of freedom.

In our proposition, the expression ‘free causes’ clearly makes a difference between freedom and causality in general, and implies causes which are not free. And yet they are still causes. But in the customary conception of the universal nature-mechanism there is, strictly speaking, no causality apart from free causes. For by it we imagine a coherence and interaction of things which only react as such in so far as they have been acted upon; and in that case we can only think of each in its activity as a point of intersection: so that causality is only applicable to the first mover existing outside this sphere. That is to say that, according to this conception, free causes having been excluded, there is no causality in finite things, while outside there is only the free infinite cause, the divine causality which is presupposed as originally setting the whole sphere in motion by a first push. If we include in this mechanism all inferior life, animal and vegetable (since there can, in this conception, be no question of a universal life of the heavenly bodies), then free causes, by which we mean men, are the sole finite causality, and it only needs one step to leave the divine causality as the only one, i.e. to hold what we have already shown to be destructive of the feeling of absolute dependence, and with it all piety—that men should regard themselves too as simply part of this mechanism, and should treat consciousness of self-activity as only an unavoidable illusion. Fortunately, few have ever been capable of this self-annihilating renunciation by which, after robbing the whole world of life, they sacrifice their own selves also to the completeness of their theory. By this method all causality of the finite is transformed into appearance, and consequently there is no ground for regarding individual finite being as existing for itself, and therefore no reason why a finite being should come to rest at one point rather than another in this universal flux of moving and being moved; but all things are either an indivisible unity or else an innumerable multitude of points of transition, i.e. atoms.

Let us now attribute to ourselves free causality along with absolute dependence, and causality also to every living being as assuredly as we hold it to have being for itself; and let us see complete absence of freedom only where a thing does not move itself and moves other things only in so far as it is moved; in that case we should be able to regard the causality of living beings as simply a diminished freedom, and we should have to say that true causality only exists where there is life, and the complete absence of freedom is also a complete absence of causality, since the impulse which sets the lifeless thing in motion so that it moves other things always comes itself from what is living. In our proposition, then, the expression ‘nature-mechanism’ is not used as our own, for we should be wrong to reduce anything which stimulates our self-consciousness and thus influences us to mere mechanism, to active points of transition. It lies, however, outside our province to inquire how far the sphere of true causality and therefore of life extends, and how in each particular case the true cause is to be discovered. But our self-consciousness, in so far as it is the consciousness of a finite being and we distinguish in it a partial consciousness of freedom and a partial feeling of dependence as belonging together, from the feeling of absolute dependence as including both, requires for every stimulation a finite causality in the sphere of the universal system of nature which, as a consequence of this, must be taken up into absolute dependence. For this feeling would not retain its uniform character if there were a sphere, i.e. that of natural-causes, in which finite and divine causation met, and alongside it two others, that of mechanical or rather apparent causation where only divine causality reigned and finite causality was absent, and that of free causality where only finite cause reigned and divine causality was absent. At the same time we must observe, with reference to absolute dependence, that we assume no sharp antithesis between freedom and natural necessity in finite being, since anything which actually has a being for itself moves itself in some sense or other, even if it has no part in spiritual life; but even in the most free cause its range is ordained by God.

2. In the dogmatic terminology which now prevails, this truth is expressed sometimes by the idea of preservation and sometimes by the idea of co-operation. The most usual form of the first kind is that God upholds each thing in its being, and therefore also free causes as such. In this statement we can find everything which we have ascertained, namely, that the activities of free beings are determined from within, without prejudice to the absolute dependence which is indicated by the expression preservation. Considered in itself, however, this formula may be open to the censure that it appears to obscure the essential difficulties in a superficial way rather than actually solve them.

In a similar way a distinction is drawn in the concept of co-operation between a co-operation after the manner of free cause and a co-operation after the manner of natural cause.¹⁶ But this expression requires at least to be treated very cautiously if the differences of finite being are not to be placed within the Supreme Being and thus God Himself appear as the totality, a view which can scarcely be differentiated from that of Pantheism. The meaning can only be that God co-operates in every case with activities which are appropriate to the nature of the active thing, but only and always according to His own causality, which is entirely different from that which belongs to the sphere of reciprocal action.

Postscript to this Doctrine.—It seemed advisable to state these separate propositions, though it must be admitted that they were already implied in essence in the principal proposition of the doctrine, for two reasons. First, because it is easy here to put forward definitions which obscure the right relationship between creation and preservation. This is done when the miraculous is regarded as entirely supernatural, since in this way a secondary creative act comes in which partially suspends preservation and thus stands in opposition to it. The same result follows if we believe that evil was less ordained by God than other things, because, in that case, of the things equally created by Him, He would leave some in the lurch rather than others. And it occurs, finally, if we oppose free causes to natural ones so strongly that the former in their activity appear to be less dependent on God; for then they must derive their effectiveness partly from elsewhere while their existence itself they derive from God, and thus an inequality is introduced between creation and preservation.

Secondly, it was supremely important here to show the harmony between the interests of piety and science on the one hand and morality on the other. Indeed, morality must always be endangered or must endanger religion if the absolute dependence be so conceived that free self-determination cannot co-exist with it, or vice versa. Scientific knowledge, however, is twofold—that of natural science and that of history. Natural science is so hampered by the assumption of the absolutely supernatural within the course of nature that it would thereby be made entirely nugatory. History deals more particularly with the opposition between good and evil, and on account of the way in which they are clearly interwoven one with another, necessarily becomes fatalistic (that is to say, it must give up its relation to the idea of the good) if evil is either not ordained by God or less ordained by Him than its opposite. Our propositions, however, retain their purely dogmatic content and do not trench upon the ground of speculation, in spite of these connexions with it, because they are all implied in the principal proposition. Their common relation to it is not everywhere equally clear. It consists in this, that each in its own province puts forward a greatest and a least and, showing that the feeling of dependence holds good in an equivalent way for both limiting cases, establishes this equivalence as the rule for all religious expression. The antithesis between the ordinary and the miraculous goes back to the greatest and least in the sphere of nature from which both are to be explained; the antithesis between good and evil goes back to the greatest and least in the harmony of universal reciprocal activity with the independent being of the individual; the antithesis between freedom and mechanism goes back to the greatest and least in individualized life. It had, therefore, to be shown that if at any of these points the similarity of treatment failed, then the main proposition of the doctrine itself would fall to the ground, and neither the conditioned feeling of dependence nor the conditioned feeling of freedom could be combined with the absolute feeling of dependence. Beyond these there are no difficult cases to consider.

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Footnotes

1. Quenstedt, Syst. theol., p. 761: … ita ut idem effectus non a solo Deo nec a sola creatura, sed unâ eâdemque efficientiâ totali simul a Deo et creatura producatur … actum dico (sc. concursum Dei) non praevium actioni causae secundae nec subsequentem … sed talis est actus, qui intime in ipsa actione creaturae includitur, imo eadem actio creaturae est.—Ibid. p. 782: Non est re ipsa alia actio influxus Dei, alia operatio creaturae, sed una et indivisibilis actio utrumque respiciens et ab utraque pendens, a Deo ut causa universali, a creatura ut particulari. ↩

2. E.g. Morus, i. p. 306: limites non definiuntur quousque operatur sol, agricola, et ubi incipiat Deus … adjuvando et limitando efficit Deus, ut fiat consilium suum. ↩

3. Quenst., l.c.: Observandum quod Deus non solum vim agendi dat causis secundis et etiam conservat, sed quod immediate influit in actionem et effectum creaturae. ↩

4. Morus, i. p. 319: Gubernatio est opus Dei efficientis ut in mundo ipse suum semper adsequatur consilium. ↩

5. Cf. Storr, Dogm., § 25. ↩

6. Mosheim, op. cit., p. 462, calls the divine activity which works miracles ‘gubernatio immediata’ or ‘inordinata,’ and, by so doing, introduces an antithesis between miracle and the sustaining activity of God, to the advantage of the last-named in the latter formula, but to its disadvantage in the former. But religious feeling would equally refuse to interpose anything between that which is and the divine activity through which it is, and to impute something to the divine activity which is at the same time regarded as unordained. At the same time, the expression conflicts with the general explanation which he gives of ‘gubernatio’—namely, that it stands for a ‘directio virium alienarum,’ if, that is to say, the miracle is not to be explained by means of the relevant natural forces. —Reinhard calls (Dogm., p. 236) the same divine activity ‘providentia miraculosa,’ and explains it by ‘cura divina, qua Deus aliquid efficit mutationibus a consuetudine naturae plane abhorrentibus.’ If, as here, we look to find the antithesis in the divine care, then preservation would be an absence of care; if in the custom of nature, then the custom of nature is apparently something independent of the divine providence. Religious feeling would, necessarily, declare equally against both views. ↩

7. The formula that in such a case God acts without intermediary causes is in contradiction to our fundamental feeling, if for no other reason than that it represents God as under constraint within the ordinary course of nature. At bottom, however, this use of terms which describes natural causes as intermediary causes, is itself infected by the radical error of conceiving the dependence on God of what happens as dependence on particular finite causes—a dependence of the same kind, only lying further back. And, in fact, Storr (Dogm., p. 336), when seeking to show how God can act directly on the world, and change the course of nature without abrogating natural laws, seems to conceive Him in the manner of a finite free cause. ↩

8. Quenstedt, l.c.: Deo concursum suum subtrahente cessat creaturae actio. ↩

9. Morus (op. cit.) describes it thus: aut enim mentio quidem fit adminiculi naturalis; aut ne fit quidem mentio talis, sed praegresso verbo res facta est. ↩

10. Buddeus, Thes. de atheism., p. 291: Operatio, qua revera naturae leges, quibus totius huius universi ordo et conservatio innititur, suspenduntur. According to Thomas, p. 1, cap. cx.: ex hoc aliquid dicitur miraculum, quod sit praeter ordinem totius naturae creatae. ↩

11. Cf. Reinhard, Dogmat., p. 238: the above-quoted expression ‘consuetudo naturae’ is in this respect carefully chosen.—Morus treats the matter in the same sense but superficially in his Commentary, part i. p. 97 sq. ↩

12. Cf. Gerhard, loc. th. loc. xxiii. § 271. ↩

13. ↩

14. See § 47, 1. ↩

15. See § 4, 3. ↩

16. Concursus ad modum causae liberae, and ad modum causae naturalis. ↩