The Theistic Conception of the World / An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought

by B. F. Cocker

2. Creation as the free act of God was not conditioned by any thing out of and foreign to the Divine nature.

A moment's reflection will suffice to convince us that a limitation posited from without would be as fatal to the idea of God as a supposed inherent necessity determining the Divine causality from within. The idea of God as the Being who is absolutely self-grounded, self-sufficient, and self-determined, equally excludes both. If God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense—the efficient cause of time and all temporal succession—the all-mighty cause of space, and of all spatial relations—the sole originator of the primordial substance, and of all its qualities, then the creative act can not have been conditioned by Time or Space or Matter.

In his otherwise admirable essay on "Nature and God," Mr. Martineau asserts that we can have no conception of even the possibility of a creation except on the assumption of the coeval existence of something objective to God as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation. He therefore affirms the coeval and co-eternal existence of Space and Matter, Time and Number, "with Him, and yet independent of Him."[62] The idea of God's "supplying Himself with objectivity" is, in his judgment, "discredited by modern science." The creative act must therefore have been conditioned by something other than God, and independent of God.

Now it must be obvious to every thoughtful mind that this assumption tends to the invalidation of every proof of the existence of God. If it can be shown that any one thing exists aside from and independent of God—that any thing exists which was not created by God—then may we claim equal independence for every other thing, and He who claims to be the Creator of all things is discredited. As Herbert Spencer urges, with great force, "If we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing."[63] With what reason can we say that some things do exist that never were created, but others can not so exist? If substances are eternal, why not attributes? If matter is self-existent, why not force? If space is independent, why not form? And if we concede the eternity of matter and force, why not admit the eternity of law—that is, uniformity of relations? And if so much is granted, why not also grant that a consequent order of the universe is also eternal? If we admit that any thing besides God is self-existent, that any thing exists independent of God as "the condition of the Divine agency and manifestation," then God is not the unconditioned Absolute Being. "A limitation posited from without directly destroys the idea of God, for it contradicts the idea of the Absolute."[64]

Mr. Martineau admits that the assumption of "the coeval existence of matter as the condition and medium of the Divine agency" "rests on quite other grounds than those which support our belief respecting space."[65] We can conceive the non-existence of matter, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space. The idea of space is absolutely necessary, therefore "no one asks a cause for the space of the universe."[66] In making this assertion, however, Mr. Martineau betrays some want of acquaintance with the history of the philosophy of space and time. Many able and thoroughly philosophic minds have "asked a cause," and have assigned a cause for "the space of the universe." Sir Isaac Newton held that "God endures always and is present every where, and by existing always and every where constitutes duration and space."[67] This doctrine, thus generally stated, is held by Saisset to be incontestible.[68] McCosh also believes that time and space are not independent of God: "I am not necessarily obliged to believe that the infinity of space and time is independent of the infinity of God.... Who will venture to affirm that space and time, being dependent on God, may not stand in some relation to God which is altogether indefinable and utterly incomprehensible by us."[69] Finally, Schleiermacher and Nitzsch do not hesitate to teach that "God is the all-mighty cause of space" and "the efficient cause of time."[70]

The question whether the idea of space is conditionally or unconditionally necessary can only be determined by the solution of the deeper question whether space is a real entity or a relation. If space is a real entity, it must have properties or attributes, but what philosopher of any reputation has ever attempted to set down the properties or attributes of space? They who assert that space is an uncreated, independent, and indestructible entity, ought to be able to define it and tell what it is. Dr. Porter tells us that space can not be defined, "We can not form a concept of this entity by means of generalized attributes or relations."[71] Can that be for us an entity of which we can form no concept, and which we can not determine in thought by any attribute or relation? The writer of the article on "The Philosophy of Time and Space," in the North American Review,[72] is an earnest defender of the objective reality of space as an independent and indestructible entity, and he has defined and analyzed the concept. "Space is absolute vacuity" (p. 91). "The idea of space is a triple synthesis ... of three negative notions—receptivity, unity, and infinity; the first is the negation of matter, the second is the negation of divisibility, the third is the negation of limitation" (p. 95). Do these words convey any knowledge? Absolute vacuity is void, empty, inane. Absolute vacuity is pure nothing, and of course there is nothing to be divided and nothing to be limited. Absolute vacuity is a negation, and unity and infinity are negations of a negation—that is, they are predicates of nothing. "Negative notions" must be predicates of something, otherwise they are a mere negation or absence of thought, and convey absolutely no knowledge. We may, if we please, assert with Hegel, that "Nothing is the same as Being," and then amuse ourselves with making affirmations concerning vacuity, nihility, and unreality to the disgrace of philosophy; but the common-sense of mankind will repudiate our absurdities. We can not think about nothing; all thought must be positive. Thought must have an object, and that object must be either an entity, or the attribute of an entity, or a relation between entities.

If pure space is regarded as "absolute vacuity"—pure nothing—then we may readily dispose of the argument on which Prof. Stewart relies with so much confidence. "Divine omnipotence can not annihilate space,"[73] therefore it must be an independent reality. We have simply to answer—the notion of annihilating nihility is an absurdity and a contradiction. There is nothing to be annihilated, and Omnipotence even must be inadequate to the annihilation of nothing.

If, with Leibnitz, Lord Monboddo, Calderwood, and many modern physicists,[74] we reject the notion of "absolute vacuity"—infinite space—and regard space as a relation—the relation of position, distance, direction—then, like all the quantitive relations of mathematics, it may be regarded as conditionally necessary—that is, bodies being given, they must necessarily have place, distance, and direction.[75] Space as a necessary relation is a reality, but a reality which is conditioned and conditional, and "God is the all-mighty cause of space." If all bodies were annihilated, there would be no position, no distance, no direction, and consequently space would be annihilated. There would remain nothing but the timeless, spaceless, Infinite One, who is the efficient cause of all existence, all qualities, and all relations. This, again, would be a sufficient answer to the sophism of Dr. Clark, quoted and indorsed by Stewart—"God can not annihilate the space in this room!" Annihilate the room, and the relative space in the room is no more—that is, the distance between the inclosing walls. Of "pure space" apart from the relations of bodies we have no conception, can have no conception; for to annihilate all bodies, in thought, we must annihilate our own body, and to a disembodied spirit there can be no here and no there. Place is a relation belonging to extension, and extension is a property of matter only.[76]

There has been so much confusion of thought generated by the mere word-jugglery of philosophers in the use of the terms time and space, duration and extension, eternity and immensity, that a revision of the whole terminology in the interest of true science is demanded. It is perilous to launch out upon this ocean of equivocal phraseology, called the philosophy of time and space, before taking our bearings, amid notions so closely related, yet so dissimilar, and endeavoring to fix some definite meaning to these terms, which, like points of the compass, shall enable us to find our position.

1. Let us commence our effort with SPACE, EXTENSION, and IMMENSITY. Some philosophers—Cousin,[77] Hamilton,[78] Spencer,[79] McCosh,[80] for example—confound space and extension, and all of them confound both with absolute immensity.[81]