Criticised.
The hypothesis in question is certainly one which, within the realm of theism, may well continue to be long the most plausible. It gives rise, however, to a great many difficulties. In the first place it assumes the superiority of what is spontaneous to what is not; of what, so to speak, does itself, as compared with what is done. Be it so, but in what respect can beings in this world be said to lead a spontaneous existence; in what respect can I be said to lead a spontaneous existence? Am I not the result of a multitude of causes? I was born and am maintained by the consilience of a multitude of little cellular or atomic volitions. Should I be less than I am if I were the result of a single volition, and that a divine volition? Over and above myself there always exist my antecedents, the causes of me; my true cause does not lie within the limits of myself: what difference does it make to me, therefore, whether those causes lie within the universe or beyond? Whether the world is the more or less harmonious work of a multitude of blind spontaneities or the work of a single intelligent will, neither diminishes nor increases the value of any given individual that is the product of the world. My ancestors are indifferent to me the instant I become dependent upon ancestors at all. Should the statue of Pygmalion reproach the sculptor with having made it beautiful, and having made it with his own hands, and definitively fashioned it for life? Providing it lives and is happy, it matters little whence its life comes. Obscurity lies behind, light and life lie before, and it is forward that one’s face is set.
Results in determinism.
In the new Platonic hypothesis, transfigured as above, the organization of the individual always becomes, in the last resort, the work of a reciprocal determinism. According to the ordinary hypothesis, it is the work of a single, absolute, determining will; but the absolute or relative character of the determining principle in nowise affects the nature of what is determined. The actual world is no more passive, if it is produced directly by the operation of the first cause, than if it is produced indirectly by the intermediation of a multitude of derivative causes, even if these causes present individually the character of spontaneity. After all, since the individual must always be solidary, solidarity between it and divine perfection is preferable to solidarity with derivative imperfection.
And contradicts itself.
There is, however, in the Platonic and Aristotelian notion of spontaneity an element of profundity and of verisimilitude, but it leads precisely to the refutation of the doctrine of creation: once carry the hypothesis of the spontaneity of existence to its ultimate conclusion, and the original fund of existence must be impoverished until nothing but nude unqualifiable substance be left; but that is to say, one must go back to Aristotle’s pure force, to Hegel’s pure being, which is identical with not being; the masterpiece of spontaneity would be self-creation. The instant such a spontaneity is possible God is a superfluity; it is easier to say that becoming arose out of the identity of being and not being, or rather that becoming is eternal on its own account. Becoming thus becomes God and theism becomes atheism or pantheism.
Summary.
To sum up, the Creator unable to create bare, virtual substance, must have created beings endowed with some real quality; but, if so, they are once for all his works and not simply independent workmen. More than that, such a substance with such qualities once created, such and such effects necessarily follow; qualities are determinations which determine subsequent determinations in their turn. Behold therefore the present, big with the future. The world becomes a determined succession of “works” which develop fatally from their earliest stage.
Doctrine that God has created beings free to choose criticized.
M. Secrétan will tell us that God simply created free wills but not substances; but it must be confessed that these free wills have been immersed in a deterministic universe which leaves them little liberty of action. Why, therefore, did He not create us freer and still freer and as free as Himself? But we should have been gods, it is objected:—so much the better, might be replied; there could not be too many gods; we do not see why God should have reduced himself to a unity, “as if the laws of number constituted a limitation of His power.”[132] It does not appear why the Creator should be unable to create a double of Himself; why He should be obliged to hand on the divine life, that He wishes to share, on lower terms only; we do not see why God’s productivity should involve a certain degeneration.