"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be in re is greater than to be in intellectu, then has the creature man, according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator essentially and necessarily has. For his will is by nature causative, creative, productive ad extra, and it is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine consciousness without realizing themselves ad extra!" (Pp. 540, 541.)
We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act ad intra, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act ad extra, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary, universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The Episcopalian journals were right in calling the Church Review's criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.
In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in his introduction to the Posthumous Works of Maine de Biran, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is worth.
[Footnote 39: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. p. xxi.]
We admit that in some sense God may be a vis activa, but we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the potentia nuda of the schoolmen, and means that God is in actu most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential, in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself; and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act ad extra, that is, create existences distinct from himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be otherwise than three persons in one God, if, per impossibile, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession ad intra, or ad extra? Is the distinction of three persons a distinction from God, or a distinction in God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that "between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction from God, you deny the divine unity—assert three Gods; if you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself, not a living God.
The action of God ad intra is necessary, proceeds from the fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action of God ad extra, or creation, proceed from the necessity of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation, everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity? Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted the expression. Be it so. But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action ad intra and action ad extra, his very assertion that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation, destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)
[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine, that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation can be only an evolution or development of himself, and consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]
Metaphysical necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537, means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by metaphysical, the reviewer means moral; then God is under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative cannot but create." Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative, is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while asserting that God is infinitely and essentially active in his own being, we denied that he is essentially creative. He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin against our criticisms.
7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.