Solution of the great problem

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...a series of ascending phases which may deceive a superficial observer, and lead him to believe that matter is itself the cause of its own progression. But reason tells us in the clearest manner that the greater does not come of itself from the lesser. If matter ascends, it is because it is drawn upwards by some force more perfect than itself. The inferior nature is assimilated by the superior which it supposes pre-existent. The imperfect supposes the perfect, as the efficient cause. It is therefore absurd to explain the world by what is imperfect, existing of itself and developing itself. The only rational explanation of the world consists in placing at the beginning the infinitely perfect producing all the ordered perfections which we behold. And thus is destroyed the fundamental error of evolution without God, the theory so elaborately worked out by Herbert Spencer. III. Creation Is Impossible After the materialists, we are faced by the pantheists, who deny the real distinction between the world and God, and tell us, either that all beings are only modifications of the sole divine substance, or that the world by a kind of generation has issued from the substance of God. Their argument is that creation out of nothing is impossible. They say in effect: 1st. Out of nothing there can be nothing made. Ex nihilo nihil. Answer: This is to say that if at a certain moment nothing existed there would never have been anything. Without a cause, no effect. But that does not mean that an efficient, infinite cause cannot without pre-existing matter cause new beings to exist. 2d. If God had created out of nothing creatures distinct from Himself, as each of these creatures has its being and its perfection, their whole added to God would make more perfection. Now that is i...