creative word; or, more correctly, the word (creation-Logos) has made real the divine thought of humanity, has, in fact, become humanity endowed with the permanent power of developing or producing individuals and nations through generation, which is a secondary creation. On the divine side the divine idea of humanity is perfectly realized; but on the human, the realization is still in progress. The freedom of the will, to use an illustration, is the gift of God, but the exercise of it is left with the individual. In the same way the human race has the potency of generation, through which it may develop itself as a whole into men and nations. In my theory these human souls are not the arbitrary product of the parents. They are created, but not by an immediate creation. In the treatise on "The Origin of Human Souls,"* I have answered the usual objections to this theory, and shown how it explains many phenomena in the nature and history of man otherwise inexplicable. The simple unity of the soul is not endangered by it, for new souls are shown not to be made of parts, but to have their unity from the essential oneness of the human race. The souls of the parents are not used sexually in their procreation, for as souls they neither beget nor are begotten. The bodily functions are not causes, but are only used instrumentally in the generation of souls. There is no occasion surely for Christian theologians who recognise a generation even in the divine life, to place generation and sexuality in any necessary connection, or to be always thinking of coarse sensuality when generation is mentioned. Nor is the immortality of souls endangered by the theory of generation. The saying of Thomas Aquinas that it is heretical to maintain that human souls come by generation, because therefore they must be transient, is not applicable here. The new formation of a soul does not take place through a putting together of parts, or through mere transformation, or the operation of the potencies of physical matter or powers, so that the origin of the soul cannot be the ground of its transiency. The abnormal and often frightful phenomena in the new formations of human nature-abortions, monster births, and things of that kind-are more easily and naturally explained on the generation theory than by the supposition that the human soul, as the life-principle of the body, is immediately created by God at the time of the conception.

In the origin of a soul through generation we must receive or regard it as following the law of all things temporal. The formation is progressive. A new soul is not issued suddenly by one stroke; but following the law of development, it may suffer disturbance in its progress. This is surely an easier explanation of the historical phenomena of barbarous and uncivilized races than to suppose that their souls came immediately from God, pure and good, only to * München Biegersche Buchhandlung, 1854.

become brutal as the barbarous nations are, and to perish for lack of knowledge. If the human race passes through stages corresponding to those of plants-as seeds, stems, branches, and seeds againjust on that account it will be exposed to varied influences, some of which will further and some impede its progress. And these influences will affect not merely the physical nature, but the conscious life-activity. With this view of the generation of souls the theological doctrine of original sin is easily explained, as well as the doctrine already mentioned of the generation of the Logos within the divine life itself.

This hypothesis of the generation of souls is opposed in the present day with incredible vehemence by the scholastically educated theologians in Germany, and by the Jesuits in Rome. The Civilta Cattolica, the organ of the Jesuits and of Pope Pius IX., calls it a "pestilential doctrine." The Jesuit Kleutgen, in his "Philosophy of the Past," has been at great pains to refute it, and to raise all kinds of suspicions concerning it. In Germany there is a considerable number of men who have been educated by the Jesuits in the so-called German College in Rome. They are employed in all kinds of spiritual offices, but their favourite vocation is that of professors in the collegiate institutions. They correspond with the Jesuits at Rome, and keep them well informed as to all matters which concern the Church. It is, as a rule, through them that the Congregation of the Index gets its first knowledge of suspected books. In 1857 my treatise on "The Origin of the Human Soul" was put in the Index. It had gone through the usual course of being denounced from Germany, and by the Congregation referred to the consultors and judges, among whom was my zealous adversary Kleutgen. That is perfectly right at Rome which is scarcely ever allowed in any other part of the world, that an adversary and accuser should be also a judge. Soon after this I received the usual request for submission to the decree of the Index; I say usual, for it is not founded on any law of the Church. Notwithstanding the greatest pressure, I refused submission and ignored the judgment which followed; a judgment of which I received no notice, and from which I had no opportunity of vindicating myself. The judges were determined opponents of my doctrine. Most of them had sworn by Thomas Aquinas, and taken an oath that they would inviolably teach and valiantly defend the doctrines of the Schoolmen. In refusing submission I retained the right of examining the charges brought against my doctrine, which I did chiefly against Kleutgen in my periodical, the Athenæum.

On the side of natural philosophy the chief objection to the idea of generation being a secondary creation is in the position, maintained

in many ways, especially since the time of Leibnitz, that the sum of the powers of nature remains the same. From this it is inferred that if new souls are introduced as new powers, the equilibrium and order of nature would be destroyed. But the balance of the sum of the powers in nature is in no way proved, in fact it falls to the ground the moment the least change in the measure of these powers in nature is admitted. Heat, for instance, is constantly streaming forth into space, yet it is in no way proved that it is replaced in the same measure by the sun. But to pass by this, the abiding relation of physical powers is not disturbed through the new or secondary creation of souls. The souls are not physical powers. They are psychical, and use the physical only as their mediums of action, but not to change their measure. This objection has never been urged by the theological opponents of the generation theory. The obvious reason is that their own hypothesis is open to the same objection.

To bring my theory as much as possible under the suspicion of heresy and to make it the terror of " the faithful," Kleutgen charged it with being a renewal of the heresy of the old Gnostics. That human souls arise through a mediate secondary creation, and that a creature can create, were supposed to be Gnostic doctrines. A very small acquaintance with Gnosticism will show that this charge is groundless. The Gnostics in their doctrine of creation were divided into two leading parties; one said that the world, or rather all organic and living beings, including men, were an efflux of the Deity or the divine region of light (Pleroma). The parts of light or powers were seized by the first matter, and thereby living souls were produced. The other class of Gnostics believed in a special world creator (Demiurgus), who, in immediate subordination to the supreme Deity, had created living essences, especially men. These views of the two chief parties of the Gnostics were held, indeed, by the most different Gnostic sects with many modifications. But not one of them had the most remote resemblance to the generation hypothesis as I have explained it. I neither make souls an emanation of the Deity nor the creations of a Demiurgus.

The chief objection of Kleutgen and other disciples of Scholasticism is the impossibility of a creature being able to possess the power of creation, or to call anything into being from nothing. This creation, being regarded as an absolute act, can belong, it is said, to none but God. On that account it cannot be transferred to any creature; and to say that this has been done was declared heretical. But the generation hypothesis does not suppose an absolute power transferred by God to any creature, nor that any creature can perform an absolute act. If we follow the Scholastics, the primary creation itself is relative; absolute acts are only supposed necessary in the

inner processes of the Divine existence, and not for the production of what is merely relative. The creation of the world can only be regarded as an absolute act on the theory that the world itself is absolute, and so the exhaustive expression of the divine power and essence. But this is the conception of Pantheism, which regards the world as the moment or expression not merely of the divine activity, but of the divine essence and life. But this is not granted by our Scholastic theologians, and therefore they have no right to say that a merely relative mode of activity, as creation from nothing, cannot be transferred to a creature. If the direct primary creation is merely relative, much more is the secondary creation, that is the creation which effects something new by the mediation of a creature. That this kind of production is an actual creation the Scholastics themselves must grant, from their interpretation of the Mosaic account of creation. According to this account the primary creation is simply the creation of the first matter out of nothing. The creation of plants and animals is afterwards effected through the medium of this matter. Now if it is said that the production of matter and form from nothing is a real creation (Productio rei ex nihilo sui et subjecti), but that the production of anything from something previously existing (Productio rei ex nihilo sui sed non ex nihilo subjecti) is not a creation, then the production of animals and men as recorded by Moses is not a proper creation.

But if creation out of nothing is to be regarded as emphatically an absolute act, we must remember that as the "nothing" is not anything absolute, so the production of something out of it cannot be an absolute activity. Production out of nothing is explained as meaning that the thing created was not made out of something which existed before. So that God is not merely a world-maker, but a world-creator. He did not seize upon nothing, and create the world out of it. In that case, the nothing would have been the matter out of which the world was made. But from nothing nothing comes. A world can only arise from divine power and will; therefore that which is created must be regarded only as the expression of that power and will. If the primary creation is only a relative act, it will not be strange that new creations are produced mediately from those that are themselves created. They are not produced from nothing, but by the creative power working, not immediately out of the eternal and absolute, but as it has entered into the temporal. As the preserving power operates for the preservation of the primary creation, so the secondary power of creation operates in the development of nature, producing organic forms and reasonable souls.

The Scholastics believe that the production through generation consists only in transformation. Beasts and the souls of beasts are

in their judgment only sensuous forms, which arose by change and by change pass away. But in what does this transformation consist? What is a sensuous soul? Evidently the souls of the parents, or rather their entire sensuous psychical nature, is regarded as the power which prepares transformation in the egg and seed, and perfects it in their union. But there must be something transformed, as well as a power which transforms. What is that something in the souls of beasts? Is it merely matter? Are the souls of beasts, on which depend the perceptions of sense, the instinct, memory, affection, and even to some extent intellectual capacities, merely the results of certain combinations of chemical and physical powers? Can these be capable of psychical functions? If this is to be maintained, which is simply the position of materialism, it will be difficult to show that from these combinations a yet higher power may not arise. The human soul itself may be only a more complete and more refined combination of material elements in the human brain. But the Scholastics reject materialism, and therefore they cannot say that in generation that which is transformed is merely matter and its powers.

It follows, then, that they must allow that that which is transformed and becomes a new soul arises from the life-principle, that is, the souls of the beasts themselves. In other words, the newly-produced soul has come from the souls of the parents, and since the new souls are entirely independent individual principles, and the souls of the parents have not been divided or made less in essence, then the new souls are new creations, and so generation must be regarded as a secondary creative power. The Scholastics admit that the souls of beasts are, in a measure, new creations (Productio rei ex nihilo sui sed non ex nihilo subjecti), not indirect, immediate, or primary, like the first creation, but mediate and secondary. This, we say, is the case in a higher sense with human souls; they are actual new creations through generation. If it is objected that it cannot be the same with the souls of men as beasts, because they are higher and independent of matter, we have only to remember that the human race is an entire unity, and as such it works in generation. If, then, the product or new soul is higher than the soul of the beasts, it is because of the higher nature of the parents, so that the higher effect corresponds to the higher cause. It may be said that generation. cannot be called creation, because creation implies the activity of the will, while generation belongs properly to the race. Now it is certainly true that the newly-created soul is not to be ascribed directly to the will of the parents, but that will is not excluded. It cooperates indirectly in the human race with the divine power, the power which, in a measure, constitutes humanity.