in terms of
the corporeal, and which has dominion over it. Its beginning and its end
are wholly unfathomable. There is no practical meaning in discussing its
"origin" or its "passing away," as we do with regard to the corporeal.
Under certain corporeal conditions it is there, it simply appears. But it
does not arise out of them. And as it is not nothing, but an actual and
effective reality, it can neither have come out of nothing nor disappear
into nothing again. It appears out of the absolutely transcendental,
associates itself with corporeal processes, determines these and is
determined by them, and in its own time passes back from this world of
appearance to the transcendental again. It is like a great unknown sea,
that pours its waters into the configuration of the shore and withdraws
them again. But neither the flowing in nor the ebbing again is of nothing
or in nothing. Whether and how it retains the content, form, and structure
that it assumes in other spheres of animate and conscious nature, when it
retires into the transcendental again; or whether it dissolves and breaks
up into the universal we do not know; nor do we attribute everlastingness
to those individual forms of consciousness which we call animal souls. But
of the self-conscious, personal spirit religion knows that it is
everlasting. It knows this from its own sources. In its insight into the
underivability and autonomy of the spiritual it finds warrant and freedom
to maintain this knowledge as something apart from or even in contrast to
the general outlook on the world.

CHAPTER XII. THE WORLD AND GOD.

The world and nature are marvellous in their being, but they are not
"divine"! The formula "_natura sive deus_" is a monstrous misuse of the
word "_deus_," if we are to use the words in the sense which history has
given to them. God is the Absolute Being, perfect, wholly independent,
resting in Himself, and necessary; nature is entirely contingent and
dependent, and at every point of it we are impelled to ask "Why?" God is
the immeasurable fulness of Being, nature is indeed diverse in the
manifoldness of her productions, but she is nevertheless limited, and her
possibilities are restricted within narrow limits. God is the
unrestrained, and everlasting omnipotence itself, and the perfect wisdom;
nature is indeed mighty enough in the attainment of her ends, but how
often is she obstructed, how often does she fail to reach them, and how
seldom