the Kantian antinomy regarding the conditions of what is
"given." It destroys the charm of the "purely causal" point of view by
showing that this in itself cannot be made complete and is therefore
contradictory. Moreover, in the phenomena of life, and in the fact that
consciousness and will control our corporeal processes, and yet can hardly
be thought of as a cause "co-operating" with other causes, we found an
analogy, if a weak and obscure one, of the relation that a divine
teleology and governing of the world may bear to mundane phenomena. Thus
mystery remains in all its strength and is not replaced by the surrogate
of a too simple and shallow dogmatic theory. In confessing mystery and
resting content with it we are justified by reflection on the nature and
antinomy of our knowledge.

All this is true also of what religion means by creation. In the feeling
of complete humility, in its experience of absolute dependence and
conditionedness, the creature becomes conscious of itself as a creature,
and experiences with full clearness what it means to be a "creature" and
"created." The dogmatic theory is here again only a surrogate of mystery.
And again critical self-reflection proves a better guide than any theory
of creation, which is quite in its place as a means of expression in
religious discourse and poetry, but is quite insufficient as true
knowledge. That we must but cannot think of this world either as beginning
or as not-beginning is the analogue in knowledge of what religion
experiences in mystery; and that this contingent and conditioned world is
founded in everlasting, necessary, true Being, is the analogue of what
religion possesses and knows through devout feeling, more directly and
clearly than by any thinking, of the relations of God to the world.

FOOTNOTES

1 This has been urged often enough even by scientific investigators.
In such cases they have frequently been reproached for dragging
miracles into nature when they call a halt in face of the
"underivable" and the "mysterious." This is a complete
misunderstanding. With miracles and with the supernatural in the
historical sense of these words, this mode of regarding nature has
nothing whatever to do. It would be much more reasonable to maintain
the converse: that there exists between supernatural ideas and the
belief in the absolute explicability and rationalisation of nature a
pec