thought of as willed by God. At the same time I suggested as an
alternative view that, even if we think of things as having an existence
which is not simply in and for minds, the things must be caused to exist
by a rational Will. Now the world, as we know it, consists of a number
of changes taking place in time, changes which are undoubtedly
represented in thought as changes happening to, or {88} accidents of, a
permanent substance, whether (with the Idealist) we suppose that this
substance is merely the object of Mind's contemplation, or whether (with
the Realist) we think of it as having some sort of being independent of
Mind. But what of the first of these events--the beginning of the whole
series? Are we to think of the series of events in time as having a
beginning and possibly an end, or as being without beginning or end?
What in fact are we to make of the theological idea of Creation, often
further defined as Creation out of nothing? It is often suggested both
by Idealists and by Realists that the idea of a creation or absolute
beginning of the world is unthinkable. Such a view seems to me to be a
piece of unwarrantable _a priori_ dogmatism--quite as much so as the
closely connected idea that the Uniformity of Nature is an _a priori_
necessity of thought. No doubt the notion of an absolute beginning of
all things is unthinkable enough: if we think of God as creating the
world at a definite point of time, then we must suppose God Himself to
have existed before that creation. We cannot think of an event in time
without thinking of a time before it; and time cannot be thought of as
merely empty time. Events of some kind there must necessarily have been,
even though those events are thought of as merely subjective experiences
involving no relation to space. A beginning of existence is, {89}
indeed, unthinkable. But there is no difficulty in supposing that this
particular series of phenomena which constitutes our physical Universe
may have had a beginning in time. On the other hand there is no positive
evidence, for those who cannot regard the early chapters of Genesis as
representing on such a matter anything but a primitive legend edited by a
later Jewish thinker, that it had such a beginning. It is no doubt more
difficult to represent to ourselves a beginning of space; and the notion
of an empty space, eternally thought but not eternally filled up by any
series of phenomena of the space-occupying kind,