Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/145

 the Creator. The Creator embodies potentially a succession of causes, or more accurately a succession of ends, that supports the proceeding effects.

Again, consider another series. There is the life-force in plants that forms leaves, flowers, and fruits, which are effects that matter is totally incapable of producing of itself. Animal instincts are effects of a still higher cause. Human intelligence is a still higher effect, and must come from a still higher cause. The causes of the powers in plants, animals, and man are manifestly a series of causes superior to the natural world. Therefore, because the natural world is an ascending, ordinated series of effects from causes, which causes are in the spiritual world, it is conclusive that the causes in the spiritual world and consequently the substances in which they inhere—for causes can not exist apart from substance—are, like nature, arranged into a series of distinct degrees, reaching upward from the lowest parts of the spiritual world that lie next to material substance to the great First Cause, the primal fountain of all activity, God, the Creator and Sustainer.

It has been shown in a general way what the Creator is; that His substance is Love, consti-