________________
CAUSATION AND EVOLUTION.
of jars. But little do they think of the grave difficulties that would arise if we were to assume the existence of an extra-cosmic personal God, not Himself the Universe, one Who has created good and evil, pain and sufferings for His creatures, but He Himself stands above and unaffected by these. On no theory of Divine dispensation and intervention in the affairs of the world from without, can evil and suffering be explained. The creation of evil and suffering except by an implied manicheaism which practically annuls the Godhead in attempting to justify its ways or excute its work.
In order to avoid these difficulties some take recourse to another line of reasoning making the agent and the patient to be one and the same and have made themselves bold to declare for an Ultimate Reality whose very nature is existence, knowledge and bliss infinite; Whose consciousness is in its nature creative or rather self-expressive force capable of infinite variations in phenomena and forms, and Who is endlessly enjoying the delight of those variations, and Who, therefore, might well be regarded as evolving
233
Theistic arguments involve grave difficulties.
Pantheistic arguments.
30
