Substance and Shadow

But this alternative is wholly lacking in the catastrophe imagined by orthodoxy. Orthodoxy alleges that God makes all things out of noth- ing, out of absolutely no material whatever ; so that if they turn out ill, the responsibility of their aberration in no way attaches to them- selves: for by the hypothesis they have no selfhood or character but what God imposes upon them, being summoned into instant con- sciousness by the creative fiat : and so attaches wholly to their maker. The orthodox concep- tion is that the creature is formed out of abso- lutely nothings and hence is utterly destitute of subjective force or selfhood apart from his ob- jective being: so that any evil which may ap- pear in him attributes itself instantly to the creator, confesses itself exclusively due either to His original want of genius to conceive, or His original want of skill to execute, a perfect work: in short, to some defect in the creative love or wisdom, or both.