The word
transcendental is like a parabola, in that there is no knowing where its
meaning ends. To say that matter is transcendental, is saying there is
no telling what it is up to. This habit of using words which have no
definite meaning is very convenient to writers, but very much the
reverse for readers. Some of the ancient Stoics distinguished between
the active and passive principles in the world, calling the one mind,
the other, matter. These however were as intimately united as matter and
life in a plant or animal.
_Theism in Unscriptural Forms._
There are men who are constrained to admit the being of God, who depart
from the Scriptural doctrine as to his relation to the world. According
to some, God created matter and endowed it with certain properties, and
then left it to itself to work out, without any interference or control
on his part, all possible results. According to others, He created not
only matter, but life, or living germs, one or more, from which without
any divine intervention all living organisms have been developed.
Others, again, refer not only matter and life, but mind also to the act
of the Creator; but with creation his agency ceases. He has no more to
do with the world, than a ship-builder has with the ship he has
constructed, when it is launched and far off upon the ocean. According
to all these views a creator is a mere _Deus ex machina_, an assumption
to account for the origin of the universe.
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