the world, that is, the Deity, as being the immortal and eternal, forms the contrast to the world which is the transient. In the cosmology of the Apologists the two fundamental ideas are that God is the Father and Creator of the world, but that, as uncreated and eternal, he is also the complete contrast to it.[423] These dogmas about God were not determined by the Apologists from the standpoint of the Christian Church which is awaiting an introduction into the Kingdom of God; but were deduced from a contemplation of the world on the one hand (see particularly Tatian, 4; Theophilus, I. 5, 6), and of the moral nature of man on the other. But, in so far as the latter itself belongs to the sphere of created things, the cosmos is the starting-point of their speculations. This is everywhere dominated by reason and order;[424] it bears the impress of the divine Logos, and that in a double sense. On the one hand it appears as the copy of a higher, eternal world, for if we imagine transient and changeable matter removed, it is a wonderful complex of spiritual forces; on the other it presents itself as the finite product of a rational will. Moreover, the matter which lies at its basis is nothing bad, but an indifferent substance created by God,[425] though indeed perishable. In its constitution the world is in every respect a structure worthy of God.[426] Nevertheless, according to the Apologists, the direct author of the world was not God, but the personified power of reason which they perceived in the cosmos and represented as the immediate source of the universe. The motive for this dogma and the interest in it would be wrongly determined by alleging that the Apologists purposely introduced the Logos in order to separate God from matter, because they regarded this as something bad. This idea of Philo's cannot at least have been adopted by them as the result of conscious reflection, for it does not agree with their conception of matter; nor is it compatible with their idea of God and their belief in Providence, which is everywhere firmly maintained. Still less indeed can it be shown that they were all impelled to this dogma from their view of Jesus Christ, since in this connection, with the exception of Justin and Tertullian, they manifested no specific interest in the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus. The adoption of the dogma of the Logos is rather to be explained thus: (1) The idea of God, derived by abstraction from the cosmos, did indeed, like that of the idealistic philosophy, involve the element of unity and spirituality, which implied a sort of personality; but the fulness of all spiritual forces, the essence of everything imperishable were quite as essential features of the conception; for in spite of the transcendence inseparable from the notion of God, this idea was nevertheless meant to explain the world.[427] Accordingly, they required a formula capable of expressing the transcendent and unchangeable nature