distributively is true of them taken all together when there is question of what belongs to their nature; and the fact that their active powers and passive potentialities _fall short_ of the actuality of the effects we attribute to them is a fact that appertains to their very nature as finite things. The phenomenon of continuous change in the universe involves the continuous appearance of _new actual being_. To account for this constant stream of actuality we are of necessity carried beyond the system of finite, changing being itself; we are forced to infer the existence of a source and principle which must itself be purely actual and exempt from all change—a Being who can cause all the actuality that results from change without losing or gaining or changing in any way Himself, because He possesses all finite actuality in Himself in a supereminent manner which transcends all the efforts of finite human intelligence to comprehend or characterize in any adequate or positive manner. The scholastics expressed this in the simple aphorism: _Omne novum ens est a Deo_. And it is the realization of this profound truth that underlies their teaching on the necessity of the Divine _Concursus_, _i.e._ the influence of the Infinite First Cause or Prime Mover permeating the efficiency of all finite or created causes. Here, for example, is a brief recent statement of that doctrine:— “If we must admit a causal influence of these things [of direct experience] on one another, then a closer examination will convince us that a finite thing can never be the adequate cause of any effect, but is always, metaphysically regarded, only a part-cause, ever needing to be completed by another cause. Every effect is—at least under one aspect, at least as an effect—something new, something that was not there before. Even were the effect contained, whether formally or virtually, in the cause, it is certainly not identical with this latter, for if it were there would be no causality, nothing would ‘happen’. In all causing and happening, something which was heretofore only possible, becomes real and actual. But things cannot determine themselves to influence others, or to receive the influence of others, since they are not dependent in their being on one another. Hence the necessary inference that all being, all happening, all change, requires the concurrence of an Absolute Principle of being. When two things act on each other the Absolute Being must work in and with them, the same Absolute Being in both—to relate them to each other, and supplement their natural insufficiency.”