A belief in transmigration is with Ward organically connected with his pluralism and pampsychism. For the pluralist "all the individuals there are have existed from the first and will continue to exist indefinitely";[192] and it follows that "'metempsychosis' in some form seems an unavoidable corollary of thoroughgoing pampsychism, so long as we look broadly at the facts of life as a whole."[193] The same doctrine that "all the individuals there are have existed from the first" affects, it should be noticed, the quality of Ward's theism. God is not transcendent in time, for we cannot conceive God without the world. He is not transcendent as being in His existence independent of the world, for a God who is not a creator is an abstraction.[194] Again He is not transcendent in the sense that He can now exercise creative power, for there can be no new creation since the beginning. 192: "The Realm of Ends,", p. 204. 193: _Ibid._, p. 213. 194: _Ibid._, p. 245. Before pampsychism, with its "unavoidable corollary" of metempsychosis, is adopted this theory itself should be subjected to a closer examination. While pampsychism has undoubted advantages as a philosophical theory, it has serious difficulties as well. It appears to have but slight relation to the progress of science in any of its lines. The whole scheme of evolution, from the inorganic through the vegetable to animal and man, is seriously modified. The movement is from consciousness to what is called matter, but consciousness seems to have suffered a sort of a "fall"; for in the geologic and astronomic ages before the introduction of life consciousness was at any rate reduced to the vanishing point. What, then, of the reality of those processes which geology and astronomy describe? Their reality as more than an imaginary prelude to human or animal life is open to question. The physiologist, moreover, will contend that there is no evidence of the presence of consciousness except in connection with a nervous system, or will at most admit a kind of diffused consciousness in all organic matter. The astronomer, finally, will think it strange to be told that while "we cannot, of course, affirm that a star or a meteor or a cluster of particles is an individual," we must as pluralists believe "that the real beings these phenomena imply have some spontaneity and some initiative."[195] 195: "The Realm of Ends," p. 455.