According to this creationist theory, then, God has "made the world out of nothing." It is supposed that God (a rational, but immaterial, being) existed by himself for an eternity before he resolved to create the world. Some supporters of the theory restrict God's creative function to one single act; they believe that this extramundane God (the rest of whose life is shrouded in mystery) created the substance of the world in a single moment, endowed it with the faculty of the most extensive evolution, and troubled no further about it. This view may be found, for instance, in the English Deists in many forms. It approaches very close to our monistic theory of evolution, only abandoning it in the one instant in which God accomplished the creation. Other creationists contend that God did not confine himself to the mere creation of matter, but that he continues to be operative as the "sustainer and ruler of the world." Different modifications of this belief are found, some approaching very close to _pantheism_ and others to complete _theism_. All these and similar forms of belief in creation are incompatible with the law of the persistence of matter and force; that law knows nothing of a beginning. It is interesting to note that E. du Bois-Reymond has identified himself with this cosmological creationism in his latest speech (on "Neovitalism," 1894). "It is more consonant with the divine omnipotence," he says, "to assume that it created the whole material of the world in one creative act unthinkable ages ago in such wise that it should be endowed with inviolable laws to control the origin and the progress of living things--that, for instance, here on earth rudimentary organisms should arise from which, without further assistance, the whole of living nature could be evolved, from a primitive bacillus to the graceful palm-wood, from a primitive micrococcus to Solomon's lovely wives or to the brain of Newton. Thus we are content with _one_ creative day, and we derive organic nature mechanically, without the aid of either old or new vitalism." Du Bois-Reymond here shows, as in the question of consciousness, the shallow and illogical character of his monistic thought. According to another still prevalent theory, which may be called "ontological creationism," God not only created the world at large, but also its separate contents. In the Christian world the old Semitic legend of creation, taken from Genesis, is still very widely accepted; even among modern scientists it finds an adherent here and there. I have fully entered into the criticism of it in the first chapter of my _Natural History of Creation_. The following theories may be enumerated as the most interesting modifications of this ontological creationism: