unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an active, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the ideal.(366) A Deity that manifests in Space and Time—these two being simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL—can be but a fractional part of the whole. And since that “All” cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that _sensed_ Creator (we say Creators) can be at best but the mere _aspect_ thereof. To use the same metaphor—inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand—these Creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become the instrumental media every spring—the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth—in fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct creation would be quite unbecoming to God—ἀπρεπὲς τῷ Θεῷ. Plato and other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to creation—αὐτουργεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “Hylozoism.” As old Zeno is credited by Laërtius with having said: Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was secreted.(367) Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there was vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical form, _i.e._, in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and its surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the real length of geological periods.