1. _In the beginning was_ MATTER--matter as the original substance or substratum, with its inherent, essential, and necessary attribute of force; this alone is eternal and infinite. "No force without matter--no matter without force." "Matter and its immanent force is immortal and indestructible." "The world is unlimited and infinite."[13] Matter, with its primary forces of attraction and repulsion, cohesion and affinity, is fully adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of the universe, physical, vital, and mental. 2. _In the beginning was_ FORCE--force homogeneous but unstable, and necessarily tending to differentiation and heterogeneity; splitting into opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, light, heat, magnetism, and electricity; and mounting up through the stages of physical, vital, and neural to the mental life itself, with all its varied and endless phenomena, as revealed in the languages, laws, institutions, arts, sciences, and religions of the world. Force is "the ultimate of all ultimates," the "Absolute Reality," the "Unconditioned Cause."[14] 3. _In the beginning was_ THOUGHT--thought as an eternal process of self-manifestation and self-actualization, which in its necessary evolution reveals itself as force, and expresses itself in the varied types of existence and laws of phenomena, natural and spiritual. "_The Absolute Idea_," as a perpetual process, an eternal thinking, is the supreme principle of all reality. "The idea of the Absolute Spirit comprehends the entire wealth of the natural and the spiritual world; it is the only substance and truth of this wealth, and nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of its being."[15] 4. _In the beginning was_ WILL--an unconditioned Will as the indivisible unity and perpetual differentiation of _Reason_ and _Power_ and _Love_. This Unconditioned Will is the causative principle of all Reality, all Efficiency, and all Perfection--a causative principle containing, predetermining, and producing all the manifold forms and relations, forces and laws of the universe in reference to a final purpose. This _Absolute First Cause_ is a living personal Being, "from whom, in whom, and to whom are all things."[16] The first and second of these propositions coalesce with the creed of _Atheism_, the third with the creed of _Pantheism_, the fourth is the creed of _Theism_, and, as we hope to prove in subsequent chapters, the only rational and adequate explanation of the facts of the universe. CHAPTER II. GOD THE CREATOR. "In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth."--Gen. i. 1. "GOD that made the world and all things therein.... He is Lord of heaven and earth."--Acts xvii. 24. "The Eternal Will is the creator of the world as He is the creator of the finite person."--FICHTE.