But this final cause of creation, such as it is given to us clearly and intelligibly, will be rendered most clear by a comparison and contrast with the conceptions of the end of nature which human reason has put forth. If the proposition already quoted from one of the latest of German philosophers, that the essence of mind consists in the negation of the opposite, be now applied (which was the application I then had in my mind) to the Creator of the world and uncreated Intelligence, then the following must be the meaning involved in it. That which is the opposite of God or the Creator is nothing; and so far the proposition is quite true, since man can not but admit that the Almighty has created the world out of nothing. For if, with some of the ancient philosophers, we were to suppose a matter existing from all eternity, out of which God did not so much create as form the world, then in this case we should have two Gods, and both imperfect and finite, instead of the one all-perfect and self-sufficient Being. But if, on the other hand, the Deity be regarded as merely a not-nothing; if the final cause of creation be simply the negation of naught, then would such a view ascribe a sort of imaginary reality to the nothing, and it would seem that the world was created solely in order to get rid of the nothing, which comes pretty much to the same as saying--if we may allow ourselves so Lessing-like a boldness of expression--the Infinite made the world out of _ennui_. Thus, in every case do the skeptical views and empty negations of idealism lead to a contradictory nothing.
But, in reality and truth, it was out of love that God made the worlds; and, indeed, out of a superabundant love. This we may well venture to assert, and even to call it a fact; and that the divine love is also the final cause, as well as the beginning of creation. A superabundance of love in God we must, however, call the final cause-ground of creation, inasmuch as He stood in no need of it; no need of the love of the creature, nor absolutely of the world itself, or created things. For in His inmost essence, where one depth of eternal love responds fully and eternally to the other, He was perfectly sufficient for himself. And yet it is even so: there is in God the superabundance of love, for He has created the worlds, and it is the divine will to be loved by His creatures. For this end and purpose has He created them; and because He would have their love, He has created them free, and given both to the pure spirits and to men a free will. The whole secret in the relation subsisting between the creature, and man especially, and the Creator, lies even in this great fact, that He has created them out of love, and requires in return the service of their love. There is, perhaps, something awful in this requisition, and in the relation thus found to subsist between a weak and imperfect creature and the infinite and omnipotent Being. But it is even so: we are really free, and are really required by God to give him our love. But now a finite and created being can only be free so far as God leaves him free; and this is only conceivable in the light I have already set it in by the simile of a fond mother teaching her babe to walk, and in order to tempt it to make the first essay with its little limbs, stepping back from it a few steps, and leaving it a moment to itself. No creature could be free did not God, in a similar way, leave it to itself, and, after the first impulse of creation, withhold from it His controlling energy. But if He did not do so--were He, on the contrary, to act upon His creatures without reserve, and with the whole infinite extent of his might--then the liberty of the latter, overwhelmed in His omnipotence, must be destroyed, as being only possible through the spontaneous limitation of the divine power, which results from the superabundance of creative love.