This is again considered by Mr.Spencer as a thoroughly illegitimate symbolic conception, as much so as the atheistic one--the difficulty as to a _self-existent Creator_ being in his opinion equal to that of a _self-existent universe_.

To this it may be replied that both are of course equally _unimaginable_, but that it is not a question of facility of conception--not which is easiest to conceive, but which best accounts for, and accords with, psychological facts; namely, with the above-mentioned intuitions.

It is contended that _we have_ these primary intuitions, and that with these the conception of a self-existent Creator is perfectly harmonious.

On the other hand, the notion of a self-existent universe--that there is no real distinction between the finite and the infinite--that the universe and ourselves are one and the same things with the infinite and the self-existent; these assertions, in _addition to_ being unimaginable, _contradict_ our primary intuitions.
Mr.Darwin's objections to "Creation" are of quite a different kind, and, before entering upon them, it will be well to endeavour clearly to understand what we mean by "Creation," in the various senses in which the term may be used.
In the strictest and highest sense "Creation" is the absolute origination of anything by God without pre-existing means or material, and is a _supernatural_ act.[257] In the secondary and lower sense, "Creation" is the formation of anything by God _derivatively_; that is, that the preceding matter has been created with the potentiality to evolve from it, under suitable conditions, {253} all the various forms it subsequently assumes.

And this power having been conferred by God in the first instance, and those laws and powers having been instituted by Him, through the action of which the suitable conditions are supplied, He is said in this lower sense to create such various subsequent forms.