the Creator, the human will being His own handiwork.

At the root of this argument lies yet another consideration upon which
unbelieving thinkers rely still more: it is drawn from the alleged
incompatibility between the conception of a created being and free will,
and will be noticed presently. It is commonly regarded as the principal
difficulty which Theists and Pantheists are condemned continually to
encounter without ever being able to explain--the rock, so to say, upon
which their optimistic systems strike, and are shattered to
pieces--unless protected by the armour of supernatural faith.

But besides the Christian and Pantheistic theories, there is another
explanation of the origin of evil offered by the religion of more than
one-third of the human race. It is a theory which can readily be labelled
and libelled by the most unphilosophical reader, but cannot be grasped
and appreciated without serious study and reflection by the most
intelligent, for it is based upon the doctrine that time, space and
causality have no existence outside the human mind.[17] The world which
we see and know, therefore, and everything it contains is "such stuff as
dreams are made of"--the woof and warp being evolved from, and interwoven
by, our own minds. Underlying the innumerable illusive appearances which
we call the world is a reality, a being or force which is one. We and
everything else are but manifestations, in time and space, of this one
reality with which, however, each and every one of us is at bottom
identical and whose sole attribute is unity. This force or will manifests
itself in myriads of facets, so to say, in the universe, and these
manifestations are not good, constitute, indeed, a sort of fall.
Intelligence is not one of the primary attributes of this eternal will.
It attained to clear consciousness and knowledge only in man and then for
the first time perceived that the existence for which it yearned is evil