“ The doctrine of emanation is thus to be distinguished from the cosmogonic theory of Judaism and Christianity, which explains human existence as due to a single creative act of a moral agent. The God of Judaism and Christianity is essentially a person in close personal relation to his creatures; emanation is the denial of personality both for God and for man. The emanation theory is to be contrasted, on the other hand, with the theory of evolution. ”

“ There is considerable superficial similarity between evolution and emanation, especially in their formal statements. The process of evolution from the indeterminate to the determinate is often expressed as a progress from the universal to the particular. Thus the primordial matter assumed by the early Greek physicists may be said to be the universal substance out of which particular things arise. The doctrine of emanation also regards the world as a process of particularization. ”

“ That essence is not only all-inclusive, but absolutely perfect, while the “emanated” individuals degenerate in proportion to the degree of their distance from the essence. The existence of evil in opposition to the perfect goodness of God, as thus explained, need not be attributed to God’s agency, inasmuch as the whole emanation-process is governed by necessary—as it were mechanical—laws, which may be compared to those of the physical universe. ”

“ The universal is, as Herbert Spencer remarked, a subjective idea, and the general forms, existing ante res, which play so prominent a part in Greek and medieval philosophy, do not in the least correspond to the homogeneous matter of the physical evolutionists. ”

“ They differ, however, fundamentally in this respect, that, whereas evolution regards the process as from the indeterminate lower towards the determinate higher, emanation regards it as from the highest to the indefinitely lower. ”