acts by necessity; or, will operates in freedom, both per se and in regard to the provoking cause, but is bound if analyzed with reference to the divine omniscience. Man feels himself free; therefore he is responsible and must be rewarded or punished. The accompanying sentiment (readiness or disinclination to act) makes the deed our own. Purpose of the world Maimonides rejected as futile and unwarranted all inquiry into the ultimate purpose of the world. Crescas posits such an ultimate purpose and assumes it to be the happiness of the soul. In this life the soul is intently striving after union with the divine; the laws of the Torah help to realize this, the soul's, never quiescent yearning. After death, the soul will enter upon greater possibilities of love, in the higher existence. Former thinkers made immortality depend on knowledge. Crescas believed that this was contrary to the teachings of religion, and also utterly unreasonable. Love, for Crescas, brings about the soul's happiness of eternal duration in the hereafter and the communion with God thereupon ensuing. "The soul is the form and essence of man, a subtle spiritual substance, capacitated for knowledge, but in its substance not yet cognizant." By this definition Crescas attempts to establish the soul's independence of knowledge. Knowledge does not produce the soul. Man's highest perfection is not attained through knowledge, but principally through love, the tendency to, and longing for, the fountainhead of all good. Man's last purpose, his highest good, is love, manifested in obedience to God's laws. God's highest purpose is to make man participate in the eternal bliss to come. The third main division devotes much attention to the theories concerning Creation. Whatever theory, however, be accepted, the belief in miracles and revelation is not affected. Religious tradition is so preponderatingly in favor of the assumption that the world and matter are created, and Gersonides' counter-reasoning is so inconclusive, that Crescas regards the denial of creation as heterodox. Immortality, punishment, reward, resurrection (a miracle, but not irrational), the irrevocability and eternal obligation of the Law, the belief in urim and thummim and Messianic redemption, are the other tenets treated as doctrines which should be accepted, but which are not strictly speaking, basic. In the fourth division thirteen opinions are enumerated as open to speculative decision, among them the questions concerning the dissolution of the world. (Crescas holds the earth will pass away