THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 



most, by the aid now and then of a dim flash of 

 light, to trace the path he has come. He has surely 

 arrived, and we are, I believe, safe in saying he has 

 come by the way of the lower orders; but the precise 

 forms through which he has come, the houses in 

 which he has tarried by the way, and all the adven 

 tures and vicissitudes that befell him on the journey 

 can we ever hope to know these things? In any 

 case, man has his antecedents; life has its anteced 

 ents; every beat of one s heart has its antecedent 

 cause, which again has its antecedent. We can thus 

 traverse the chain of causation only to find it is an 

 endless chain; the separate links we can examine, 

 but the first link or the last we see, by the very na 

 ture of things, and the laws of our own minds, must 

 forever elude us. Science cannot admit of a break 

 in the chain of causation, cannot admit that miracles 

 or the supernatural in the old sense, as external and 

 arbitrary interference with the natural order, can 

 play or ever have played any part in this universe. 

 Yet science has to postulate a First Cause when it 

 knows, or metaphysics knows for it, that with the 

 Infinite there can be no first and no last, no begin 

 ning and no ending, only endless succession. 



To science man is not a fallen creature, but a 

 many times risen creature and all the good of the 

 universe centres in him. The mind that pervades 

 all nature and is active in plant and animal alike 

 first comes to know itself and regard itself and 

 219 



