GREAT QUESTIONS IN LITTLE 



VIII. BEGINNINGS 



The problem of the beginning of anything when 

 philosophically considered is an elusive problem. 

 Everything and every condition has its antecedents, 

 and these antecedents have their antecedents. In 

 spring the sap begins to mount in the trees, but to 

 draw a line between its state of quiescence and its 

 state of activity could only be done in imagination. 

 It is not like a gun that is ready to go off when the 

 trigger is pulled. It goes off slowly and insensibly. 

 It is "fixing to begin to get ready" to go off all win- 

 ter, as the old colored w^oman said about a like 

 matter. The grain begins to sprout in the ground, 

 but the insensible changes in the germ that have 

 preceded the actual sprouting — what about them? 



Things in nature begin, but they begin away 

 back, and so gradually and insensibly that we can- 

 not put our finger on the point of actual beginning; 

 we have to imagine such a point. Spencer rej)udi- 

 ates the theory of spontaneous generation, or the 

 instantaneous birth of living matter from the non- 

 living, because such a theory admits of no steps or 

 gradations in the process. The theory of generation 

 by evolution is more thinkal^le — an immeasurably 

 slow transformation of the non-livnng into the living 

 without any fixed line between them. 



If we cannot say that life ever literally begins, can 

 we say that it ever literally ends? It is certainly 



303 



