292 The Origin of a 'Thing' and its Nature 



such line. For the attempt to construe a thing entirely in 

 terms of history, entirely in the retrospective categories, 

 would make it impossible for him to stop at any point and 

 say * this far back is nature and further back is origin ' ; for 

 at that point the question might be asked of him : ' what is 

 the content of the career which describes the thing's origin ? ' 

 — and he would have to reply in exactly the same way 

 that he did if we asked him the same question regard- 

 ing the thing's nature at that point. He would have to 

 say that the origin of the thing observed later was de- 

 scribed by career up to that point ; and is not that exactly 

 the reply he would give if we asked him what the thing 

 was which then was ? So to get any reply to the question 

 of the origin of one thing different from that to the ques- 

 tion of the nature of an earlier thing, he would have to go 

 still farther back. But this would only repeat his diffi- 

 culty. So he would never be able to distinguish between 

 origin and nature except as different terms for describing 

 different sections of one continuous series of aspects of 

 behaviour. 



This dilemma holds also, I think, in the case of the 

 intuitionist. For as far as he denies the natural history 

 view of origins and so escapes the development above, 

 he holds to special creation by an intelligent Deity ; but to 

 get content to his thought of Deity he resorts to what he 

 knows of mental behaviour. The nature of mind then sup- 

 plies the thought of the origin of mind. 



To those who do not shut themselves up, however, to the 

 construction of things in the categories of realized fact, of 

 history, of 'retrospect,' the question of origin is a fruitful 

 one apart from the statement of nature. For at any stage 

 in the career of a thing the two methods of thought are 



