34 INTRODUCTION 



These interrogations may be too strongly put. 

 'Accompaniments' of the cosmical system might 

 be better than 'products'; 'revelations through 

 that process' may be nearer the truth than 'results' 

 of it. But what it is intended to show is that the 

 moral order is a continuous line from the beginning, 

 that it has had throughout, so to speak, a basis in 

 the cosmos, that upon this, as a trellis-work, it has 

 climbed upwards to the top. The one — the trellis- 

 work — is to be conceived of as an incarnation ; the 

 other — the manifestation — as a revelation; the one 

 is an Evolution from below, the other an Involution 

 from above. Philosophy has long since assured us 

 of the last, but because it was never able to show 

 us the completeness of the first, science refused to 

 believe it. The defaulter nevertheless was not 

 philosophy but science. Its business was with 

 the trellis-work. And it gave us a broken trellis- 

 work, a ladder with only one side, and every 

 step on the other side resting on air. When 

 science tried to climb the ladder it failed ; the 

 steps refused to bear any weight. What did men 

 of science do? They condemned the ladder and, 

 balancing themselves on the side that was secure, 

 proclaimed their Agnosticism to philosophy. And 

 what did philosophy do? It stood on the other 

 half of the ladder, the half that was not there^ and 



