420 IMMORTALITY. 



But the philosophic truth which underlies all these 

 facts and all these beliefs is one and the same — that 

 of the ultimate supremacy of the final cause. It is 

 this superiority of the final cause which preserves 

 the conception of causation from self- refutation, 

 and which can alone give a real explanation of the 

 world-process. For it is only as the gradual reali- 

 zation of some pre-existent purpose that the process 

 has any real meaning. 



§ 2 1. These considerations open up several ways 

 in which pre-existence is compatible with heredity. 



In the first place, as the ultimate explanation of 

 everything is teleological, i.e.^ relative to the end of 

 the world-process, the parents must be in the last 

 resort held to transmit certain qualities to their 

 offspring in order to further the development of the 

 pre-existent spirits. For the parents are such as 

 they are, their parents are such as they are, and so 

 on, everything is such as it is, until the metaphysical 

 or first cause of the world-process is reached, which 

 is also its final cause, and acts in a certain way in 

 order to promote that process. 



And secondly, it is possible to conceive that just 

 as the hypnotic operator can affect the will of his 

 subjects without their knowledge, so the spiritual 

 entity influences the parents so to fashion the organ- 

 ism of the offspring as is required by its nature and 

 its needs. 



Thus the assertions that we are descended from 

 angels and ascended from beasts, that we are, {a) 

 phases in the development of ultimate spiritual 

 entities, {b) the resultants of the historical develop- 

 ment of our ancestors, do not clash, for they formu- 

 late the process from different points of view. And 

 not only do they not clash, but they supplement 



