THE CONTROL OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 337 



of the children of efficient parents. It therefore follows that, although 

 we can not trace the control absolutely to effort in the individual, we 

 can still find a part of the difference accounted for in the efforts of a 

 line of ancestors, or in parents whose special aptitudes, perhaps at- 

 tained directly by work, are united with magnifying effect in one of 

 their children.* If we go back of the effective qualities of men, we 

 encounter the unfathomable fact of the persistence of force ; for the 

 most important characteristic of these effective qualities is a certain 

 mechanical motive power. It may be possible to definitely separate 

 the force in men into the presence or absence of different kinds of it 

 in a line of ancestors, but ultimately we are obliged to say that the 

 first impulse took place for the same reason that the earth persists in 

 its course round the sun, or for the same reason that motion appears 

 to be an inevitable attribute of matter. Of course this is not account- 

 ing for it. It is simply reducing the question to a point of fact be- 

 yond which further investigation is apparently useless. In estimating 

 our power of control, the right method is to start with the qualities 

 existing, or latent, and then proceed to their effects. We may say, 

 with Herbert Spencer, that special forms of thought-force were built up 

 through processes of action and adjustment, but, as involved or noticed 

 in his conclusions, this only dissolves the existing special manifestations 

 of force into a general but at the same time unaccountable force. 



While the enormous magnitudes and forces in nature remind us 

 of our helplessness, it is yet clear that the tendency to master distant 

 facts is constantly stimulated by natural phenomena. We ought not 

 to be discouraged by the fact that exceptional events are not always 

 classified or reduced to order by us — their connection is often lost, 

 owing to our limited grasp of duration — nor by the truth that as nat- 

 ural phenomena recede from us we are more conscious of problems 

 beyond the circumstances or surroundings which we partly control. 

 Many apparent disconnections gradually lead us away from the series 

 close at hand. The heavenly bodies, for example, manifest so much 

 variation in movement and brightness, that men are led to undertake 

 increasingly difficult or more delicate tasks of calculation, as in esti- 

 mating the distances of a Centauri, Sirius, Vega, and other stars. 

 Another result is, that attempts are made to form at least a theoretical 

 idea of the physical conditions of suns and planets through knowledge 

 attained by means of the spectroscope. The conclusions thus reached 

 are necessarily imperfect because based upon fragmentary data, but 

 the mental tendency to inquire is with scientific minds inevitable, be- 

 cause there are always appearing, with every increase of telescopic 

 power, other stars beyond those last discovered. 



It thus appears that while the high aims of Plato and Aristotle find 



* A certain artist seems to have inherited his father's habit of keen observation and 

 his mother's mechanical ingenuity. Very often, however, these characteristics can not 

 be definitely traced back. 

 VOL. XXIV. — 22 



