36 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



cellent one, eagerly demanded, and quite indispensable 

 to any perfect and final explanation. But every one 

 perceives that such a statement, such a deduction of the 

 Present from the Past, however accurate, is and always 

 has been and always will be in all generations incurably 

 lopsided and inadequate. For it states at most and at 

 best only the concatenated antecedents, the material 

 causes of the man's presence there ; it says not one word 

 about the grounds or reasons therefor. It answers per- 

 fectly the question how, but it is absolutely dumb with 

 regard to the weightier question why? Now it is pre- 

 cisely this question why that every man puts and must 

 put, and no man can be satisfied till it is answered. 

 Moreover, it is a matter of immediate knowledge, as 

 primary as primary can be, that no possible assignment 

 of causes, of antecedent conditions, can ever satisfy the 

 questioner, who is seeking for reasons and not causes. 

 Still further, observe that the only satisfying answer will 

 be in terms of the Future, and not of the Past. The 

 man will say : ' I desire to hear and see something or 

 somebody/ At each instant the desire was a present 

 experience, but the thing desired was and remains from 

 first to last in the Future. At the start he desired to 

 hear the beginning, then he was eager to hear the middle, 

 and finally became impatient to hear the end. When he 

 heard that, he straightway heaved a sigh of relief and 

 hastened home. Once and always his desire is still 

 ahead and beckons him on from instant to instant. It is 

 a voice crying out forever from the bosom of the flying 

 hours. It is the call of the time to come. It is a tug 

 from before, not a thrust from behind; it is the pull of 

 the Future, not the push of the Past. ... On the side of 

 matter, of cause and effect, the universe is one immeasur- 

 able Memory. On the side of mind, of purpose and aim, 

 it is one unbounded Hope. . . . 



