CHAPTER VI 



PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS 



The first aspect which we have, of evolutionary creation 

 of the Hfe forms of the natural world, is of course that of 

 the life around us. Our questions first arise in regard to 

 things that are visible or perceptible, ourselves included. 

 Whence come they, and we, and whither do we all go? The 

 answers are not first approached at the beginning; we seek 

 to reach the beginning, by studying first the present, and 

 then the next earlier ; and backward from that to the next, 

 until we seem to have reached a point which might be a 

 starting point. Then on this starting point we arrange our 

 knowledge chronologically, or at least consecutively, so that, 

 in cause and effect, the laws and series of laws appear, and 

 lead up again to the present ; and then we conceive of these 

 laws operating in similar sequence onward into the future, 

 until we imagine what seems to be an end. 



Such has been usually the natural method of objective 

 philosophy and reasoning, and such it probably will be at 

 all times. A knowledge of the past of this kind, gave to 

 our civilization the old conception of the creation, and from 

 this starting point the prevailing knowledge led through a 

 historic system to what was then the present, to be revised 

 and developed into the basis of the aspirations of prophetic 



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