THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 
most, by the aid now and then of a dim flash of 
light, to trace the path he has come. He has surely 
arrived, and we are, I believe, safe in saying he has 
come by the way of the lower orders; but the precise 
forms through which he has come, the houses in 
which he has tarried by the way, and all the adven- 
tures and vicissitudes that befell him on the journey 
— can we ever hope to know these things? In any 
case, man has his antecedents; life has its anteced- 
ents; every beat of one’s heart has its antecedent 
cause, which again has its antecedent. We can thus 
traverse the chain of causation only to find it is an 
endless chain; the separate links we can examine, 
but the first link or'the last we see, by the very na- 
ture of things, and the laws of our own minds, must 
forever elude us. Science cannot admit of a break 
in the chain of causation, cannot admit that miracles ° 
or the supernatural in the old sense, as external and 
arbitrary interference with the natural order, can 
play or ever have played any part in this universe. 
Yet science has to postulate a First Cause when it 
knows, or metaphysics knows for it, that with the 
Infinite there can be no first and no last, no begin- 
ning and no ending, only endless succession. 
To science man is not a fallen creature, but a 
many times risen creature and all the good of the 
universe centres in him. The mind that pervades 
all nature and is active in plant and animal alike 
first comes to know itself and regard itself and 
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