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of itself; we perceive only the results of force. We see results issue into the field of our observation, as if spontaneously; they boil up out of non-being into being. The power from which they issue may be One, as a single mighty vein of water feeds many never-failing springs. To that subterranean source we cannot penetrate; beneath the world of being to the world of causing our science cannot reach. We speak freely of causation, but of original causation we are absolutely ignorant.

It is not uncommon to suppose that there is only one kind of original force; that all purely mechanical effects can be traced to a single power, the operation of which we recognize in gravity and every form of attraction and repulsion; and not only that all mechanical effects are operations of that single power, but also that chemistry, if fully understood, would be seen to be only a subtler mechanics; and that life itself, when thoroughly comprehended, would prove to be a yet subtler and more intricate combination of chemical and mechanical processes. If all this were proved, it would not disturb the biologist, the chemist, or the physicist, nor cause anyone to doubt that there is a special sphere for each of these sciences. This view seems rather to give aid and comfort to promoters of these special sciences. If there is but one originating power that continuously causes all phenomena, then explanation may go a step farther in the same direction and add that whenever the manifestations of the One Power, which we have named physical, chemical, and vital, enter into certain further combinations, there issue those other manifestations that we call conscious, psychic; and that creation proceeds from the lowest to the highest stages without ever the addition of a new force that had not been operative at the lowest levels ; but rather that out of combinations of the simplest emerge the more complex, and out of the lower the highest; phenomena thus rising nearer to the level of their source, and disclosing yet more of the potentiality inherent in all existence. Then it would remain to add that a combination of phenomena of all these kinds the physical, chemical, physiological, and psychic issues in the most highly modified stream of mani- festations, which we name social.