Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/319

 to state the limits of known and unknown connection. In so far as we are here in presence of effects produced by living agents on what is living, and have no longer to do with the effects produced by what is spiritual on what is bodily, there are connections present which cannot be gainsaid, and which yet, so long as the deeper conception of this relation is unknown, may still appear as inscrutable, as magic, or as miracle. Thus in magnetism everything which is usually called connection ceases; regarded in the ordinary way, it is an incomprehensible connection.

If the sphere of mediation in magic be once entered, the huge gate of superstition is opened, and then every detail of existence becomes significant, for every circumstance has results, has ends; everything is both mediated and mediating, everything governs and is governed: what a man does depends as to its results upon circumstances; what he is, his aims, depend upon certain conditions. He exists in an external world, amidst a variety of connections of cause and effect, and the individual is only a ruling force to the extent to which he has power over the particular forces thus connected. In so far as this connection remains undetermined, and the definite nature of things is still unknown, we float about in a condition of absolute contingency. Since reflection enters into this region of relations, it has the belief that things stand to one another in a relation of reciprocity. This belief is quite correct, but the defect in it is that it is still abstract, and consequently the definite special character of action, the precise mode of action, the exact nature of the connection of things with other things is not as yet present in it. Such a connection exists, but its real character is not yet known, and accordingly what is present is the contingent character, the arbitrariness of the means. Most people are on one side of their nature in this position, and nations occupy this standpoint in a way which shows that this aspect is for them the fundamental one,