Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/27

 table, to shatter all its illusions would be the only way to re-form and re-build it on a sounder and more enduring foundation. By all means, we should begin with realities—at the very bottom of stern, bitter realities. But are not the most obvious facts in life liquid or malleable? Is there such a thing as a bald and finite reality, divested of all spiritual or moral or social or physical associations? Is there such a thing as an isolated material fact, which you could dispose of as if it were a banana peel in your way? Why, even the most degenerate of beings is a vital link in the chain of social and spiritual possibilities. Indeed, every reality is in itself an undying source of myterious growth and decay. Even the theologian, like the scientist, recognizes the theory of causation and the continuity of the natural law. Neither good nor evil, in this sense, is a hard fact, but a liquid phenomenon. And every individual manifestation, every given fact is related to thousands, millions of its kind that precede and follow. Repentance, for