Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/166

148 described by career up to that point; and is not that exactly the reply he would give if we asked him what the thing was which then was? So to get any reply as to the question of the origin of one thing different from that to the question of nature at an earlier stage, he would have to go still further back. But this would only repeat his difficulty. So he never would be able to distinguish between origin and nature except as different terms for describing different sections of one continuous series of aspects of behavior."

In other words, the answer to the question as to what we mean by origin is that this point is determined wholly by the need or interest or purpose of the investigation. Origin is not ultimate. There is no such thing as an absolute beginning of anything. The origin of a thing is always its beginning with reference to a certain end. The end and the beginning cannot be separated except methodologically. They are complementary concepts. Origins take place continually, and ends or values are achieved continually. As Professor Baldwin says: "The only way to treat the problem of ultimate origin is not to ask it, as an isolated problem, but to reach a category which intrinsically resolves the opposition between the two phases of reality." Or, as Mr. Hobhouse says: "No event begins or ends; but a process goes on which passes gradually from one phase into another. We ticket prominent or clearly distinct phases with separate names, and speak of them as different events; but we must remember that, though in one sense they are different, there is yet no barrier." Or as he says in another place: "Reality is or includes a time process. Now if we take any time process, and consider its beginning, we are dealing with a partial fact, and for every partial fact, thought demands an explanation which will connect it with reality as a whole. For the cause of the origin of a process, then, we may look in two directions, to its results or to its antecedents. If we look to the latter, we are clearly going outside the process. But if the process is one in which the whole nature of our ultimate system is to be expressed, we cannot go outside it without denying the claim of our system to be complete. We are therefore