Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/45

No. 1.] of the past that we must affirm in order to justify our belief in the compensatory function of the later stages of life. For only the evil that has become good is atoned for; and only the good that has become evil is spoiled.

Our contention then is that in order to justify the belief in the compensatory function of the later stages of human life we must assume the reality of change as characterizing that life in the sense that we have just described. We must now ask what can be said in support of this contention. A part of our defence has already been offered in connection with the discussion of the nature of past events. We have shown, I think, that we cannot justify the belief in the supreme importance of the later stages if we assert the utter non-existence of the past, nor if we regard the past as existing simply through its being remembered and through its influence upon later stages. We have shown also that we cannot explain it by appealing to the fact that in general the later stage has more influence than its predecessors in determining the quality of still later ones. But one more point remains to consider before we can regard our defence as complete. It seems fairly evident that if we assert the reality of change, we can justify the belief in the supreme importance of the later stages only by supposing that the later include the earlier and thus in a sense keep them in existence.