collision of forces, way back in the darkness, that helped to kindle this great light.

If, then, the world's discipline, in spite of all delays and failures and false steps, has been a discipline, abolishing its own feebleness by its own progress, this fact most distinctly discloses a Supreme Spiritual Power, working all things upward toward itself, and disclosing their fulness from that supreme elevation.

§ 9. Final causes are involved in every discussion concerning the being of God. Reason has two movements. It traces effects backward through causes, but it also more immediately in its own behalf rises above special lines of causation, and asks: What purpose do they singly and conjointly subserve? In what structure are they framed together? Referring all things to itself it inevitably inquires: Why were they made? Reason can not stultify itself by overlooking this relation. It will not travel a road without asking whither it leads. This is perfectly plain when we deal with human actions, the immediate and manifest products of reason. If any work of man is before us, we must inevitably put the two inquiries: For what was it made? and, By what means was it made?

Nor could we have any interest in the causal relations of the world were it not for the constructive purposes they seem to us so plainly to contain, and those further purposes to which we can ourselves put them. However staunchly we may deny this fact, and however carefully conceal it in language, causes concern us because (I) they are constructive,