From
the supernatural point of view people say: "This chance, as you call it,
is, in reality, the action of providence. Man may give himself what
trouble he will--God leads him all the same." Only, unfortunately, this
supposed intervention as often as not ends in the defeat of zeal,
virtue, and devotion, and the success of crime, stupidity, and
selfishness. Poor, sorely-tried Faith! She has but one way out of the
difficulty--the word Mystery! It is in the origins of things that the
great secret of destiny lies hidden, although the breathless sequence of
after events has often many surprises for us too. So that at first sight
history seems to us accident and confusion; looked at for the second
time, it seems to us logical and necessary; looked at for the third
time, it appears to us a mixture of necessity and liberty; on the fourth
examination we scarcely know what to think of it, for if force is the
source of right, and chance the origin of force, we come back to our
first explanation, only with a heavier heart than when we began.
Is Democritus right after all? Is chance the foundation of everything,
all laws being but the imaginations of our reason, which, itself born of
accident, has a certain power of self-deception and of inventing laws
which it believes to be real and objective, just as a man who dreams of
a meal thinks that he is eating, while in reality there is neither
table, nor food, nor guest nor nourishment? Everything goes on as if
there were order and reason and logic in the world, while in reality
everything is fortuitous, accidental, and apparent.
Pages:
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352