Is It Astonishing That, Like Children Trying

The Present Contains Nothing More Than The Past, And What Is Found In The Effect Was Already In The Cause.

For Life Is Tendency, And The Essence Of A Tendency Is To Develop In The Form Of A Sheaf, Creating, By Its Very Growth, Divergent Directions Among Which Its Impetus Is Divided.

When It Is Said That An Object Occupies A Large Space In The Soul Or Even That It Fills It Entirely, We Ought To Understand By This Simply That Its Image Has Altered The Shade Of A Thousand Perceptions Or Memories, And That In This Sense It Pervades Them, Although It Does Not Itself Come Into View.

Spirit Borrows From Matter The Perceptions On Which It Feeds And Restores Them To Matter In The Form Of Movements Which It Has Stamped With Its Own Freedom.

Is It Astonishing That, Like Children Trying To Catch Smoke By Closing Their Hands, Philosophers So Often See The Object They Would Grasp Fly Before Them?