le I was wrapt in admiration, was the fact that
though everything was in constant change, and in the change there was
clearly an order and routine, yet I could not detect anything that
seemed like purpose. Direction there was, but not direction to an end;
for the end was no better than the beginning, it was only different;
the idea of Good, in short, did not apply. And this fact, which was
striking enough in the case of the phenomena I have described, made
itself felt with even more insistence when I turned to consider the
course of human history. For that too I saw unrolled before me, not
only on our own, but on innumerable other worlds, in various phases
and in various forms, both those which we know, and others of which we
have no conception, and which I am now quite unable to recall. Men
I saw housing in caves, or on piles in swamps and lakes, dwellers in
wagons and tents, hunters, or shepherds under the stars, men of the
mountain, men of the plain, of the river-valley and the coast, nomad
tribes, village tribes, cities, kingdoms, empires, wars and peace,
politics, laws, manners, arts and sciences. Yet in all this, so far as
I could observe, although, through all vacillations, there appeared
to be a steady trend in a definite direction, there was nothing to
indicate what we call purpose. Men, I saw, had ideas about Good, but
these ideas of theirs, though they were part of the efficient causes
of events, were in no sense the explanation of the process. There
was no explanation, for there was no final cause, no purpose, end, or
justification at all. Man, like nature, was the plaything of a blind
fate. The idea of Good had no application.

"The horror I felt as this truth (for so I thought it) was borne in
upon me was proportioned to my previous delight. I had now but one
desire, to escape, even though it were only back to what I had left.
And as the Angel-Boys in 'Faust' cry out to Pater Seraphicus for
release, when they can no longer bear the sights they see through
his eyes, so I, in my anguish, cried, 'Let me out! Let me out!' And
instantly I found myself standing again at the foot of the tower, in
that land of twilight, silence, and infinite space, with the souls
going down the river, in and out, in and out, futile, trivial,
tedious, monotonous, and vain. Looking up, I saw written over the door
from which I had emerged, and which was opposite to that by which I
had entered, words whose sense was:

"'_Eye hath