ernoon,' are stars that have set upon the path of him
who in good earnest makes himself a moralist. The transitions are
abrupt, absolute, truly shot out of a pistol; for while many
possibilities are called, the few that are chosen are chosen in all
their sudden completeness.

Must we then think that the world that fills space and time can yield
us no acquaintance of that high and perfect type yielded by empty space
and time themselves? Is what unity there is in the world {270} mainly
derived from the fact that the world is _in_ space and time and
'partakes' of them? Can no vision of it forestall the facts of it, or
know from some fractions the others before the others have arrived?
Are there real logically indeterminate possibilities which forbid there
being any equivalent for the happening of it all but the happening
itself? Can we gain no anticipatory assurance that what is to come
will have no strangeness? Is there no substitute, in short, for life
but the living itself in all its long-drawn weary length and breadth
and thickness?

In the negative reply to all these questions, a modest common-sense
finds no difficulty in acquiescing. To such a way of thinking the
notion of 'partaking' has a deep and real significance. Whoso partakes
of a thing enjoys his share, and comes into contact with the thing and
its other partakers. But he claims no more. His share in no wise
negates the thing or their share; nor does it preclude his possession
of reserved and private powers with which they have nothing to do, and
which are not all absorbed in the mere function of sharing. Why may
not the world be a sort of republican banquet of this sort, where all
the qualities of being respect one another's personal sacredness, yet
sit at the common table of space and time?

To me this view seems deeply probable. Things cohere, but the act of
cohesion itself implies but few conditions, and leaves the rest of
their qualifications indeterminate. As the first three notes of a tune
comport many endings, all melodious, but the tune is not named till a
particular ending has actually come,--so the parts actually known of
the universe may comport many ideally possible complements. But as
{271} the facts are not the complements, so the knowledge of the one is
not the knowledge of the other in anything but the few necessary
elements of which all must partake in order to be together at all.
Why, if one act of knowledge could from one p