There is an easy and not unnatural way of thinking of this process as we see it going on about us that may keep us long unmindful of even the possibility of such a question. In every field of action, we habitually look back upon accomplished changes from some present well-secured vantage-point, and as we trace the steps by which they have come to pass it is almost inevitable that we should first see the sequence as an approach, direct or devious but always sure, to the stage on which we happen to have taken our stand. It seems clear to us that what we have attained is better than aught that has gone before--if it were not distinctly satisfactory on its own merits we should not now be taking it as the standpoint for a survey. But once it is so taken, our recognition of its appreciable and satisfying superiority passes over insensibly into metaphysics. What we now find good we find ourselves perceiving to have been all the while predestined in the eternal scheme of things! We pause in retrospect like the wayfarer who has reached the turning of a mountain road or the man of middle age who for the first time feels that his professional position is assured. This, we say, justifies the effort it has cost, _this_ at last is really living! And the next step in retrospective reconstruction follows easily; this was my true goal from the first, the dim and inexpressible hope of which would not let me pause and kept me until now dissatisfied. The end was present in the beginning, provoking the first groping efforts and affording progressively the test and measure by which their results were found ever wanting.