In our Flowery Land we may smile at these speculations and _eccentricities_--for such and similar vagaries are as old as Literature; and the special notion of Darwin, as to the _Origin of Species_, has not even the attraction of novelty. The _speculation of evolution_, by which all visible forms are developed from a form less perfect below it, and this from another below that, and so on, down to the beginning, is a clumsy mode of stating that original forms were few, and contained wrapped up in them, many--and that possibly there may have been primarily only _one_, containing all! The Sovereign Lord Himself! In truth, it is the immemorial _out of nothing_ idea; for when a creator of worlds, in the shape of man, has got to a single form containing all, he has yet to account for that _Single Form_. The few, most advanced of the Barbarian Philosophers, cut adrift entirely from the _Superstition_. They copy largely from the Greeks, Romans, and ancient peoples, who said, on such subjects, over and over again what these modern imitators say--and said it better. In _Physics_ these moderns think themselves wiser. They may be, in the use of some things, but are not in the nature. Our Sect called _Taos-se_ resemble these speculative writers in many things: the English may not directly teach the _Metempsychosis_; but in effect it is the same. Evolution may hold to an original germ which is fixed and indestructible; yet what matters if to the observer this germ takes on every possible shape! The Metempsychosis does not contradict the notion of an original germ--it is entirely consistent with it. This speculative inquiry into the nature of things is as old as man, who, even before he knows how to formulate his thoughts, has the deep shadows of them. The Old Greeks introduced _the Literature_ of these fancies to the Western Barbarians, though themselves were no more than bright and beautiful dreamers of old dreams. The human intellect will always, as it has always, search into the unsearchable, applying to it whatever of sharpness, of imagination, of culture, it may have. There will be the inquiry, but never the answer. The mind itself finds its advantage; nor could the Sovereign Lord have designed otherwise, else the intellect would not persist in a vain task. Nevertheless, wise men rest satisfied with the _intuitions_ of the moral and intellectual nature. The origin and essence of the Sovereign Lord and of the visible world cannot be known. The source, the purpose, the end, and the nature of Things are beyond the scope of man. He may ask, and he may find delight in the asking; for new ranges and glimpses of the infinite may flash upon him. But when he thinks he _knows_--that he has _discovered_--he is a fool!