ator" of the second
thing. As a matter of fact, no "thing" ever causes or "creates" another
"thing." Cause and Effect deals merely with "events." An "event" is
"that which comes, arrives or happens, as a result or consequent of some
preceding event." No event "creates" another event, but is merely a
preceding link in the great orderly chain of events flowing from the
creative energy of THE ALL. There is a continuity between all events
precedent, consequent and subsequent. There is a relation existing
between everything that has gone before, and everything that follows. A
stone is dislodged from a mountain side and crashes through a roof of a
cottage in the valley below. At first sight we regard this as a chance
effect, but when we examine the matter we find a great chain of causes
behind it. In the first place there was the rain which softened the
earth supporting the stone and which allowed it to fall; then back of
that was the influence of the sun, other rains, etc., which gradually
disintegrated the piece of rock from a larger piece; then there were the
causes which led to the formation of the mountain, and its upheaval by
convulsions of nature, and so on ad infinitum. Then we might follow up
the causes behind the rain, etc. Then we might consider the existence of
the roof In short, we would soon find ourselves involved in a mesh of
cause and effect, from which we would soon strive to extricate
ourselves.

Just as a man has two parents, and four grandparents, and eight
great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on
until when, say, forty generations are calculated the numbers of
ancestors run into many millions--so it is with the number of causes
behind even the most trifling event or phenomena, such as the passage of
a tiny speck of soot before your eye. It is not an easy matter to trace
the bit of soot hack to the early period of the world's history when it
formed a part of a massive tree-trunk, which was afterward converted
into coal, and so on, until as the speck of soot it now passes before
your vision on its way to other adventures. And a mighty chain of
events, causes and effects, brought it to its present condition, and the
later is but one of the chain of events which will go to produce other
events hundreds of years from now. One of the series of events arising
from the tiny bit of soot was the writing of these lines, which caused
the typesetter to perform certain work; the proofreader