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lates an external, simple substance from which it attempts to explain the multiplicity of the complex. Philosophy in this sense assumes various forms. All of them attempt to interpret the law of causation, and in that attempt many, fatigued after the long mental strain, stop at some one thing, element, or principle (physical or metaphysical) beyond which they have not mentally the ability to go. Some (for instance, the Ionic philosophers) called it water, fire, or air.
The Sankhya philosophy, in India, tried to explain evolution and even cosmic consciousness and the growth of organs, etc., as proceeding from the simple substance called Prakrti, or primordial matter. Modern science evolves all life from the simple protoplasm. In tracing every effect to a cause, when these philosophers stop at something they contradict themselves by not extending and applying the law of causation to what they call the "first principle". Dr. Paul Deussen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel, in Germany, very truly says, with reference to Causality (“Elements of Metaphysics''). "As space and time are without limits, so also the net of causality is necessarily without beginning or end," and he gives the following demonstration :
"(a) If it were not without beginning, we should have to assume a first state of things. In order that this state might develop, a change would have to occur in it, which change would itself again be the effect of a foregoing change," etc.*
* This is the rock on which splits the cosmological argument, which confounds the metaphysical principle of salvation (God) with the physical principle of creation,
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