The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-23
WE OUGHT TO READ THE FU-
 TURF.
Quite as Well as We Do the Past, is the Speculation of MaeterIinck.

the Speculation of MaeterIinck.
 It is, in certain respects, quite incom1- prehensible that we should not know the future. Probably a mere nothing, the displacement of d cerebral lobe, the resettfng of Broca's convolution in a different manner. the addition of a slender network of nerves to those which form our eonsciousness-any one of these would be enough to make the future unfold itself before us with the same clearness, the same majestic am- plitude, as that with which the past is displayed on the horizon, not only of our individual life, but also of the life of the species to which we belong. A singular infirmity, a curious limitation of our intellect, causes us not to know what is going to happen to us, when we are fully aware of what has befaI- len us. From the absolute point, of view to which our imagination succeeds in rising, although it cannot live there, there is no reason why we should not see that which does not yet exist in it's delation to us must necessarily have it's being already and manifest itself somewhere. If not, it would have to be said that, where time is concerned, we form the center of the world, that we are the only witnesses for whom events wait so that they may have the right, to appear and to count in the eternal history of causes and effects
 It would be as absurd to assert this for time as it would be for space, that other not quite so incomprehensible form of the twofold infinite mystery in which our whole life floats. Space is more familiar to us, because the acci- dents of our organism place us more directly in relation with it, and make it more concrete. We can move in it pretty freely, in a certain number of directions, before and behind us. That is why no traveller would take 1t into his head to maintain that the towns which he has not yet visited will be-. come real only at the moment when he sets his foot within their walls. Yet this is very nearly what we do. when we persuade ourselves that an event which has not yet happened does not yet exist.
 can conceive that we are not quail flied to know beforehand the disturb- ances of the elements, the destiny of the planets, of the earth, of smpires, peoples and races. All this does not touch us directly, and we know it in the past thanks only to the artifices of history But that which regards us, that which is within our reach, that which is to unfold itself within the lit tie sphere of years, a secretion of our spiritual organism, that envelopes us in time, even as the shell or the cocoon envelopes the lnollusz or the insect in space; that, together with all the eX- ternal events relating to it, is probably recorded in that sphere. In any case, 1t would be much more natural that it were so recorded than comprehensible that it be not. There we have realities struggling with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from believ- ing that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming illusion. Realities are what will happen to us, having already happened in the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman history of the uni verse. Illusion is the opaque veil wo- ven with the ephemehal threads calltd yesterday, to-day and tomorrow, ! which we embroider on those realities But it is not indispensable that our ex= istence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. We may even ask ourselves whether our extraordina- ry unfitness for knowing a thing so simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so necessary as the future, would not | form one of the greatest subjects for astonishment to- an inhabitant of an- other star who should visit us.
 To-day this all appears to us so pro- ! foundly impossible that we find it diffi- cult to imagine how the certain reality of the future world would refute the objections which we make to it in the name of the organic illusion of our | minds. We say to it for instance: If. at the moment of undertaking an af- ] fair, we could know that it's outcome would be unfortunate, we should not undertake 1t; and since it must be written somewhere in time, before our question has been put, that the affair wlli not take place, seeing that we abandon it, we could not, therefore, foresee the outcome of that which will have no beginning.
 1 So as not to lose ourselves in this road, which would lead us whither nothing calls us, it will be enough for us to say that the future, like all that exists, is probably more coherent and more logical than the logic of our im- agination, and that all our hesitations and uncertainties are included in it's provisions.
 Moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be complete ly upset if we knew 1t beforehand. First, only they would know the future,