4 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



to their places ; in the inexorable sequence of the 

 ages of man's life ; in that successive rise, apogee, 

 and fall of dynasties and of states which is the most 

 prominent topic of civil history. 



As no man fording a swift stream can dip his foot 

 twice into the same water, so no man can, with exact- 

 ness, affirm of anything in the sensible world that 

 it is. ( 2 ) As he utters the words, nay, as lie thinks 

 them, the predicate ceases to be applicable ; the 

 present has become the past ; the ' is ' should be c was/ 

 And the more we learn of the nature of things, 

 the more evident is it that what we call rest is only 

 unperceived activity ; that seeming peace is silent but 

 strenuous battle. In every part, at every moment, the 

 state of the cosmos is the expression of a transitory 

 adjustment of contending forces ; a scene of strife, in 

 which all the combatants fall in turn. What is true 

 of each part, is true of the whole. Natural knowledge 

 tends more and more to the conclusion that " all the 

 choir of heaven and furniture of the earth " are the 

 transitory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wend- 

 ing along the road of evolution, from nebulous poten- 

 tiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and 

 satellite ; through all varieties of matter ; through 

 infinite diversities of life and thought ; possibly, 

 through modes of being of which we neither have a 

 conception, nor are competent to form any, back to 

 the undefinable latency from which they arose. Thus 

 the most obvious attribute of the cosmos is its imper- 

 manence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a 

 permanent entity as of a changeful process, in which 



