ESSAY-REVIEWS 613 



the heat of a fire and the gratefulness of its warmth or between 

 the forest oak and the humble acorn. In the sphere of life the 

 river appears, whatever correction may be applied by reflection 

 and analysis, to flow higher than its source. Evolution has 

 proceeded from protoplasm to man, and from rude culture to 

 civilised communities. Immediate experience, so far from 

 confirming Mr. Balfour's doctrine that reason must have a 

 rational source, suggests that the superiority of effects to their 

 causes is a fundamental law of the animate world. 



The " Doctrine of Congruity " may serve as a working 

 principle in the mechanical or physical sphere. A system can- 

 not manifest more energy than it possesses or acquires from 

 other sources. The quantity of matter with which an opera- 

 tion ends is usually equivalent to the matter present at the 

 start and to any that may be introduced as the operation pro- 

 ceeds. Mr. Balfour mechanises the principle of growth when he 

 argues that the end is really the same as the beginning. The 

 human intellect is strongly inclined, from its nature and con- 

 stitution, to this mechanical habit of thought. We obtain our 

 mental grip, for the most part, by tracing likenesses and per- 

 ceiving similarities ; we end, through an almost inevitable 

 movement of thought, by creating for ourselves the prejudice 

 that there can be no real difference between the last effect and 

 the first cause. Hence the notion that the rational must pro- 

 ceed from the rational, the moral from the moral, the apprecia- 

 tion of beauty from an original aesthetic perception. But if 

 growth be the type of the fundamental universal processes, 

 processes therefore in which the end may be both different from 

 and superior to the beginning, it becomes not merely possible 

 but probable that the rational issues from the non-rational. 

 The " Doctrine of Congruity " requires a source similar to the 

 final result ; the " Doctrine of Growth " requires a difference 

 between the end and the beginning. Uncorrupted experience 

 believes in growth ; mechanised thought believes in congruity. 

 Mr. Balfour's argument for Theism depends on preferring the 

 claims of the mechanical to those of the vital or organic. 



40 



