ESSAY-REVIEWS 33 1 



Prof. Pringle-Pattison prefers to think that "the whole process wears the 

 appearance of a progressive revelation," and that novelties pour from " the inex- 

 haustible nature of the fountain from which we draw." It is possible, abstractly, 

 that life might be an extra dole by the Dispenser, or by the Dispensing Agency, 

 consciousness another dole, and so on in succession. In any case the problem of 

 accounting for the doles remains. "Creative Evolution," the higher springing 

 creatively from the lower, represents creation by instalments. "Progressive 

 revelation," or novelties doled out from a prior store, represents an original 

 creation in the lump. Experience suggests the instalment method— events 

 suggest that they follow it. If novelty or creation appear at one point, it is 

 reasonable to expect it at others. The mystery of creation distributed through 

 development is no less a mystery when collected at the source, and the substitu- 

 tion rejects our perceptions for a speculative interpretation. " How can anything 

 come into being unless it is founded in the nature of things— that is, unless it 

 eternally is?" asks Prof. Pringle-Pattison. To be quite candid we do not know, 

 but, while the human mind certainly appeared at some point in the world's history, 

 there is no indication that it " eternally is." This notion that what comes out 

 must have been in shirks the category of organism. To suppose that the amoeba 

 was really a man or contained one is to revert to mechanism — supposing growth 

 to resemble the principle that for all energy taken out an equivalent quantity 

 must be put in. 



Prof. Pringle-Pattison tries to evade this issue by a line of argument which he 

 thus sums : " Questions of the apparent historical genesis of the higher or more 

 complex from the lower or simpler have no philosophical importance or relevance, 

 seeing that, philosophically considered, the lower or simpler phases are not inde- 

 pendent facts existing as firius, but abstract aspects of a single fact, which is fully 

 expressible only in terms of self-conscious experience." Now the earth seems to 

 us to have existed before man appeared on it. The above quotation informs 

 us that the earth was no firius, for it existed only when men could think about 

 it— we dwell, in short, in a world of illusion. This is a singular conclusion to 

 discover in a writer who insists that man's perception and knowledge " put 

 him in touch with reality," regards primary and secondary and even " tertiary " 

 (such as beauty) qualities as realities and not as phenomenal mediations, 

 and declares of each creature that " what it apprehends, up to the limit of 

 its capacity, is a true account of its environment, so far as it goes." If we can 

 trust our powers of apprehension at all we must believe that a past condition 

 existed before the present, and that a future condition, not yet existent, is due. 

 An example of the confusion imported into this simple principle by the ideal- 

 istically minded philosopher occurs in the further statement that " it would be 

 more consonant with the structure of consciousness ... to place it in the future," 

 if it became necessary " to choose between placing the vis directrix in the past or 

 in the future." He is referring, of course, to the anticipatory character of the 

 mind— to the ends that control its operations. There is no future to contain the 

 vis directrix ; our purposes refer to what will or may be, but they occur and act in 

 the present. An attempt is made to secure some point in the future to which the 

 vis directrix can be hitched by " explaining the evolving subject not only by what 

 it has been, but, still more vitally, by what it is not yet, but is on its way to 

 become.'' This is the " Ideal or the end realised in the process," and thus " we 

 may be said to supplement the causality of the past by the causality of the 

 future." This hints at a phenomenon even more remarkable than the standing 

 puzzle of creation out of nothing, for causation by the future is creation by the 



