THE GOAL OF EVOLUTION 235 



the universe in process. His was a timeless concept of God- 

 substance; but, as limited as his conception of nature was, he 

 nevertheless saw clearly that there must be no separation of 

 mind and matter in the mind of man. 



On the basis of their concept I undertook to sum up 

 briefly the evidence now available that Bruno and Spinoza 

 in their discernment of the eternal and infinite had touched 

 closely upon the truth. The universe they held in such rev- 

 erence is self-sufficient and self-contained, operationally 

 controlled by lawfully ordered principles wherein the op- 

 erator is an integral part of the ?7iechanis?n and this I wished 

 to bring out by a survey of the highlights of the evolution- 

 ary process in the sublime panorama of successive creative 

 organizations, subatomic, atomic, molecular, on up to man. 

 This panorama shows ever more impressively in the succes- 

 sive stages of the rising configurations how deep and all- 

 inclusive is nature'' s organizing capacity , as it carries through 

 the physical continuum to organic life and the societies of 

 many and even into the mind of man as a ^'source of new 

 ideas, of high aspirations, of lofty flights of the creative i77t- 

 agination; the means, indeed, by which man launches out 

 into the deep and challenges the unknown universe^* 



In a review of evolution such as has been attempted in this 

 book the conception of the organism, or the basic life prob- 

 lem of organization, is very strongly brought to our atten- 

 tion. There is an endless chain of organizing activities in the 

 evolutionary process throughout both its physical and or- 

 ganic phases. It is interesting to note how the biological 

 principle of organization is equally applicable in other dis- 

 ciplines, for the central problems of modern physics and 

 chemistry are also problems of organization. Basically, the 

 atom preserves its organization against the incessant thermal 

 motion surrounding it. The elementary physical events are 

 of a discontinuous nature, discrete stages differing in quan- 



* E. W. Sinnott, Cell and Psyche (Chapel Hill: University of North 

 Carolina Press, 1950) , p. 78. Italics suppHed. 



