58 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



what is called evolution. If no evolution were apparent in 

 Nature, there could be no Science ; for those steps which to 

 the naturalist indicate evolution, being only the physical ex- 

 pression — the formulation — of the logical process, afford the 

 means by which the student reaches the highest generalization. 

 If these steps be wanting, he cannot proceed. 



Admitting then to its fullest extent the fact that, judged 

 from a purely physical point of view, all organic forms seem 

 to have been derived each from its immediate predecessor, by 

 a mere functional impulse; and admitting that science is possi- 

 ble upon no other condition, we claim that these material forms 

 are brought into such relation by intellectual evolution, and 

 not by physical genesis ; they represent an evolution of 

 Thought and not an evolution of Matter. We know from con- 

 sciousness that this process of evolution is the method of our 

 thinking. We know also that the divine thought can be ren- 

 dered intelligible to us upon no other hypothesis than that 

 which supposes it to be governed by the laws which control 

 human thought. Translating the physical symbols which we 

 see about us, and which present this appearance of evolution, we 

 infer that this is the method according to which the Divine 

 Mind proceeded. Science will not materially err in its phys- 

 ical results, if it adopt the hypothesis of physical evolution, 

 but it must confine its attention to physics ; it is only as we 

 attempt higher generalizations that the insufticiency of the 

 hypothesis becomes manifest in its failure to satisfy the con- 

 ditions of the problem as presented to philosophy. 



