324 VINCENT E. SMITH 



be characterized by them both. That is to say, there are no 

 processes which tend to be governed by only one of these 

 principles, say entropy, while other motions are ruled only by 

 evolution. For entropy is generally regarded as universal,"* and 

 if modern cosmogony is a witness, equally universal is the 

 principle of evolution. Hence, evolution and entropy must 

 simultaneously characterize the same change and the same 

 changing things. Therefore, the substratum of these two ten- 

 dencies must be indifferent to both of them. If it inherently 

 possessed one, it would expel the other; and vice versa. 



Such a triadic structure seems to throw us back upon the 

 three first principles of change discussed in perennial phi- 

 losophy. Evolution is a sign of form; entropy, of privation; 

 and the indfferent substratum, of primary matter. We are 

 speaking here of signs — not of principles; of effects not of 

 causes. For evolution and entropy, if they do signify form 

 and privation, are derived and secondary contraries which must 

 be traced back to their first principles. But this determination 

 of signs and effects is all we are after, here. It is evidence of 

 the kind of dualism which has been re-afRrmed in recent physics 

 in establishing new bridgeheads between modern science and 

 traditional philosophy. 



Teilhard, though not alluding to the substratum we have 

 claimed as a necessity to bring evolution and entropy together, 

 has reinforced the effort we have made above: 



In every physico-chemical change, adds thermodynamics, a fraction 

 of the available energy is irrecoverably ' entropised,' lost, that is to 

 say, in the form of heat. Doubtless it is possible to retain this 

 degraded fraction symbolically in equations, so as to express that 

 in the operations of matter nothing is lost any more than anything 

 is created, but that is merely a mathematical trick. As a matter 

 of fact, from the real evolutionary standpoint, something is finally 

 burned up in the course of every synthesis in order to pay for that 

 synthesis. ^^ 



Entropy measures the loss factor, the privation, the exhaust 



"* Von Weizsacker, op. cit., p. 57. "• Op. cit, p. 51. 



