96 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



at in the attempt to construct a synthetic, or cos 

 mic, system of philosophy. There has been no 

 further transcending of experience than is implied 

 in the assumption that the order of Nature is the 

 same in the Pleiades and in the Solar System 

 until we learn to the contrary ; and it would be 

 difficult to set aside Mr. Spencer s proceedings as 

 un-Baconian without so drawing the line as to 

 exclude Newton s comparison of the falling moon 

 to the falling apple, --the grand achievement 

 which first extended the known dynamic order of 

 Nature from the earth to the heavens. 



Our knowledge of the universe is no doubt 

 well-nigh infinitely small, how small we can 

 not know. The butterfly sailing on the summer 

 breeze may be no farther from comprehending 

 the secular changes in the earth s orbit than man 

 is from fathoming the real course and direction of 

 cosmic events. Yet if throughout the tiny area 

 which alone we have partially explored we every 

 where find coherency of causation, then, just be 

 cause we are incapable of transcending expe 

 rience, we cannot avoid attributing further co 

 herency to the regions beyond our ken, so far as 

 such regions can afford occasion for thought at all. 

 The very limitations under which thinking is con 

 ducted thus urge us to seek the One in the Many ? 



