30 PKOGKESS: US i.AW AND CAUSE. 



organic development, is the law of all development. Th&amp;lt; 

 advance from the simple to the complex, through a process 

 of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest 

 changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way 

 back; and in the earliest changes which we can induc- 

 l^vcly establish ; it is seen in the geologic and climatic 

 evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its 

 Burfacc ; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether 

 contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggre 

 gation of races ; it is seen in the evolution of Society in 

 respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economi 

 cal organization ; and it is seen in the evolution of all 

 those endless concrete and abstract products of human 

 activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. 

 From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to 

 the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essen 

 tially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous 

 into the heterogeneous. 



And no\v, from this uniformity of procedure, may we 

 not infer some fundamental necessity whence it results ? 

 May we not rationally seek for some all-pervading princi 

 ple which determines this all-pervading process of things? 

 Does not the imivcrsality of the law imply a universal 

 cause f 



That we can fathom such cause, noumenally considered, 

 is not to be supposed. To do this would be to solve that 

 ultimate mystery which must ever transcend human intelli 

 gence. But it still may be possible for us to reduce the 

 law of all Progress, above established, from the condition 

 of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a ra 

 tional generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret 

 Kepler s laws as necessary consequences of the law of gravi 

 tation ; so it may be possible to interpret this law of Pro 

 gress, in its multiform manifestations, as the necessary con- 



