DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 5 



But the whole miraculous tale is not yet told. 

 The same drama is enacted to the same destiny 

 in countless myriads of individuals so sundered in 

 time, so severed in space, that they have no oppor 

 tunity for mutual consultation and no means of 

 interaction. As an old writer quaintly said, 

 &quot; things of the same kind go through the same 

 formalities &quot; celebrate, as it were, the same 

 ceremonial rites. 



This formal activity which operates throughout 

 a series of changes and holds them to a single 

 course ; which subordinates their aimless flux to its 

 own perfect manifestation; which, leaping the 

 boundaries of space and time, keeps individuals 

 distant in space and remote in time to a uniform 

 type of structure and function: this principle 

 seemed to give insight into the very nature of 

 reality itself. To it Aristotle gave the name, eido$. 

 This term the scholastics translated as species. 



The force of this term was deepened by its 

 application to everything in the universe that ob- * 

 serves order in flux and manifests constancy I 

 through change. From the casual drift of daily J 

 weather, through the uneven recurrence of seasons 

 and unequal return of seed time and harvest, up 

 to the majestic sweep of the heavens the image 

 of eternity in time and from this to the unchang 

 ing pure and contemplative intelligence beyond na 

 ture lies one unbroken fulfilment of ends. Nature 



