262 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXPERIENCE 



is the method of making, of following the history 

 of production; the term &quot; cause &quot; that has (when 

 taken as an existent entity) so hung on the heels 

 of science as to impede its progress, has universal 

 meaning when read as condition of appearance in 

 a process. And, as already intimated, the concep 

 tion of evolution is no more and no less the dis- &amp;lt; ^ 

 covery of a general law of life than it is the gen 

 eralization of all scientific method. Everywhere 

 analysis that cannot proceed by examining the suc 

 cessive stages of its subject, from its beginning 

 up to its culmination, that cannot control this 

 examination by discovering the conditions under 

 which successive stages appear, is only prelimi 

 nary. It may further the invention of proper tools 

 of inquiry, it may help define problems, it may 

 serve to suggest valuable hypotheses. But as 

 science it breathes an air already tainted. There 

 is no way to sort out the results flowing from the 

 subject-matter itself from those introduced by the 

 assumptions and presumptions of our own reflec 

 tion. Not so with natural history when it is 

 worthy of its name. Here the analysis is the un 

 folding of the existence itself. Its distinctions are 

 not pigeon-holes of our convenience ; they are 

 stakes that mark the parting of the ways in the 

 process itself. Its classifications are not a grasp 

 at factors resisting further analysis; they are 

 the patient tracings of the paths pursued, Noth- 



