INVOLUTION. 321 



or a Sigillaria world? Is the biologist to give up his 

 clay or the moralist his higher kingdom ? Are Mind, 

 Morals, Men, to be interpreted in terms of roots, or 

 are atoms and cells to be judged by the flowers and 

 fruits of the tree ? 



The first fruit of the discovery must be that each 

 shall explore with new respect the other s world, and, 

 instead of delighting to accentuate their contrasts, 

 strive to magnify their infinite harmonies. Old as is 

 the world s vision of a cosmos, and universal as has 

 been its dream of the unity of Nature, neither has 

 ever stood before the imagination complete. Poetry 

 felt, but never knew, that the universe was one ; 

 Biology perceived the profound chemical balance 

 between the inorganic and organic kingdoms, and no 

 more ; Physics, discovering the correlation of forces, 

 constructed a cosmos of its own; Astronomy, through 

 the law of gravitation, linked us, but mechanically, 

 with the stars. But it was reserved for Evolution to 

 make the final revelation of the unity of the world, to 

 comprehend everything under one generalization, to 

 explain everything by one great end. Its omnipresent 

 eye saw every phenomenon and every law. It 

 gathered all that is and has been into one last whole 

 a whole whose very perfection consists in the all 

 but infinite distinctions of the things which it unites. 



What is often dreaded in Evolution the danger of 

 obliterating distinctions that are vital is a ground 

 less fear. Stigmaria can never be anything more than 

 root, and Sigillaria can never be anything less than 

 stem. To show their connection is not to transpose 

 their properties. The wider the distinctions seen 

 among their properties the profounder is the Thought 

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