THE PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATISM 119 



The course of evolution is not conceived by biologists as a 

 dialectic. The forces which bring about the successive stages 

 of the process are not supposed to be completely contained in 

 the nature of the lower forms as such. The course of evolution 

 is not understood as logically predetermined by the concept of 

 these forms. In short, it is not to be explained in terms of mere 

 logical relationship. External circumstances, instead of being 

 unessential, and as likely to obscure as to illuminate the signifi 

 cance of the process, have become determining factors, a detailed 

 knowledge of which is indispensable to the understanding of the 

 evolution. Had external circumstances been ever so little dif 

 ferent, the succeeding stages of the process might have been 

 profoundly modified. Thus the later stage can no longer be 

 regarded as the realization of the earlier. There is, to be sure, a 

 certain inclusion of the features of the earlier in the structure of 

 the later; but what features are to be so included, and what ex 

 cluded, is not determined by the essential nature of the lower 

 form. It may, perhaps, be said, that the full development of man 

 was implicit in the earliest vertebrate forms ; but so too were the 

 eagle and the horse and the other existing vertebrate species 

 and so too were the unnumbered possible forms which might 

 have developed had environmental conditions been favorable. 

 If evolution is a process of conservation, it is equally a process 

 of waste; for the selection of the existing lines of development 

 has been at the expense of countless other possible lines. It is 

 not, then, properly described as the progressive unfolding of a 

 reality potentially existent throughout. In a word, it is not to 

 be regarded as a teleological process. 



In view of this transformation wrought in the idea of evolution 

 by the Darwinian hypothesis, it is evident that a treatment of 

 logical problems based on the new conception must differ widely 

 from the logical theory of absolute idealism. In the first place, 

 there is a tremendous difference of standpoint in regard to the 

 nature and position of thought itself. According to absolute 

 idealism, rational thought, since it is the outcome of the process 



