48 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS n 



But no sooner has the edifice, reared with such 

 exact elaboration, attained completeness, than it 

 begins to crumble. By degrees, the plant withers 

 and disappears from view, leaving behind more or 

 fewer apparently inert and simple bodies, just like 

 the bean from which it sprang ; and, like it, en 

 dowed with the potentiality of giving rise to a 

 similar cycle of manifestations. 



Neither the poetic nor the scientific imagination 

 is put to much strain in the search after analogies 

 with this process of going forth and, as it were, 

 returning to the starting-point. It may be likened 

 to the ascent and descent of a slung stone, or 

 the course of an arrow along its trajectory. Or 

 we may say that the living energy takes first an 

 upward and then a downward road. Or it may 

 seem preferable to compare the expansion of the 

 germ into the full-grown plant, to the unfolding 

 of a fan, or to the rolling forth and widening of a 

 stream ; and thus to arrive at the conception of 

 ' development,' or ' evolution.' Here as else 

 where, names are ' noise arid smoke ' ; the im 

 portant point is to have a clear and adequate 

 conception of the fact signified by a name. And, 

 in this case, the fact is the Sisyphsean process, in 

 the course of which, the living and growing plant 

 passes from the relative simplicity and latent 

 potentiality of the seed to the full epiphany of a 

 highly differentiated type, thence to fall back to 

 simplicity and potentiality. 



