THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION 



For if mind, the only thing of which we have im- 

 mediate knowledge, be a by-product, then surely 

 that which we know thereby atoms, ether, and 

 motion is merely a by-product of a by-product 

 and what becomes of Reality? 



Now radium and radio-activity have proved 

 what the wise knew without their aid, that the 

 hard atoms, "the foundation-stones of the material 

 universe, which have existed since the creation, un- 

 broken and unworn " are as much a figment of the 

 imagination as Coleridge's palace of Kubla Khan, 

 or any other product of an opium dream. We 

 may regard as proven the modern electrical theory 

 of matter, which has shown that even the root- 

 characters of mass and inertia, which we attrib- 

 ute to matter, are properties of electrical energy. 

 Nor will any trained intelligence now dispute the 

 proposition of Spencer (him the unscrupulous call 

 materialist) that, if it were necessary to describe 

 the all in terms of matter alone, or of mind alone, 

 one's only chance of success would lie in the latter 

 alternative. 



Let us, then, make a category of the Cosmos as 

 we now understand it not, however, using the 

 word "now" as if to suggest that at last we have 

 reached finality. Our category rmist include four 

 entities which, at the first glance, we can observe. 

 These are matter, the ether, the many obvious 

 forms of energy, such as light, electricity, heat, 

 and mind. Modern theory, as I have shown, 

 entirely disposes of the first, that matter which 

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