212 NATURAL SELECTION ix 



If it is said, "those changes are automatic, and are set in 

 motion by external causes," then one essential part of our 

 consciousness, a certain amount of freedom in willing, is 

 annihilated ; and it is inconceivable how or why there should 

 have arisen any consciousness or any apparent will, in such 

 purely automatic organisms. If this were so, our apparent 

 WILL would be a delusion, and Professor Huxley's belief 

 " that our volition counts for something as a condition of the 

 course of events," would be fallacious, since our volition would 

 then be but one link in the chain of events, counting for 

 neither more nor less than any other link whatever. 



If, therefore, we have traced one force, however minute, 

 to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of 

 any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improb- 

 able conclusion that all force may be will-force ; and thus, 

 that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actu- 

 ally is, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one Supreme In- 

 telligence. It has been often said that the true poet is a seer ; 

 and in the noble verse of an American poetess we find ex- 

 pressed what may prove to be the highest fact of science, the 

 noblest truth of philosophy : 



God of the Granite and the Rose ! 



Soul of the Sparrow and the Bee ! 

 The mighty tide of Being flows 



Through countless channels, Lord, from Thee. 

 It leaps to life in grass and flowers, 



Through every grade of being runs, 

 While from Creation's radiant towers 



Its glory flames in Stars and Suns. 



Conclusion 



These speculations are usually held to be far beyond the 

 bounds of science ; but they appear to me to be more legiti- 

 mate deductions from the facts of science than those which 

 consist in reducing the whole universe, not merely to matter, 

 but to matter conceived and defined so as to be philosophically 

 inconceivable. It is surely a great step in advance, to get 

 rid of the notion that matter is a thing of itself, which can 

 exist per se, and must have been eternal, since it is supposed 

 to be indestructible and uncreated, that force, or the forces 



