SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 555 



ceding histories, or will have succeeding histories, or both, 

 of which no account is given. And as such preceding and 

 succeeding histories are subjects of possible knowledge, a 

 Philosophy which says nothing about them, falls short of the 

 required unification. Whence we saw it to follow that the 

 formula sought, equally applicable to existences taken sin- 

 gly and in their totality, must be applicable to the whole his- 

 tory of each and to the whole history of all. 



By these considerations we were brought within view 

 of the formula. For if it had to comprehend the entire 

 progress from the imperceptible to the perceptible and 

 from the perceptible to the imperceptible; and if it was 

 also to express the continuous re-distribution of Matter 

 and Motion; then, obviously, it could be no other than one 

 defining the opposite processes of concentration and diffu- 

 sion in terms of Matter and Motion. And if so, it must be a 

 statement of the truth that the concentration of Matter 

 implies the dissipation of Motion, and that, conversely, the 

 absorption of Motion implies the diffusion of Matter. 



Such, in fact, we found to be the law of the entire cycle 

 of changes passed through by every existence — loss of mo- 

 tion and consequent integration, eventually followed by 

 gain of motion and consequent disintegration. And we saw 

 that besides applying to the whole history of each existence, 

 it applies to each detail of the history. Both processes are 

 going on at every instant; but always there is a differential 

 result in favour of the first or the second. And every 

 change, even though it be only a transposition of parts, 

 inevitably advances the one process or the other. 



Evolution and Dissolution, as we name these opposite 

 transformations, though thus truly defined in their most 

 general characters, are but incompletely defined; or rather, 

 while the definition of Dissolution is sufficient, the definition 

 of Evolution is extremely insufficient. Evolution is always 

 an integration of Matter and dissipation of Motion; but it 

 is in most cases much more than this. The primary re- 



