LIFE AND THE COSMOS 311 



explanation of origin and fulfillment, to feel it 

 a worthy subject of reflection. From this point 

 of view, however, science need expect no inter- 

 ference, but without any last vestige of former 

 shackles may pursue the search after mechan- 

 istic explanations of all natural phenomena. 1 



At length we have reached the conclusion 

 which I was concerned to establish. Science 

 has finally put the old teleology to death. 

 Its disembodied spirit, freed from vitalism 

 and all material ties, immortal, alone lives 

 on, and from such a ghost science has noth- 

 ing to fear. The man of science is not even 

 obliged to have an opinion concerning its 

 reality, for it dwells in another world where 

 he as scientist can never enter. 



1 "An evolution is a series of events that in itself as series 

 is purely physical, — a set of necessary occurrences in the 

 world of space and time. An egg develops into a chick ; 

 a poet grows up from infancy ; a nation emerges from bar- 

 barism ; a planet condenses from the fluid state, and develops 

 the life that for millions of years makes it so wondrous a place. 

 Look upon all these things descriptively, and you shall see 

 nothing but matter moving instant after instant, each con- 

 taining in its full description the necessity of passing over into 

 the next. Nowhere will there be, for descriptive science, 

 any genuine novelty or any discontinuity admissible. But 

 look at the whole appreciatively, historically, synthetically, 

 as a musician listens to a symphony, as a spectator watches 

 a drama. Now you shall seem to have seen, in phenomenal 

 form, a story." — Royce, "The Spiritof Modern Philosophy . " 

 Boston and New York, 1896, 8th ed., p. 425. 



