ZOOLOGV, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 135 



nish a register of all that has happened. The track of every canoe, 

 of every vessel that has as yet disturbed the surface of the ocean, 

 whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains 

 forever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles 

 which may occupy its place. The furrow which it left is indeed 

 instantly filled up by the closing waters, but they draw after them 

 other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these 

 again, once moved, communicate motion to others in endless suc- 

 cession. The air itself is one vast library, in whose pages are 

 forever written all that man has said or even whispered. There, 

 in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest 

 as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded 

 vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united 

 movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will."^ 



So far as we know, nothing that has ever been can be as if it had 

 not been ; and we seem to have good ground for believing that every 

 portion of the material universe contains a record of every change 

 that has taken place in all its parts, and also for believing that there 

 is no limit to the power of minds like ours to read and interpret 

 this record. Every new experience also shows that our expectation 

 that the future will, on the whole, be like the past is reasonable. In 

 these facts science finds a basis broad enough and firm enough 

 for all our needs ; for to this extent the data of science are latent 

 in the physical universe, even if the future is, in part, to be what 

 man and other living things make it. 



If these evolutionists who hold that all nature is determinate and 

 necessary are right, mind would seem to be useless. It may, for 

 all I know to the contrary, be true that, when I perform an action 

 because my reason approves it, neither the performance of the 

 action nor the approval of my reason is anything more than exhaust- 

 ive knowledge of the mechanism of my brain might have led one 

 to expect ; and if it follows that my action is necessary, and must 

 take place, whether my reason approve it or not, reason would seem 

 to be useless ; but I cannot see why this should follow, for I fail 

 to see how or why proof that my reason is mechanical and no 

 more than might have been expected from my structure should 

 be inconsistent with my confidence in its value, since I cannot con- 



1 Quoted by Jevons, " Principles of Science," p. 758. 



