The Idea of Development 49 



are saturated with the merely mechanical and static conceptions 

 of the universe engendered by an anthropomorphic design. 



Evolution is another term for " universal " experience— it is 

 Causation in activity. It is the active manifestation in the world 

 of what we mean when we speak of Causation. Causation is a 

 principle, and it can therefore have no reality unless it is re- 

 garded as a function. We cannot get outside it and look upon it 

 with categories of the mind. It is an essential part of the consti- 

 tution of the universe, and we can no more tell why it is or ex- 

 plain how it operates than we can tell why we speak of matter 

 and of mind as existing, or say how they operate (ontologically) 

 upon each other. 



Causation is the method by which a universe of powers, poten- 

 tialities and promises realises itself. Causation is the potentiality, 

 the dunaiuis "energising," actualising itself, making reality; 

 and it would be far better to use the word " cause " in its old 

 restricted logical sense and to carry over this meaning of uni- 

 versal causation into our idea of the process of Evolution, where 

 it properly belongs, and with which, metaphysically, it is synony- 

 mous. 



Besides, this is a position to which the consistent thinker is 

 ultimately forced, if he accept Evolution even in its baldest state- 

 ment. For, if we say that one thing " causes " another, or that 

 retrospectively one thing is due to another, how does it happen 

 that from one thing comes another of a different kind? It is 

 useless to argue, as has so often been done, that a thing produces 

 an effect like itself. We know that this is not so. The heat is 

 not like fire ; the plant is not like seed ; the child is not like his 

 parents. Nor again, strictly speaking, does the fire cause the 

 heat ; or the seed, the plant ; or the parents, the child. Fire, plant, 

 child are the realisation, the actualisation of fire as fire, of seed 

 as seed, of parents as parents. They are part of the conception 

 of fire, seed, and parent. They are the potentiality of combustible 

 material, of vegetable cells, and of human beings made manifest,, 

 expressed, realised, evolved. We cannot have fire without in- 

 volving, both in idea and in actuality, heat; nor can we really 

 mean seed without seeing in our mind's eye its full fruition as 

 plant ; nor does the relation of parents mean aught save as it is 

 realised in the existence of children. In this conception of the 



