CHAPTER XXIV. 



EVOLUTION OF LIFE-FORMS. 



TT has been shown that the sole sufficient cause of all 

 -* movement and of all reality is to be found in the 

 spontaneity of the absolute divine Spirit. We have also 

 seen that as spontaneity the divine Spirit is absolute 

 internality or subjectivity. 



But subjectivity and internality are themselves one- 

 sided terms. Neither can have any meaning save in 

 connection with its correlative. The inner apart from 

 the outer, the subjective apart from the objective, could 

 be nothing else than a pure abstraction of our own finite 

 thought. At the present stage of our inquiry all this 

 has grown familiar. The subjective, in its ultimate 

 significance, is now understood to be the energizing 

 principle which is ever unfolding itself into all forms 

 of objective reality. 



This principle, then, is itself absolute Vitality; and, as 

 such, it must from its very nature unfold into all phases 

 of reality belonging thereto. As already seen, it involves 

 within its own nature the necessity of self-externaliza- 

 tion in the mechanical and chemical relations of the 

 world in space. The first phase of recoil from this 

 merely outward tendency is seen in centrality, the second 

 in affinity, or chemism in its wider acceptation. We 

 now come to inquire what must be the next fundamental 

 stage. ^ 



