358 THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 



adaptations, to compare both with the conflict of human races 

 and what may result therefrom, but it is probably more falla- 

 cious than useful. The similarities are at best formal, except 

 that in all cases — in inorganic genesis, in organic evolution, 

 and in social history — we are dealing with processes of 

 change. 



We dwell on these distinctions because they are not really 

 easy, because they are often ignored, and because our whole 

 system of thought depends on our answer to the question 

 whether organic evolution is adequately described as a 

 mechanical process. In his famous article in the 9th edi- 

 tion of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Prof. James Sully 

 defined evolution as a " natural history of the cosmos, includ- 

 ing organic beings, expressed in physical terms as a mechan- 

 ical process ". We have given some reasons for regarding 

 this definition as scientifically unsound. The vital striving 

 and struggling characteristic of the realm of organisms is 

 something apart from and finer than even the music of the 

 spheres. 



Let us give the contrast we are emphasising its most 

 generalised statement. From the purely physical point of 

 view — a very abstract one — the history of the world has 

 been and continues to be a series of re-distributions of matter 

 and energy. Even if we think of radium pouring forth 

 power like an inexhaustible fountain, we make it conform 

 with physical theory by speaking of the potential energy 

 liberated by a dissolution of the atoms. The world is like a 

 change-ofiice, without increase or decrease in its initial stock. 

 We always stand in the middle of an equation, past equalling 

 future. It is for the biologist to correct this partial view, 

 for to him the possible that grows out of the past is new 

 and in some measure unpredictable. The psychologist has a 



