310 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY 



must be expended on the system from without by some 

 external agency. Whatever else physics shows us it 

 shows us an unitary universe, that is, an universe in 

 which anything that happens affects, to some extent, 

 all the other parts. Therefore the diminution of 

 diversities, or energy-differences, is something that 

 cannot be undone, or compensated, for there is nothing 

 without the universe.^ Everything that happens in 

 our universe reduces the possibility of further happen- 

 ing. We desire, at the risk of reiteration, that this 

 principle of energetics should be perfectly clear : in- 

 organic happening, of whatever kind it may be, is a 

 case or consequence of the second law of energetics — is 

 the second law itself in a sense. All energy-transform- 

 ations occur because energy-differences are being 

 diminished, because diversities are being abolished. 

 This is the sense, or quality, or direction of inorganic 

 phenomena. 



It is not the direction of organic evolution. In the 

 development of the individual organism what we most 

 clearly see is the progressive increase of diversity of the 

 parts. In phylogenetic evolution one, or a few, simple 

 morphological forms of life have become, and are 

 becoming, indefinitely numerous morphological forms. 

 Diversity is continually increasing. If we cling to the 

 mechanistic view of life, we must suppose that the 

 diversity of the fully developed organism, or that of the 

 organic world with all its species, was also the diversity 

 of the fertilised ovum or that of the primitive life-sub- 

 stance in another phase. Then we commit ourselves 

 to all the crudities of modern speculations on heredity. 



With this increasing diversity of form there is a 



^ It is assumed that the universe is a finite one. If it were infinite the 

 whole discussion becomes meaningless, and we must give up this and other 

 problems. 



