8 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



best, to mere modes of the Sole Divine Life, and 

 all their lives to mere effects of its solitary omnipres- 

 ent causation : — 



When me they fly, I am the wings. 



This discovery, that the leading conceptions of the 

 evolutional philosophy are opposed to the vital con- 

 ceptions underlying the historical religion of our 

 Western civilisation, of course does not in the least 

 settle the merits of the issue between these concep- 

 tions in the court of rational evidence. But the 

 interests at stake touch everything that imparts to 

 human life the highest u^orth, and all that our past 

 culture has taught us most to value. These inter- 

 ests, it may well be contended, are so great as to 

 justify us in challenging any theory that threatens 

 them. Human nature is not prepared to face de- 

 spair, until it shall have been proved beyond all ques- 

 tion, and after a search entirely exhaustive, that 

 despair must indeed be faced. 



Amid all the clamour of the times in extolling 

 evolution, then, it is eminently seasonable to ask, 

 Jtist how miich can the principle of evolution really 

 do ? Is it of such reach and such profundity as 

 actually to serve for the explanation of everything 

 known .'' To state the question more exactly. How 

 far over the fields of being does evolution really go, 

 and with unbroken continuity .-' Let us try to dis- 



