THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION H 



The extension of evolution from this limited and 

 lowly scope in the region of life into a theory of 

 cosmical reach, and, still farther, into a theory of 

 the origin of life, and then of the origin of mind, 

 is an act for which science furnishes no warrant 

 whatever. The step into boundlessness is simply 

 the work of philosophical speculation, as it always 

 is. I do not mean to say that philosophical specu- 

 lation is necessarily without warrant, or destitute of 

 evidences of its own, more or less valid within its 

 own field. But what I do wish to say is, that these 

 evidences are not the evidences of science ; that 

 scientific evidences must by their nature stop short 

 of such sweeping universals ; and that when either 

 scientific men or the general public assume that 

 such speculative extensions of principles reached in 

 some narrow field of science have the support and 

 the prestige of science, they are deluded by a soph- 

 ism — a sophism really so glaring that its common 

 prevalence is matter for astonishment, and might 

 beforehand well be incredible. The correctness of 

 this statement will appear as we go on. 



No, our question is not in the least a question of 

 science. It is only when men of science, or other 



of the biologists, that this psychic series is but a part of " physiology " 

 totally conceived; though the thread of genetic connexion is of course 

 not at all the same as that in pliysiology proper. But this implication 

 does not touch the question of the essential mind, the intelligent prin- 

 ciple. See below, however, pp. 16-25. Cf. pp. 39-41. 



