THE I.IAIirS OF EVOLUTION- 2$ 



is f>ej- sc supersensible, but tbat tbe reacli of our 

 conceptive powers, on the contrary, is limited to the 

 world of sense. If we assume that our cognising 

 the existence of the Noumenon is anything more 

 than an illusion, we have already granted to one 

 of our conceptions the privilege of overstepping this 

 limit. 



Thus at every turn the inherent inconsistency and 

 inner contradiction lurking in the evolutional explana- 

 tion of mind, with its consequent doctrine of mental 

 limitation, comes into light. The noumenal change- 

 less Energy, incessant and ubiquitous, is rightly felt 

 by Mr. Spencer and his school to be indispensable to 

 the explanation — yes, to the very existence — of evo- 

 lution. Without it no new form could arise among 

 phenomena ; nor could there be such a fact as varia- 

 tion of species in response to varying environment, 

 or as natural selection resulting from a struggle for 

 existence. In short, the Unseen Power must be a 

 certainty, if evolution is to be, and is to work ; yet 

 when evolution exists, when it works with the un- 

 bounded sweep desired, and mind becomes its prod- 

 uct, then mind can have no faculty by which to 

 reach the certainty of an Unseen Power, since con- 

 sciousness is then reduced to sense alone, to sense- 

 perceptions and abstractions from them. 



In this impotence of the principle of evolution to 

 cross the break between the phenomenal and the 



