28 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



resemblance, and a continued progression of resem- 

 blance, among all the parts of the inorganic world, 

 and between the parts of the inorganic and those 

 of the organic too — is to our mental nature 

 indispensable. What is the true sense in which 

 the reality of this continuous connexion ought 

 to be taken ? Some explanation of it is for our 

 intelligence imperative. It cannot mean literal 

 descent by physiological generation ; it cannot be 

 by reproduction through sap or through blood. 

 What, then, can it mean — what alone viust it mean.? 

 Inexplicability by anything merely sensible — even 

 psychic, when this is taken simply as the sensibly 

 psychic — here shows up plainly. If the notion of 

 continuous genesis is to be made apprehensible to 

 our understanding, if it is not to vanish into some- 

 thing utterly obscure and meaningless, the meaning 

 for it must be sought and found in some mode of 

 mind — of our mind — quite other than the mode of 

 sense. But such a mode the agnostic interpretation 

 of evolution, and, reciprocally, the evolutional inter- 

 pretation of mind as originating out of non-mind, 

 necessarily denies. 



At this juncture, then, where a new break is 

 discovered, — the break between physiological and 

 logical genesis, — the philosophical reach of evolu- 

 tion betrays its Third Limit. 



