92 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



but natural to identify the potential energy of cor- 

 relation — the "waste-heap" of power — with the 

 Whole of natural selection. And thus we appear 

 to reach, by a cumulative argument, the One-and- 

 All in which all must be absorbed. 



If we now add to these several indications, given 

 by the method and the two chief results of modern 

 science, the discredit that the principles of con- 

 servation and evolution appear to cast directly upon 

 the belief in freedom and immortality, the panthe- 

 istic note in modern science will sound out to the 

 full. In the case of free-agency, this discredit 

 comes (i) from the closer nexus that the correla- 

 tion of forces seems plainly to establish between 

 every possible conscious action and the antecedent 

 or environing chain of events out of which the 

 web of its motives must be woven, and (2) from 

 the pitch and proclivity that, according to the prin- 

 ciple of evolution, must be transmitted by the 

 heredity inseparable from the process of descent. 

 In the case of immortality, the discredit comes 

 first by way of the principle of evolution, through 

 its indication of the transitoriness of all survivals, 

 and its irremediable failure to supply any evidence 

 of even a possible survival beyond the sensible 

 world, with which empirical evolution has alone 

 to do. But it comes also by way of the princi- 

 ple of the conservation and dissipation of energy. 



