30 PEOGKESS: lis i>AW AXD CAUSE. 



organic clevelopment, is the law of all developmeDt. The 

 advance from the simple to the complex, through a process 

 of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest 

 changes of the Universe to which we can reason onr way 

 back; and in the earliest changes which we can induc- 

 tively establish ; it is seen in the geologic and climatic 

 evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its 

 surface ; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether 

 contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggre- 

 gation of races ; it is seen in the evolution of Society in 

 respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economi- 

 cal organization ; and it is seen in the evolution of all 

 those endless concrete and abstract products of human 

 activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. 

 From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to 

 the novelties of yesterc^ay, that in which Progress essen- 

 tially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous 

 into the heterogeneous. 



And now, from this uniformity of procedure, may we 

 not infer some fundamental necessity whence it results ? 

 May we not rationally seek for some all-pervading princi- 

 ple which determines this all-pervading process of things ? 

 Does not the universality of the law imply a universal 

 cause f 



That we can fathom such cause, noumenally considered, 

 is not to be supposed. To do this would be to solve that 

 ultimate mystery which must ever transcend human intelli- 

 gence. But it still may be possible for us to reduce the 

 law of all Progress, above established, from the condition 

 of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a ra- 

 tional generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret 

 Kepler's laws as necessary consequences of the law of gravi- 

 tation ; so it may be possible to interpret this law of Pro- 

 gress, in its multiform manifestations, as the necessary con- 



