THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 17 



Finding thought to be the very essence of man considered 

 as a natural product, we are compelled to believe that there 

 is thought, implicit or explicit, in all the products which 

 compose this universe. Nothing can be clearer, as the result 

 of three centuries of scientific industry, than that there is 

 neither loss of elements nor abrupt separation of species in 

 the Kosmos, but that the whole is wrought of the same 

 ground materials and evolved in its multiplicity of forms 

 out of the same fundamental constituents. If then we 

 discover thought in man upon one plane of this immense 

 development, how can we deny it to existences on other 

 planes? How can we conceive that the primitive energies 

 out of which the whole proceeded were not conscious or 

 pregnant with consciousness ? If mind is our sole reality 

 and self, is it not the sole reality and self of all ? Must we 

 not maintain that, the universe being in one rhythm, things 

 less highly organised than man possess consciousness, in the 

 degrees of their descent less acute than man's? Must we 

 not also surmise that ascending scales of existences more 

 highly organised, of whom we are at present ignorant, are 

 endowed with consciousness superior to man's ? Paradoxical 

 as this may seem, it is not incredible that the globe on which 

 we live is more conscious of itself than we are of ourselves ; 

 and that the cells which compose our corporeal frame are 

 gifted with a separate consciousness of a simpler kind than 

 ours. 



In this speculation of the universe, whether we advance 

 towards the verge of mysticism or abide within the bounds 

 of reverent abstention from such excursions, law the law of 

 the world's life appears as God, brought nearer to experience, 

 the object of obedience, the ever-present source of quickening 

 enthusiasm. To this power, in whom we live and move and 

 have our being, in whom the infinitely great and infinitely 

 small alike exist, we commit ourselves with the assurance 

 that self, purged of egotism, is seeking its own best through 

 dedication. We do not ask for crowns and thrones in the 

 next world ; we do not bargain for compensation which shall 

 make earth's trials insignificant. Face to face with death, 



