12 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



first sight to apprehend. It is nothing less than 

 an attempt to present, in the unity of thought, the 

 unity of all real existence and all relations of real 

 existence, in co-existence and succession throughout 

 all time. All orders of persons and things, and all 

 processes of change, must find their due place in the 

 reproduction in thought of that organic whole which 

 is assumed to embrace all things in its totality. The 

 vastness of such an undertaking might well impart 

 a feeling of mistrust to the boldest and most self- 

 confident. Man buried, according to the doctrine of 

 the evolutionist, in the depth of this incomprehensible 

 universe of concrete being, tossed like a particle of 

 dust in the whirl of its incalculable eddies, stretching 

 hopelessly towards its infinite bounds, groping blindly 

 after its origin and end man, in his felt insignificance 

 over against the unsearchable actuality, might well 

 enter with hesitancy on the task of framing, in the 

 shape of organized knowledge, a true representation 

 of the whole range of being from God to inanimate 

 nature, and of the law of the activities, inter-rela- 

 tions, and changes of the whole and every part. Yet 

 this is the achievement which a philosophy, successful 

 in the task of unifying all knowledge, must accom- 

 plish. For " it is not enough to unify different classes 

 of phenomena ; philosophy must unify all concrete 

 phenomena." 



The goal of unity has been sought along various 

 lines. 



