22 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



of the inorganic world cannot be unified. No one 

 dynamic principle will account for the play of forces 

 in nature, or reduce all their operations to unity. 

 To explain the action of inorganic matter there is 

 more needed than the persistence of force. "The 

 antecedent forces must be adequate in their quanti- 

 ties, kinds, and distribution."* When the imagina- 

 tion has pushed back the conception of matter and 

 force to the utmost limit, to derive the universe that 

 is, the evolutionist must assume a certain position of 

 the atoms, certain orderly relations among the atoms, 

 certain activities and their laws a conception as com- 

 plex and as far from bein^ resolved into unitv as the 



JT C3 */ 



visible cosmos. The world that now is lay, by hypo- 

 thesis, wrapped up in that original collocation of 

 matter and force. Systems on systems of atoms 

 rising through systems on systems of molecules, ac- 

 cording to Mr. Spencer, constitute the imperceptible 

 out of which the visible has been shaped. This in- 

 finitely complicated and inexplicable series of systems 

 is necessary, even in one field of observation, to the 

 conception of that unity which science seeks. How 

 inconceivable the complexity, when we survey the 

 whole world of thought ! 



As the stream of created being flows forth from 

 the unseen, obedient to the Divine word, like the 

 Edenic river, it is " parted into four heads " : inor- 



* Spencer's Principles of Biology, Vol. I., Appendix. 



