46 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



horizon. How can we then judge with certainty the 

 direction or calculate the law of universal mutation ? 

 According to the principles of the evolutionist, we 

 are driven to hold that conclusions regarding the past 

 or future of the universe arrived at on the faith of 

 the validity throughout all time of any physical law 

 may very probably do rest on a mistake. Taking 

 the position of the evolutionist, we must feel that to 

 be slippery ground on which we stand, if stand it can 

 be called, when we are submerged in a stream of 

 constant change. That we have traced with precision 

 the law of cosmic movement while we ourselves are 

 drifting in the ceasless flux, is surely open to the 

 gravest doubt. One law after another which seemed 

 well-founded having slipped away from us, we poise 

 ourselves, as 011 the ultimate certainty, on a principle 

 supposed to govern repeatedly recurring eras of evolu- 

 tion and dissolution, " ever the same in principle, 

 but never the same in concrete results." 



But it is folly to speak of man as if he were 

 the spectator of this eternal stream of change ; he is 

 himself an integral part of it : nos mutamur in illis. 

 Reason, an evolved product, cannot stand apart and 

 survey the ceasless flow from the security of a self- 

 conscious intelligence, which has derived its being 

 from a super- sensual source. Mind is a phase of the 

 mutation an insignificant eddy in the vast the 

 unfathomable whirl. Reason has been evolved and 

 passes towards dissolution. The play of the cosmic 



