A Dynamic Theory. 71 



matter or something other than matter, if it is to re- 

 main for ever absolutely unknown. We want to 

 know what we are to think about that actuality as 

 conditioned in the knowable universe as we see it 

 manifested within the compass of experience. In the 

 region of the visible, within the view of science, the 

 evolutionist doctrine is clear and unmistakable. Over 

 the whole field of scientific knowledge, over the whole 

 range traversed by intelligence, there is no law known, 

 or that can be known, that is not included under the 

 one regulative principle that of the redistribution of 

 matter and motion ; and there is no power operative 

 within the cosmos, as open to the view of science, that 

 does not operate in accordance with that supreme law. 

 The law of the continuous redistribution of matter and 

 motion rules all change : wherever the eye pierces, it is 

 there ; wherever science illumines the depths of exist- 

 ence with the collected rays of organized knowledge, it 

 is there ; thought can never pass beyond its domain or 

 escape from its grasp ; it commands all the knowable. 

 Dynamic law is the one universal. Evolutionism is a 

 thorough-going dynamic theory. 



Let us look at the breadth of the application of this 

 dynamic principle. We have already, in outline, 

 sketched the realm of knowledge as embracing the 

 Supreme Source of all things ; and as including four 

 great streams flowing from that Source the know- 

 ledge of the world of inorganic matter, the knowledge 

 of organisms endowed with vegetal life, of organisms 



