122 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



as its first conception. When we go back, then, to- 

 that primordial manifestation of force with which 

 evolution sets out a mass homogeneous or nearly 

 homogeneous, " diffused, uniform, indeterminate." * we 

 are to find in it the causes of all knowable pheno- 

 mena. That mass contained in it, by hypothesis, all 

 the causes which, gradually evolving, have issued in 

 the unimaginable diversity of the universe at it is. 

 These causes are such as may be comprehended in 

 one moving mass, and have their operation in new 

 modes of the relations of matter and motion. They 

 are generalized in a "dynamic principle." The law 

 expressing their combined operations, is the law of 

 the continuous redistribution of matter and motion. 

 The links of physical causation, on this supposition, 

 bind the present in all its varied phenomena phy- 

 sical and mental in one unbroken chain of necessity 

 to that far off past. In this primordial manifestation 

 of force, rising into the view of science, lay the causes 

 that have evolved the heavens and the earth, that 

 have shaped all forms of knowable existence, that 

 have generated all sensate being, that have created 

 Adam and Christ. 



Let not our position be misapprehended. We re- 

 cognize it to be the work of science to search in 

 antecedent cosmic phenomena, for the causes of all 

 that comes within the field of observation. It is the 



* First Principles, 187. 



