130 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



existence of Mr. Spencer's system of philosophy was 

 determined by a nice adjustment in that original 

 collocation of forces : a difference quite imperceptible 

 would have left the thinking portion of the world, 

 if in that case any thinking portion had ever 

 come to be, without the very important addition 

 which Mr. Spencer has contributed to speculative 

 thought. 



No doubt we must postulate some mode in which 

 the original matter and motion were distributed in 

 space, and one is as readily taken for granted as 

 another. But by what right does the evolutionist 

 demand that among the infinite possibilities we should 

 posit just that one mode, and no other, which contains 

 the amount and arrangement of matter and motion 

 that will, if his theory is true, evolve the existing 

 universe ? From that which is, he may reply, I infer 

 what must have been. The inference is doubly illegi- 

 timate; for the point in debate is whether, from a 

 primordial homogeneity to the present form of things, 

 there may or may not have been any intervention of 

 the absolute power, whether the process has been 

 > necessarily from the beginning until now the con- 

 tinuous and untouched operation of dynamic law, and 

 he posits an ordered heterogeneity : not only so, but 

 to show that all new manifestations of power and the 

 revelation of being in any mode not the outcome of a 

 dynamic principle are for ever excluded, he assumes a 

 specific and determinate arrangement of the imagined 



