The Formula of Evolution, 135 



positive knowledge of the cosmos as it is. If we have- 

 in view not the totality of things, but a portion of 

 matter say a plant germ we are in no respect 

 helped towards a right understanding of its growth 

 by the implication that it has, at the outset, no dis- 

 tinguishable bounds separating it from surrounding 

 matter. If we take the term to mean as seems 

 intended that which is undefined in qualities, that is- 

 having no attributes that can be clearly differenced, 

 we start with a something assumed to possess no- 

 known or knowable properties by which it may be 

 distinctly and definitely represented in thought. 



The conception of this "indefinite" existence within 

 the knowable has a close kinship with the " indefinite 

 consciousness " by which the existence of the unknow- 

 able is known. But we are entitled to ask whether 

 this indefiniteness is the absence of definite qualities or 

 the impossibility of our knowledge of them. If it be the 

 latter, we begin by positing our own ignorance, and not 

 a quality of things ; if the former, how does it accord 

 with the assumption that all the causes of the existing 

 order of knowable things lay in that original homo- 

 geneity ? It was, on Mr. Spencer's theory, definite in. 

 its relation to the knowable, definite in the amount of 

 force manifested in it, definite in the collocation of its 

 forces, definite in the direction of its motion, definite 

 in the dominion over it of dynamic law, definite in the 

 possession of just such causal energy, and of just such 

 operation of that energy under definite law as issue 



