The Formula of Evolution. 139 



herent?" Its parts cohered in the primal state, do 

 they now cohere more than at the first ? Then the 

 total of attraction in the universe has increased, and 

 the law of gravity is a fiction. Is the coherence but 

 the closer packing of the original matter at certain 

 points, and greater separation of it at others ? It then 

 means only a re-arrangement of positions, and all 

 science is knowledge of spatial relations. Coherence 

 yields no knowable modification except that of form. 

 The troops that had been arranged in open order are 

 now shown as massed in columns or in squares. But 

 we have no account of the way in which new arms of 

 precision have been elaborated, and how the parts 

 have been endowed with the higher qualities of in- 

 telligence and courage, as well as arranged in new 

 positions. " Coherence," even if we could measure it,, 

 would explain but a small part of the phenomena. 



"Heterogeneity" does not help us to any real mean- 

 ing. What constitutes exactly the difference marked 

 by the term ? Is it altered distribution in space, or 

 altered arrangement of parts in mutual relation or in 

 bulk, or is it difference in the mode of motion of the 

 whole or of the parts ? Or is it all these together, or 

 something else ? What it may be precisely, the for- 

 mula leaves undefined : it is elastic enough to bear a 

 variety of interpretations. That into which the 

 universe passes in evolution is left by the formula 

 as vague as that out of which it proceeds. 



When the explanatory clause of the formula fails 



