102 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



dissolution, only that our attention is pre-emi- 

 nently attracted to the former aspect of the two- 

 fold process, as that which is at present upper- 

 most in our own portion of the universe. In no 

 department of Nature, whether in the heavens or 

 on the earth, in the constitution of organic life or 

 in the career of human society, does the doctrine 

 of evolution assert progress as necessary, uni- 

 versal, and perpetual, but always as a contingent, 

 local, and temporary phenomenon. 



But what better phrase could we desire than 

 " cosmical weather " whereby tersely to describe 

 the endlessly diversified and apparently capricious 

 course of Nature as it is thus set forth in the doc- 

 trine of evolution? As the wind bloweth where 

 it listeth, but we know not whence it came, nor 

 whither it goes, so in the local condensations and 

 rarefactions of cosmical matter which make up 

 the giant careers of stellar systems we can detect 

 neither source nor direction. Not only is there 

 no reference to any end which humanity can rec- 

 ognise as good or evil, but there is not the slight- 

 est indication of dramatic progress toward any 

 d^nofiment whatever. There is simply the never- 

 ending onward rush of events, as undiscriminat- 

 ing, as ruthless, as irresistible, as the current of 

 Niagara or the blast of the tropical hurricane. 



