174 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



abide. There would be no harmony of form and mo- 

 tion anywhere. The astronomical bodies would not be 

 formed, and therefore life as we now see it, in the 

 multiplication of effects, on the earth, would be impos- 

 sible. 



Units of inorganic substance, or of organic com- 

 pounds, combining in the course of evolution, or dis- 

 integrating in the process of dissolution, appear to 

 know, or to be conscious, to that degree, of the proper 

 motion to make in harmony with the pending phenome- 

 non. Teleology locates the consciousness of these 

 movements outside of units of substance. But that is 

 an assumption, not justified by the facts. This ''mind" 

 in atoms is their subjective side, and while it is very 

 limited compared with our conception of the same phase 

 in the human organism, yet we are compelled to recog- 

 nize its existence. So, it is intelligence when the com- 

 ponent parts of a star, brought by a ray of its light, 

 pass through a lens, and form a spectrum, informing 

 the astronomer of the composition, and conditions, of 

 a far-off sun. These star components do this, whether 

 there is any astronomer to interpret them or not. They 

 did it millions of years prior to the birth of Praunhofer 

 and Kirchoff, who first properly conceived, and inter- 

 preted their meaning. 



The term "psychical" has been limited to the activi- 

 ties of the human nervous system, and the analogous 

 phenomena in the inorganic are termed physical. But 

 the cause, and the effect, in both activities, are similar. 

 If, at the moment of the discovery of a great truth, like 

 the attraction of gravitation, in the brain of Newton, 

 the bony covering of his cerebrum could be removed, 

 and the most powerful microscope applied to the opera- 

 tion going on, nothing could be discovered, but the 



