INVOLUTION 423 



ingly appropriated, quantitatively and qualitatively, 

 with each fresh stage of the advance, that a con- 

 sistent theory is possible, or that the true nature 

 of Evolution can appear. 



A child does not grow out of a child by 

 spontaneous unfoldings. The process is fed from 

 without. The body assimilates food, the mind 

 assimilates books, the moral nature draws upon 

 affection, the religious faculties nourish the higher 

 being from Ideals. Time brings not only more 

 things, but new things ; the higher nature inaugu- 

 rates possession of, or by, the higher order. "It 

 lies in the very nature of the case that the 

 earliest form of that which lives and develops is 

 the least adequate to its nature, and therefore that 

 from which we can get the least distinct clue to 

 the inner principle of that nature. Hence to trace 

 a living being back to its beginning, and to ex- 

 plain what follows by such beginning, would be 

 simply to omit almost all that characterizes it, 

 and then to suppose that in what remains we 

 have the secret of its existence. That is not 

 really to explain it, but to explain it away ; for 

 on this method, we necessarily reduce the features 

 that distinguish it to a minimum^ and, when we 

 have done so, the remainder may well seem to be 

 itself reducible to something in which the principle 



