INVOLUTION 429 



curiosity of Science. For what is the product? It 

 is not mountain and valley, sky and sea, flower 

 and star, this glorious and beautiful world in which 

 Man's body finds its home. It is not the god-like 

 gift of Mind nor the ordered cosmos where it 

 finds so noble an exercise for its illimitable powers. 

 It is that which of all other things in the 

 universe commends itself, with increasing sure- 

 ness as time goes on, to the reason and to the 

 heart of Humanity — Love. Love is the final 

 result of Evolution. This is what stands out in 

 Nature as the supreme creation. Evolution is not 

 progress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It 

 is a progress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in 

 that which is at once most human, most rational, 

 and most divine. Whatever controversy rages as 

 to the factors of Evolution, whatever mystery en- 

 shrouds its steps, no doubt exists of its goal. The 

 great landmarks we have passed, and we are not 

 yet half-way up the Ascent, each separately and 

 all together have declared the course of Nature to 

 be a rational course, and its end a moral end. At 

 the furthest limit of time, in protoplasm itself, we 

 saw start forth the two great currents which by 

 their action and reaction, as Selfishness and Unsel- 

 fishness, were to supply in ever accentuating clear- 

 ness the conditions of the moral life. Following 



