292 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



that the constitution of things is such that in time Mind is 

 to have the ultimate sway? Have we any such reason? 

 Can we connect the development which we have followed 

 with the world-process as a whole? Can we base it on 

 conditions that are not merely of wide reach but eternal ? 

 To ask this question is to attempt nothing less than to 

 discover in essentials the nature of the moving forces which 

 have determined the whole vast sequence revealed to us by 

 human history, by the study of the animal world and by 

 the geological record, which has made up the life of the 

 world in time. Even had we no question of the future to 

 raise, the actual emergence of so much of life and intelligence 

 as we know, the gradual peopling of the earth with beings 

 of a higher and higher cpnsciousness would be a mystery 

 demanding its explanation. It could be conceived of as 

 no sport or casual result of a rare combination of circum- 

 stances. It is rather that which constitutes the main thread 

 of narrative in the account which we must give ourselves 

 of things as experience reveals them. How then are we to 

 understand it ? What are the underlying springs of move- 

 ment ? To answer this question we must first enquire into 

 the causation of mind and its growth. We have treated 

 mind throughout as a true cause. In the last analysis is it 

 so, or is it at bottom an epi-phenomenon ? On the answer 

 to this question must depend our interpretation, and, 

 therefore, our view of the future of the evolution that has 

 been described. For on the one interpretation mind is a 

 power that is constantly growing, and that has in the prin- 

 ciple of harmony the vital seed of continuous expansion. 

 On the other it is the superficial result of an adjust- 

 ment of forces intrinsically indifferent to its growth 

 or decay. 



But further, even if mind is a true cause, the mind, whose 

 development we have traced, is only one cause among 

 others. It strives with indifferent and even brutish condi- 

 tions. It grows and increases its mastery over these con- 

 ditions. But it has to fight every inch of its way. It can 

 make no pretension to be the Absolute or the Uncondi- 

 tioned. It is a process within Reality, conditioned closely 

 by other elements of Reality. Can we obtain any light as 



