COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



successfully subjected to both deductive and in- 

 ductive verification. In every department of 

 nature it has triumphantly borne the supreme 

 test of reconciling the order of conceptions with 

 the order of phenomena. And in our sociologi- 

 cal chapters, as well as in the chapters on the 

 Genesis of Man, it has enabled us to detect re- 

 lations among phenomena which had hitherto 

 remained in obscurity. 



It remains to add that this grand hypothe- 

 sis, for the conception and elaboration of which 

 I have ventured to liken Mr. Spencer to the 

 thinker who conceived and elaborated the hy- 

 pothesis of gravitation, affords in itself a strik- 

 ing illustration of that process of Evolution 

 which it formulates. Considered as an event in 

 intellectual development, this discovery is an 

 immense extension in time of the correspondence 

 between the order of human conceptions and 

 the order of phenomena, as Newton's discovery 

 was an immense extension of the correspondence 

 in space. The one has enabled us to adjust 

 our mental sequences to phenomena as distant 

 as the Milky Way ; the other carries back the 

 adjustments till they comprehend the birth of 

 the Solar System. The announcement of a 

 verifiable Law of Evolution is but the most re- 

 cent phase of a process which has been going 

 on from the time when men first began to spec- 

 ulate about the world of phenomena, — the 

 170 



