176 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. 



entered into the historical process of development 

 at some fixed point in the past. Supposing e.g., 

 that life had existed from all time in the form of 

 protoplasm, it might suddenly have taken to de- 

 veloping more complex forms, and this point would 

 form the starting-point of biology, and the ideal 

 ^xed point to which the Historical Method would go 

 back. Or again, an " eternal " Deity may have 

 existed always, and at some point in the past have 

 created the beginnings of the world. In this second 

 case the ideal starting-point of the Historical Method 

 would be also the real beginning of the world (at 

 least as a world) ; in the first, It would be ideal only, 

 and mark the limit merely for our knowledge. But 

 in either case, the Historical Method would be unable 

 to distinguish the ideal from the real limit ; it could 

 not determine whether its starting-point was merely 

 an instantaneous phase in the history, or whether it 

 had not existed for an infinity before the beginning 

 of change and beyond the reach of all history. It 

 is thus an intrinsic limitation of the Historical 

 Method, that even where it does penetrate to an 

 apparent beginning, it cannot tell us whether it is 

 the beginning of the existence of the thing or only of 

 its history. 



§ 4. Now It follows from the fact that modern 

 Evolutionism is a special application of the Histori- 

 cal Method that it shares all the metaphysical as- 

 sumption and limitations of that method. But in 

 the course of its development it has superadded 

 several others. And as its history affords the most 

 instructive examples of how scientific progress un- 

 wittingly develops metaphysical conceptions (ch. vi. 

 §§ 9, 16), it will be no real digression to trace the 

 history of the theory of Evolution. 



