152 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. 



which is the basis and datum of evolution, and which 

 no evolution can explain. 



(2) The thing to be explained may merge into 

 something else, and cease to exist, or at least to be 

 distinguishable as' such. 



(3) It may vanish entirely : it may be traced to 

 its first appearance on the scene. 



It is possible to illustrate each of these results of 

 the historical explanation from various evolutionist 

 theories. The first may perhaps be said to be the 

 most common result in the present condition of our 

 data. If we rigorously refuse to follow the evolution- 

 ist method beyond the data which are indisputably 

 given, instead of prolonging our histories inferen- 

 tially, we almost everywhere come to a point at 

 which our evidence fails us. To take the most 

 striking example, we can trace the history of life 

 down to protoplasm, but we have no evidence that 

 could explain how life arose out of lifeless matter. 

 Strictly speaking, therefore, protoplasm is the inex- 

 plicable dahcm of biological evolution. For, though 

 it so happens that protoplasm, or something very 

 like that hypothetical basis of biology, is an actually 

 visible substance, and so capable of further analysis 

 by chemical and physical methods, there is nothing 

 in its chemical and physical properties to bridge the 

 gulf between them and the phenomena of life, 

 nothing that renders it less of an ultimate fact for 

 biology. 



As an instance of the second we may quote the 

 supposed origin of the intellectual and the moral 

 consciousness in the evolution of life. As we trace 

 the history of intelligence downwards, we seem to 

 pass from the highest reason of man by insensible 

 gradations to a form of life in which nothing that 



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