THE ACTUAL PRIOR TO THE POTENTIAL. 1 99 



^f only we have the faith in science to carry it to 



its conclusion, and the courage to interpret it, 



►roves irrefragably that no evolution was possible 



ithout a pre-existent Deity, and a Deity, more- 



>ver, transcendent, non-material and non-pheno- 



lenal. 



And for the power of such a Deity to produce 

 ^the world, the pure potentiality with which evolu- 

 :ionism starts is merely the expression. And the 

 world as actual is prior to the germ which potent- 

 ially contains it, simply because the world-process 

 is the working out of an anterior purpose or idea 

 in the divine consciousness. And as all things are, 

 LS far as possible, directed to the realization of that 

 [end or purpose, the real nature of things is to be 

 [found in their final cause, and not in their historical 

 antecedents, which, just because they take prece- 

 dence in Time, are means to an end, and of inferior 

 significance in truth. 



Thus it is not true, in the last analysis, that the 

 , lower explains the higher, or that the antecedent 

 is truer than the final cause. On the contrary, it 

 is only from the standpoint of the higher that the 

 lower can be explained, and it is only by a recog- 

 nition of final causes that the conception of caus- 

 ation can be cleared of its difficulties (cf. iii. § ii). 

 The evolutionist method, which was to have a- 

 bolished teleology, turns out itself to require the 

 [most boldly teleological treatment. 



§ 19. And the same conclusion as to the ne- 

 cessity of teleology may be reached, perhaps more 

 clearly, from an investigation of the other meta- 

 physical implications of evolutionism. 



It has been already stated (§ 4) that the evolu- 

 tionist method involved the conception of a world- 



