200 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. 



history and the belief that that history had a 

 meaning, and was capable of rational formulation. 

 But we may now go a step further and assert that 

 the conception of the world as an evolution is the 

 conception of the world as a process. In applying 

 to the world the conception of evolution, we apply 

 to it the metaphysical conception of a process, and 

 hence we continually hear evolutionists talking of 

 " processes of evolution." But they hardly perhaps 

 realize how much metaphysic is contained in that 

 single word. 



§ 20. In the first place, a process is necessarily 

 finite and involves a beginning or starting-point 

 and an end, as two fixed points, between which 

 the process lies. For a process consists in A's be- 

 coming B ; but if neither A nor B is fixed, the 

 becoming cannot be described as a process. In 

 order to describe what happens we must have a 

 definite and determinate starting-point in A, and 

 a definite and determinate end in B. And even 

 if the real does not, strictly speaking, appear to 

 possess this definite character, we must assttme it 

 in idea for the purposes of knowledge. For our 

 thought, and the language which is the expression 

 of that thought, can only work with definite and 

 determinate conceptions, and would be rendered 

 unmeaning if the flux of the Real extended to 

 them, and a term did not mean one thing to the 

 exclusion of everything else. For this reason mere 

 Becoming, which nowhere presents any salient 

 phases which our thought can seize upon as fixed 

 points for a process, is unknowable (ch. iv. § 22, 

 ch. iii. § 13). Nothing that happens, therefore, can 

 ever be described except as a process, for our 

 thought cannot grasp nor our language express a 



