206 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. 



obscurer and more unintelligible, because they do 

 not so clearly exhibit the drift of the process. 

 Hence their explanation comes last, just because in 

 the historical process they came first. We must not 

 therefore hastily conclude that because the teleo- 

 loglcal method is true, it will be at once possible to 

 give a teleological explanation of the physical laws of 

 nature. The physical laws of nature are the earliest 

 and lowest laws of the world-process, the first at- 

 tempts at the realization of its End, and so are the 

 very last to become intelligible. If we ever arrive 

 at a teleological explanation of them, it will be only 

 after we have worked down to them from the higher 

 laws of the more complex phenomena. The basis, 

 in other words, for a teleological interpretation of 

 nature will not be found in sciences like physics and 

 mechanics, but in sciences like sociology and ethics. 



But if this principle is borne in mind, and no 

 attempt is made at premature interpretation of the 

 lower orders, which is bound to fail, we need not 

 despair of ultimately being able to give a rational 

 account of why everything is what it is and nothing 

 else. 



§ 23. But though enough has perhaps been said 

 to elucidate the teleology of the world-process, its 

 relation to Time yet requires further discussion. 

 We saw in § 2 that every assertion of the reality of 

 history involved the reality of the Past, i.e. of Time, 

 and a beginning of that history either In or with 

 Time. But we must now consider whether the end, 

 which is involved In the conception of a world- 

 process, applies also to Time, whether it is a real or 

 merely a logical end. 



We saw (§ 13) that It seemed not impossible to 

 regard the world as a process which went on ever- 



I 



