CHAPTER VIII. 



FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTLON. 



§ I. We have seen in the last chapter what Is 

 impHed in saying that the world is an evolution. 

 To speak of Evolution, of a world-process, is to put 

 before ourselves a metaphysical ideal, to which we 

 assert the course of Reality will conform. And this 

 faith might be held even though we were utterly 

 unable to define this world-process, to divine the 

 content of our conception in our particular case, or 

 to predict from what the wqrld develops Into what. 

 We might say that the world wp-s evolving, and as 

 yet not know what it was evolving. We might feel 

 sure that the phenomena of the world are not merely 

 an aimless flux of change, but a development In a 

 definite direction, even thoucrh the state of our know- 

 ledge might not enable us to determine and to for- 

 mulate that direction. 



But such a strain upon the faculty of faith is fortun- 

 ately uncalled for. The same scientific evidence 

 which first suggested the application of the meta- 

 physical conception of process to the world, also 

 instructs us as to the nature of that process. The 

 formulas of the law of Evolution are generalizations 

 similar to the other generalizations about the world, 

 and to some extent they have already been dis- 

 covered, 



