CHAPTER XIV. 



THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 



107. DEDUCTION has now to be verified by induction. 

 Thus far the argument has been that all sensible existences 

 must, in some way or other and at some time or other, reach 

 their concrete shapes through processes of concentration; 

 and such facts as have been named have been named merely 

 to clarify the perception of this necessity. But we cannot 

 be said to have arrived at that unified knowledge consti- 

 tuting Philosophy, until we have seen how existences of all 

 orders do exhibit a progressive integration of Matter and 

 concomitant loss of Motion. Tracing, so far as we may by 

 observation and inference, the objects dealt with by the 

 Astronomer and the Geologist, as well as those which Biolo- 

 gy, Psychology and Sociology treat of, we have to consider 

 what direct proof there is that the Cosmos, in general and 

 in detail, conforms to this law. 



In doing this, manifestations of the law more involved 

 than those hitherto indicated, will chiefly occupy us. 

 Throughout the classes of facts successively contemplated, 

 our attention will be directed not so much to the truth that 

 every aggregate has undergone, or is undergoing, inte- 

 gration, as to the further truth that in every more or less 

 separate part of every aggregate, integration has been, 

 or is, in progress. Instead of simple wholes and wholes 

 of which the complexity has been ignored, we have here to 

 deal with wholes as they actually exist mostly made up 



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