THE INTERPRETATION OF EVOLUTION. 409 



erogeneity, or between both and increasing integration. 

 Still less evidence is there that these laws of the re-distribu- 

 tion of matter and motion, are necessarily correlated with 

 those laws of the direction of motion and the rhythm of mo- 

 tion, previously set forth. But until we see these now sepa- 

 rate truths to be implications of one truth, our knowledge re- 

 mains imperfectly coherent. 



147. The task before us, then, is that of exhibiting 

 the phenomena of Evolution in synthetic order. Setting out 

 from an established ultimate principle, it has to be shown 

 that the course of transformation among all kinds of ex- 

 istences, cannot but be that which we have seen it to be. 

 It has to be shown that the re-distribution of matter and 

 motion, must everywhere take place in those ways, and pro- 

 duce those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms, societies, 

 alike display. And it has to be shown that this universality 

 of process, results from the same necessity which determines 

 each simplest movement around us, down to the accelerated 

 fall of a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp-string. 



In other words, the phenomena of Evolution have to be 

 deduced from the Persistence of Force. As before said 

 " to this an ultimate analysis brings us down; and on this 

 a rational synthesis must build up." This being the ulti- 

 mate truth which transcends experience by underlying it, 

 so furnishing a common basis on which the widest general- 

 izations stand, these widest generalizations are to be unified 

 by referring them to this common basis. Already the 

 truths manifested throughout concrete phenomena of all 

 orders, that there is equivalence among transformed forces, 

 that motion follows the line of least resistance, and that it is 

 universally rhythmic, we have found to be severally dedu- 

 cible from the persistence of force; and this affiliation of 

 them on the persistence of force has reduced them to a co- 

 herent whole. Here we have similarly to affiliate the univer- 

 sal traits of Evolution, by showing that, given the persist- 



