566 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 



" essences," " potentialities," " occult virtues," &c. ; in the 

 abandonment of such doctrines as those of " Platonic 

 Ideas," " Pre-established Harmonies," and the like; and in 

 the tendency towards the identification of Being as present 

 to us in consciousness, with Being as otherwise conditioned 

 beyond consciousness. Still more conspicuous is it in the 

 progress of Science; which, from the beginning has been 

 grouping isolated facts under laws, uniting special laws 

 under more general laws, and so reaching on to laws of 

 higher and higher generality ; until the conception of univer- 

 sal laws has become familiar to it. 



Unification being thus the characteristic of developing 

 thought of all kinds, and eventual arrival at unity being 

 fairly inferable, there arises yet a further support to our 

 conclusion. Since, unless there is some other and higher 

 unity, the unity we have reached must be that towards which 

 developing thought tends; and that there is any other and 

 higher unity is scarcely supposable. Having grouped the 

 changes which all orders of existences display into induc- 

 tions; having merged these inductions into a single induc- 

 tion ; having interpreted this induction deductively ; having 

 seen that the ultimate truth from which it is deduced is 

 one transcending proof; it seems, to say the least, very im- 

 probable that there can be established a fundamentally 

 different way of unifying that entire process of things 

 which Philosophy has to interpret. That the foregoing 

 accumulated verifications are all illusive, or that an opposing 

 doctrine can show a greater accumulation of verifications, is 

 not easy to conceive. 



Let no one suppose that any such implied degree of 

 trustworthiness is alleged of the various minor propositions 

 brought in illustration of the general argument. Such an 

 assumption would be so manifestly absurd, that it seems 

 scarcely needful to disclaim it. But the truth of the doctrine 

 as a whole, is unaffected by errors in the details of its pre- 

 sentation. If it can be shown that the Persistence of Force 



