GROWTH OF IDEAS 261 



once more, after a safe voyage. The notes he made 



during his journey yielded another charming work, 



Letters from the East Indies and Malaysia (1901). 



His spirit of enterprise is inexhaustible, and still 



continues. 



. • • • • 



Within this frame of his career we have now 

 to study a growth of ideas and a continuance of 

 research that tell of vigour, consistency, and 

 success in every line. It unfolds logically like a 

 great work of art. 



The General Morphology stands at the parting 

 of two ways. It afforded a programme of an 

 infinite amount of fresh technical research — the 

 elaboration of his studies in detail, of promor- 

 phology, of his theory of individuality, and of the 

 phylogenetic system of living things ; and the 

 strengthening of the laws of evolution, especially 

 the great biogenetic law. On the other hand, there 

 was the purely philosophic work to be done : the 

 gathering together of the general threads that 

 ran through his work, and the building of a new 

 philosophy of life, based on a new story of creation, 

 from the atom to the moneron, from the moneron 

 to man, and the whole to be comprised and 

 contained in God. In a word, he might proceed 

 in either of two ways from the Morphology : he 

 might construct academic zoology afresh, or he 

 might write a work on the new God. 



When he came home from Lanzarote, the two 

 ways seemed to coincide in front of him ; his work 

 had, indeed, opened them out as one. But external 



