ch. in.] EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 315 



less assent ; but if we were to go on and assert that upon 

 this axiom might be directly reared a science of organic 

 phenomena, he would laugh us to scorn. If we were to 

 assure him that every form of energy manifested by his 

 organisms, from the molar motions of the stomach in diges- 

 tion and the lungs in respiration to the molecular motions of 

 cerebral ganglia, must have pre-existed in some other form, 

 he would thoroughly agree with us, but would ask us of 

 what use is all this unless we can trace the course and the 

 results of the transformations. If we were still to insist 

 that all the motions taking place in the aforesaid organisms 

 occur rhythmically, along lines of least resistance, and that 

 every such rhythm ends in a more or less considerable redis- 

 tribution of molecular motions, we might still be met by the 

 answer that all this does not give us a science of biology 

 unless we can also point out the general character and direc- 

 tion of the changes in which organic rhythms result. 



In other words our biologist might say to us, with Mr. 

 Spencer, that all these profound truths, with which we were 

 seeking to take away his occupation, are analytical truths, 

 and that "no number of analytical truths will make up that 

 synthesis of thought which alone can be an interpretation of 

 the synthesis of things. The decomposition of phenomena into 

 their elements," (he would continue,) "is but a preparation 

 for understanding phenomena in their state of composition, as 

 actually manifested. To have ascertained the laws of the 

 factors is not at all to have ascertained the laws of their 

 cooperation. The question is, not how any factor behaves 

 by itself, or under some imagined simple conditions; nor is 

 it even how one factor behaves under the complicated condi- 

 tions of actual existence. The thing to be expressed is the 

 joint product of the factors under all its various aspects. 

 Only when we can formulate the total process, have we 

 gained that knowledge of it which Philosophy aspires to." 1 

 1 First Principles, p. 274. 



