jn. i.l T.KB QUESTION RESTATED 373 



cizing sympathetically the relatively rude theories, customs, 

 and prejudices of bygone generations ; this ability to realize 

 in imagination a time when forms of life now wholly distinct 

 were represented by a common ancestral type, or a time 

 when the material universe existed in a shape very differ- 

 ent from that in which it is presented to our senses ; this 

 growing tendency to interpret groups of phenomena by 

 reference to other groups of phenomena long preceding ; are 

 all alike explicable, in an ultimate analysis, as a prodigious 

 extension in time of the correspondence between the human 

 mind and its environment. 



The Doctrine of Evolution, in which this dynamical habit 

 of viewing things is reduced to a system, represents also 

 the most extensive integration of correspondences that has 

 yet been achieved. The continuous organization of scientific 

 truths by philosophy has all along been a progress in this 

 kind of integration. From the very first crude observations 

 and the earliest cosmical theories, it is true that succeeding 

 observations have all along had their results incorporated 

 with the cosmical theories, or else new cosmical theories 

 have been framed, which, by including the results of more 

 mature observation, have superseded the old ones. In this 

 way the progress of philosophy has on the whole kept pace 

 with that of science. But between the earlier systems and 

 the more modern ones there is a marked difference in the 

 extent to which special truths in different departments of 

 science are made to support and illustrate each other. For 

 the gaps in the scientific knowledge synthesized in older 

 systems were so considerable that, in order to make a syn- 

 thesis at all, it was necessary to incorporate a large amount 

 of hypothetical speculation which was not only unverified 

 but unverifiable ; so that the relations between science and 

 philoGophy were much less coherent than at present. To- 

 day the interdependence is more complete than ever before. 

 Our cosmic theories are rapidly modified by the incorpora- 



