30 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



which has only been worked into new forms without 

 any increase or diminution ; and therefore we may grant 

 that all these have proceeded from the original cosmic 

 vapour. But this admission does not require us further 

 to say that the highest immaterial things proceeded 

 from the vapour or that they were " potential " in it. 

 Indeed, in what sense could our philosophy or art be 

 said to be potential in the cosmic vapour ? That they 

 were bound to come out eventually in course of de- 

 velopment. But they did not come out in Mars or 

 Jupiter presumably, certainly not in the moon, all of 

 whom are derived from the cosmic vapour as well as 

 the earth. And they would not have come out on the 

 earth if there had not existed other powers and properties 

 than the physical ones postulated in the cosmic vapour, 

 other agency at work than the play of contingency in 

 natural selection; if there had not been an inner force 

 and necessity that was bent on realizing life and con- 

 sciousness and the ever higher content of these 

 Philosophy, Art, Science; an inner Power at work behind 

 natural selection, that manifested both unwearied purpose 

 and all-comprehending executive skill, but of which there 

 is no notice taken in either the Materialist or the 

 Evolution philosophy. 



At least, we are certain on Darwinian principles that 

 after life appeared on earth, and when the universal 

 struggle for existence began, the uncertainty repeated 

 again and again that hangs ever over the ordeal of battle 

 must have made the possible future existence of the 

 human species a matter of contingency; as we are 

 certain that after our species appeared, especially in its 

 infancy, there must have occurred crises, when, as in 

 childhood generally, the further existence of the species 

 trembled in the scales of uncertainty. At the first ap- 



