INVOLUTION. 339 



to confusion. And as to the term Affinity, the most 

 recent Chemistry, finding it utterly unfatliomable in 

 itself, confines its research at present to the investiga- 

 tion of its modes of action. Science does not know 

 indeed what forces are ; it only classifies them. Here, 

 as in every deep recess of physical Nature, we are in 

 the presence of that which is metaphysical, that which 

 bars the way imperiously at every turn to a material- 

 istic interpretation of the world. Yet name and 

 nature of force apart, what affinity even the grossest, 

 what likeness even the most remote, could one have 

 expected to trace between the gradual aggregation of 

 units of matter in the condensation of a weltering 

 star, and the slow segregation of men in the organi- 

 zation of societies and nations ? However dift'erent the 

 agents, is there no suggestion that they are different 

 stages of a uniform process, different epochs of one 

 great historical enterprise, different results of a single 

 evolutionary law ? 



Read from the root, we define this age-long process 

 by a word borrowed from the science of roots — a word 

 from the clay — Evolution. But read from the top, 

 Evolution is an impossible word to describe it. The 

 word is Involution. It is not a Stigmaria world, but 

 a Sigillaria world ; a spiritual, not a material universe. 

 Evolution is Ad volution ; better, it is Revelation — the 

 phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive 

 realization of the Ideal, the Ascent of Love. Evolu- 

 tion is a doctrine of unimaginable grandeur. That 

 Man should discern the prelude to his destiny in the 

 voices of the stars ; that the heart of Nature should be 

 a so human heart ; that its eternal enterprise sliould 

 be one with his ideals ; that even in the Universe 



