PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 165 



ent and self-sufficient that they can be adequately 

 rationalized and philosophically explained without 

 resort to the higher mind and superphysical operations 

 and factors that lie behind and determine their place 

 and significance in the whole order. Nature is orderly, 

 and reveals the principle of continuity, because it is 

 part of a larger order in which that principle holds 

 sway. But when nature is regarded in isolation from. . 

 the higher order which it subserves, and dealt with' 

 as if complete in itself, gaps appear, and the veryj 

 principle of continuity which it teaches is made more 

 difficult to understand. 



Some of these gaps have been noted in my discus- . 

 sion of the evolutionary theory. The advance from! 

 the inorganic to the organic and living constitutes an 

 example, as does also the appearance of mind in a uni- 

 verse previously non-intelligent. The materialistic Pro- 

 fessor Tyndall, in an address to the Physical Section 

 of the British Association at Norwich, in 1868, said: 

 " Granted that a definite thought and a definite molec- 

 ular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do 

 not possess the intelligent organ, nor apparently any 

 rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, 

 by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other." 

 It is clear that physical scientists cannot successfully 

 reduce all the phenomena by which they are confronted 

 in nature to purely physical categories. The presence 

 of superphysical factors is not intelligently to be 

 denied, and these factors modify physical sequences 

 in manners that have very important significance in 



