446 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP, xix 



If this ideal of thought may be taken as adumbrating 

 the ultimate nature of Reality, nature is neither wholly 

 blind, nor wholly the creature of intelligent purpose. 

 Origin and purpose are mutually dependent parts of one 

 scheme. What was in the beginning was in order that 

 what shall be might be realised. But what shall be, and 

 the way in which it shall come about, are equally the 

 creations of that which was at first. If we seek to realise 

 in some concrete fashion what this means, we shall think 

 once more of the germ of a soul in a living organism. 

 The soul would not exist in germ, but that there is laid 

 up in store for it a futurity which repays the travail of 

 development. Neither could it exist but for the physical 

 conditions in which it is immersed. Its development is a 

 war with these conditions which maintain and yet limit it 

 and its triumph is the submission of the conditions to its 

 perfected nature. In this image we have a brief account 

 of the whole process of the evolution of Mind as traced 

 in these chapters, and therewith the process of evolution 

 upon this earth appears as the working out in concrete 

 shape and on this relatively narrow stage of the vaster 

 process which we dimly conceive as constituting the 

 essential life of the world. 



