8 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. i 



third, the struggle for existence, the agent of the 

 selective process in the state of nature, would 

 vanish.* 



Granting the existence of these tendencies, all 

 the known facts of the history of plants and of 

 animals may be brought into rational correlation. 

 And this is more than can be said for any other 

 hypothesis that I know of. Such hypotheses, for 

 example, as that of the existence of a primitive, 

 orderless chaos; of a passive and sluggish eternal 

 matter moulded, with but partial success, by 

 archetypal ideas; of a brand-new world-stuff 

 suddenly created and swiftly shaped by a super- 

 natural power; receive no encouragement, but the 

 contrary, from our present knowledge. That 

 our earth may once have formed part of a nebu- 

 lous cosmic magma is certainly possible, indeed 

 seems highly probable; but there is no reason to 

 doubt that order reigned there, as completely as 

 amidst what we regard as the most finished works 

 of nature or of man.f The faith which is born of 

 knowledge, finds its object in an eternal order, 

 bringing forth ceaseless change, through end- 

 less time, in endless space; the manifesta- 

 tions of the cosmic energy alternating between 

 phases of potentiality and phases of explication. 

 It may be that, as Kant suggests,! every cosmic 



* Collected Essays, vol. ii. passim. 



■f Ibid., vol. iv. p. 138; vol. v. pp. 71-73. 



tlUd., vol. viii. p. 321. 



