ON EVOLUTION. 287 
distinctive symptom observable in every case in which the 
term is held to be applicable, but takes account of nothing 
more, cannot properly be accepted as a definition of the thing 
signified ; and that, accordingly, we ought to say, not that 
life is, but that it is known by, ‘‘ the continuous adjustment of 
internal relations to external relations.”?* Further, | would 
suggest that persistence should be predicated of Hffect rather 
than of Force. If a body, once set in motion, continue 
moving, it is an effect which visibly persists, whether in the 
simple, undeviating motion thus originated, or in the resultant 
of a multiplicity of effects. It may be eventually trans- 
muted from sensible movement into molecular tremors, or 
may be lurking in situations of relative and apparent repose ; 
but, howsoever this be, it is the effect which lasts, and which, 
if we suppose a final balance of conflicting effects, or, we may 
say, their absolute neutralisation, must in this form, but must 
in any case in some form or other, last for ever. The action 
of true force, so long as it persists, must needs be, as is 
evident in a falling body, cumulative. There is, I do not fora 
moment doubt, a persistence, or ceaseless conservation, of all 
tendencies observable in matter ; and, for scientific purposes, 
every such tendency may be conveniently represented, rela- 
_ tively to the amount of resistance it can overcome, as force, 
and relatively to its equivalent in work (Zpyov), as energy 
(évépyem). ‘To credit atoms and molecules, however, with 
the possession of forces and energies is, I cannot but 
think, to encumber science with gratuitously-conceived 
metaphysical entities, and thus to fall into the very snare 
against which scientists so emphatically caution us. Of Force 
we have no truly scientific knowledge, except in so far as, 
aided by the immediate experience of spontaneity, we 
conceive of a Necessary Force whence all movement and 
change originate. ‘The philosophical conception of force 
assumes that the elementary particles from whose complex 
movements and combinations diversities of structure arise, 
execute with faultless regularity preordained manceuvres, and 
assume, without fail, appointed places under the control of an 
all-compelling Will, and thereby constitute the ever-growing 
expression of an Hternal Idea. 
16. The question we have now to consider I formulate accord- 
ingly, as follows:—Are the various types which have been 
modelled to serve as vehicles and instruments of correspond- 
ing varieties of that specific determination of the Divine 
* The Principles of Biology, by Herbert Spencer, Part I. ch. v. § 30. 
