UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 131 
fully to account for the systems of energy complexes 
which constitute material nature. They think that the 
strivings of such a great free cause in cooperation with the 
strivings of lesser free causes are revealed in the evolu- 
tion of organic forms, and in the achievement and fixing 
in by repetition of the mechanical causes discoverable in 
every new species. They also think that the inorganic ele- 
ments and compounds, while viewed in isolation they 
seem to be mechanical energy complexes, when more 
fully viewed are but abstract aspects of strivings whose 
outcome has been matter for the construction and nourish- 
ment of organic mechanisms, and the conduct issuing 
from them. 
These philosophers think, then, that material nature 
is a system of free causes or persons. Such causes being 
free are of course undetermined, and so they are ulti- 
mate, uncreated, or eternal realities. Through their 
immediate relationship to one another they give rise to 
all habits or energy complexes, and so to all changes, 
whether free or mechanical, going on in material nature. 
And this outcome includes all those energy complexes 
arising from an imitative reproducing or a knowing of 
the lives of others, or in the slowly developing perceptual 
adjustments to the sensory, spatial, and temporal aspects 
of the energy complexes which underlie and dictate 
these perceptual adjustments. 
As each of these free causes or persons is a centre 
of freedom and life to all the others, and in striving and 
achieving guides and sustains both the blind and the 
thoughtful strivings and choices of any or all of the 
others, perpetual progress or life would seem to be a 
character of all free causes or persons. From the nature 
of the material world as a natural system of such free 
causes or persons this progress or living must be uni- 
versally shared or rational, that is, the fullest living 
must be moral and religious. The end, then, of material 
nature, without our recognition of which the growing 
processes that constitute material nature cannot of course 
be fully understood, no more than can a plant without its 
flower and fruit, is the establishment of a moral and 
religious society of persons each of whom will find his 
satisfaction in efficient and loving service. 
