September 26, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



427 



distribution of materials (as in writing, 

 painting and sculpture), we can carry on 

 intelligent intercourse with our fellows; 

 and we get so used to these ingenious and 

 roundabout methods, that we are apt to 

 think of them and their like as not only 

 the natural, but as the only possible modes 

 of communication, and that anything more 

 direct would disarrange the whole fabric 

 of science. 



It is clearly true that our bodies consti- 

 tute the normal means of manifesting our- 

 selves to each other while on the planet; 

 and that if the physiological mechanism 

 whereby we accomplish material acts is in- 

 jured, the conveyance of our meaning and 

 the display of our personality inevitably 

 and correspondingly suffer. 



So conspicuously is this the case that it 

 has been possible to suppose that the com- 

 municating mechanism, formed and worked 

 by us, is the whole of our existence: and 

 that we are essentially nothing but the 

 machinery by which we are known. We 

 find the machinery utilizing nothing but 

 well-known forms of energy, and subject to 

 all the laws of chemistry and physics — it 

 would be strange if it were not so — and 

 from that fact we try to draw valid deduc- 

 tions as to our nature, and as to the impos- 

 sibility of our existing apart from and 

 independent of these temporary modes of 

 material activity and manifestation. We 

 so uniformly employ them, in our present 

 circumstances, that we should be on our 

 guard against deception due to this very 

 uniformity.- Material bodies are all that 

 we have any control over, are all that we 

 are experimentally aware of ; anything that 

 we can do with these is open to us; any 

 conclusions we can draw about them may 

 be legitimate and true. But to step out- 

 side their province and to deny the exist- 

 ence of any other region because we have 

 no sense organ for its appreciation, or be- 



cause (like the ether) it is too uniformly 

 omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our 

 advantages and privileges from their 

 proper use and apply them to our own 

 misdirection. 



But if we have learned from science that 

 evolution is real, we have learned a great 

 deal. I must not venture to philosophize, 

 but certainly from the point of view of 

 science evolution is a great reality. Surely 

 evolution is not an illusion ; surely the uni- 

 verse progresses in time. Time and space 

 and matter are abstractions, but are none 

 the less real ; they are data given by experi- 

 ence ; and time is the keystone of evolution. 



Thy centuries follow each other, perfecting a 

 small wild flower. 



We abstract from living moving reality 

 a certain static aspect, and we call it mat- 

 ter ; we abstract the element of progressive- 

 ness, and we caU it time. When these two 

 abstractions combine, cooperate, interact, 

 we get reality again. It is like Poynting's 

 theorem. 



The only way to refute or confuse the 

 theory of evolution is to introduce the sub- 

 jectivity of time. That theory involves 

 the reality of time, and it is in this sense 

 that Professor Bergson uses the great 

 phrase, "creative evolution." 



I see the whole of material existence as 

 a steady passage from past to future, only 

 the single instant which we call the present 

 being actual. The past is not non-existent, 

 however; it is stored in our memories, 

 there is a record of it in matter, and the 

 present is based upon it; the future is the 

 outcome of the present, and is the product 

 of evolution. 



Existence is like the output from a loom. 

 The pattern, the design for the weaving, is 

 in some sort "there" already; but whereas 

 our looms are mere machines, once the 

 guiding cards have been fed into them, the 

 loom of time is complicated by a multitude 



