652 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
this Power, or we may, in common with many evolutionists, predicate of this 
Power such attributes, and still hold to the theory of Evolution. ‘This theory 
concerning the relativity of knowledge was borrowed by Spencer from Hamilton, 
and hence does not enter as a logical element into the formula of Evolution. 
These are distinctions which need to be made if we would form a just 
estimate of the merits of the Synthetic Philosophy. Evolution claims to be an 
explanation of proximate causes, laws and origins, not of ultimate ones. The 
opponents of evolution seem utterly unable or unwilling to understand this dis- 
tinction. Even Agassiz, who ought to have understood this, failed to do so in 
his latest utterances. He says: ‘‘ How the world originated is the great question, 
and Darwin’s theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus 
far merely conjectural.” Darwin’s theory, which is a special phase of evolution, 
does not attempt to explain the origin of life, but the ovigén of species. Again, it 
is manifestly unfair to criticise adversely the Synthetic Philosophy for its failure 
to construct an ontology which shall explain ultimate causes and origins. The 
merits of a science or philosophy should be judged solely by its success in dealing 
with those questions which belong to its own self-chosen sphere of thought. 
Such a confusing of the question is to be regretted, both for the sake of science 
and theology. It brings issues into scientific discussion which have no business 
there, by confounding proximate and ultimate causes. It does harm to theology 
by exciting in the minds of religious people needless fears, causing them to regard 
science, and especially evolution, as hostile to their religion. 
Now, to properly understand Evolution, we must view it as the law which 
formulates successions in time. Whether it is the savage or the philosopher who 
looks out upon the face of nature, the most imposing and impressive feature is 
motion, or ceaseless activity. All Nature is one vast rhythm of action and reac- 
tion, endless processions and recessions. Amid this perpetual conflict of forces, 
this continual becoming and ceasing to be, land and sea are ever striving for the 
mastery. The sea is ever being carried away in the form of vapor to the tops 
of the hills and the mountains, while the hills and the mountains, the symbols 
of durability, are slowly but surely traveling to the sea. Nature, ‘‘red of tooth 
and claw,” has ever been hunting down without pity or remorse the living forms 
which make up the long procession of life. Man and his works, like all below 
him, are ever whirled onward in this mighty torrent of change which allows 
nothing to endure in fixed and stable form. We mark the ages of history by the 
different types of men and civilizations which have risen and flourished during 
their brief day, and then disappeared to be succeeded by new phases in the 
movement of Humanity. We thus see event following event, the cause ever 
passing into the effect, and the antecedent becoming incorporated into the conse- 
quent amid the ceaseless successions of time. 
But the savage and the philosopher assume toward these ceaseless changes 
of nature very unlike mental attitudes. In the mind of the one those varied 
phases of nature form an undiscriminated congeries of impressions, with no fixed 
