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THE SVNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY AN ORGANON OF THE SCIENCES. 6538 
law or order; in the mind of the other there is an abiding conviction that amid 
all the manifold changes which make up the world of phenomena, there is in the 
innermost determination of things a unity of plan ever working toward the reali- 
zation of definite ends. To the savage, nature is a Sibyl whose scattered leaves 
have no meaning; to the philosopher who carefully collects her leaves and places 
them in their true connection, she reveals the mysteries of ancient time. To 
trace out the genetic successions and correlations in cosmic phenomena, to show 
how one stage or epoch has unfolded out of its antecedent, and how this, in turn, 
will unfold into its consequent—in a word, to formulate the universal law of 
seguence which holds in all orders of phenomena, is the object of the law of Evo- 
lution. We agree with Prof. Le Conte in regarding Evolution as the grandest 
idea of modern science, embracing, as it does, at least one-half of all science, 
and this by far the most interesting and important half. ‘‘A most valuable 
habit,” says Mr. J. J. Murphy, ‘‘has become general among men of mental 
cultivation, of regarding every object, not as if it were alone and isolated, but in 
its connection with other objects.” Man as a being ‘‘looking before and after,” 
in order to satisfy the demands of his mental nature, earnestly desires to know 
the causes which have operated to produce the present order and relation of 
things. The mind accepts as a satisfactory explanation of any class of phenom- 
ena when it knows the dynamic laws, by the operation of which cognizable objects 
acquire and lose the sensible forms under which they assert themselves to con- 
sciousness. ‘This manner of investigation, made familiar by Evolution, is termed 
the gewetic method, because it investigates phenomena in their historic successions 
as manifested in the relations of each phase of a subject to preceding and suc- 
ceeding phases. ‘The phenomenon which at a particular period of time manifests 
itself to us does not reveal the totality of its nature, properties and relations. 
The genetic method, going back by amadysis, tends to reduce diversities to a 
primitive identity, and advancing forward by sywéhes¢s finds the primitive identity 
disappearing in diversity. By the former process science reconstructs the past; — 
by the latter it constructs the future. By this method we interpret the present by 
the past, the complex by the simple, and the fully developed product by the 
rudimentary form. 
This desire of man to know the past and to connect it organically with the 
present accounts for the fact that Evolution has been so generally received by 
the thinking class of persons. This law offers the only rational solution which 
our faculties permit us to perceive as to the mode of origin of the present cosmical 
order from primitive, antecedent conditions. From the time that Newton taught 
mankind to modify their idea of cause into the conception of mechanical force, 
and thence to look at nature from a dynamic point of view, the scientific mind 
has been advancing with sure step to Evolution as the final, logical outcome. 
To understand Evolution, we must study its fundamental characteristics. But it 
is from biology, the fundamental category of which is ovganism, that we get our 
clearest conception of those essential characteristics which constitute evolution, 
