PROLEGOMENA 49 



Without the third, the struggle for existence, the agent of 

 the selective process in the state of nature, would vanish. 6 

 Granting the existence of these tendencies, all the 

 known facts of the history of plants and of animals may 

 be brought into rational correlation. And this is more 

 than can be said for any other hypothesis that I know of. 

 Such hypotheses, for example, as that of the existence of 

 a primitive, orderless chaos; of a passive and sluggish 

 eternal matter moulded, with but partial success, by 

 archetypal ideas; of a brand-new world-stuff suddenly 

 created and swiftly shaped by a supernatural power; 

 receive no encouragement, but the contrary, from our 

 present knowledge. That our earth may once have 

 formed part of a nebulous cosmic magma is certainly 

 possible, indeed seems highly probable; but there is no 

 reason to doubt that order reigned there, as completely as 

 amidst what we regard as the most finished works of 

 nature or of man. 7 The faith which is born of knowl- 

 edge, finds its object in an eternal order, bringing forth 

 ceaseless change, through endless time, in endless space; 

 the manifestations of the cosmic energy alternating be- 

 tween phases of potentiality and phases of explication. 

 It may be that, as Kant suggests, 8 every cosmic magma 

 predestined to evolve into a new world, has been the no 

 less predestined end of a vanished predecessor. 



n. 



Three or four years have elapsed since the state of 

 nature, to which I have referred, was brought to an 

 end, so far as a small patch of the soil is concerned, 

 by the intervention of man. The patch was cut off 



6 Collected Essays, vol. ii. passim. [T. H. H.] 



7 Ibid., vol. iv. p. 138; vol. v. pp. 71-73. [T. H. H.] 



8 Ibid., vol. viii. p. 321. [T. H. H.] 



