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relatively call a metaphysics of its own. Accordingly, wo 
speak with entire precision and propriety of a mathematical, 
a chemical, and a physiological metaphysics. Used in this 
sense the term has a legitimate signification. Nor do we in 
the least except against the recognition of development or 
evolution as a legitimate conception or law in any class or 
sphere of phenomena, so far as its presence and agency are 
sustained by observation or verified by experiment. The true 
philosopher will as rationally and as readily believe in develop- 
ment or evolution, either as a force or a law, as he will believe 
in mechanical adhesion or chemical combinations, or the laws 
which govern either. He will not even object to the explica- 
tion of any number of phenomena by means of evolution, pro- 
vided the evidence for this application is satisfactory and the 
experiments are decisive. Nor will he object to relying on 
analogy as a ground of believing in evolution beyond the range 
of observation or experiment, provided the data of facts are 
sufficiently numerous, and the analogies compel to this sole 
conclusion. 
It is only when evolution or development is taken out of its 
definite and legitimate applications within the domain of life, 
and extended to every description of beings and phenomena, 
from the inorganic on the one hand to the self-existent on the 
other, that we question the warrant for applying the relation 
so widely and to a subject-matter from which it is wholly 
foreign. That a form of metaphysics is current, which in the 
sense defined may properly be called physiological, cannot be 
questioned by any person who is superficially acquainted with 
the philosophizing of our times. Its growth has been rapid 
and its development has been, to use its own favourite term, 
almost as sudden as was the first rushing of star-dust into the 
first solid orb. The elements of which it is composed are sin- 
gularly incongruous, and the writers who have contributed to 
its popularity and its acceptance are strangely unlike. Some 
of the principles and philosophies which it has contrived to 
subdue to its own vital power are seemingly irreconcilable, 
and yet they all have been gathered somehow into a common 
school of thought, which is regarded by many as mechanical, 
materialistic, and atheistic on the one hand, while it claims on 
the other to do full justice to the phenomena of spirit and the 
mystery of the Infinite. The menstruum which it employs as 
a solvent for these apparently unrelated and intractable ele- 
ments is its doctrine of life. Whatever may be the defects or 
incongruities of this bold and sweeping theory, whatever are 
the dangers it brings to faith and morals, to social order and 
religion, it hides in part by the elevated associations which 
