ical bankruptcy; by resolutely refusing to face the problem of
the whole--of the ultimate whence and whither. If it would positively
exclude theism or finalism it must ascribe all seeming order and
adaptation to the persistence of some blind force, subduing all things
to itself, to "existence," or to "life" striving to assert and extend
itself. It is this conception that seems best to bring the mystery of
the universe within the comprehension of the popular mind, and is more
in keeping with those "aggregation theories" of our day which regard
dust as the one eternal reality whose combination and disguises delude
us into believing in soul and intelligence and divinity. But on closer
examination the words "life" and "existence" answer to no simple reality
or force which can be regarded as governing nature, and from this
radical fallacy of language a whole brood of further absurdities spring
up which make the popular form of Evolution-philosophy utterly
incoherent.

_June, Aug. Sept._ 1899.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: This will perhaps be the most convenient term. In the
_Summa of Aquinas_, the elaborate treatise _De vera religione_, called
into existence by more recent exigencies, had no place. Still, in so far
as it is constructed roughly on the same scheme and presupposes the same
philosophy, and (were it not a deepening of the roots rather than an
extension of the branches) might almost be regarded as a development of
scholasticism, it may rightly be called "scholastic" to distinguish it,
say, from such a work as the _Grammar of Assent_.]

[Footnote 2: _Science and a Future Life_, By F. W. Myers.]

[Footnote 3: i.e., If an object be adequately and exhaustively
conceived under the predicates A.B.C.D., it is inadequately conceived as
A.B.x.x. But if each of these properties be permeated and modified by
the rest, then A in this object is not as A in any other combination,
but is A as related to and modified by B.C.D.; and similarly, the other
properties are each unique. Hence any part is somewhat falsely
apprehended till the whole be apprehended, when we are dealing with
organic as opposed to mechanical totalities.]

[Footnote 4: Not that the transmutation of one species into another has
yet been detected in any instance, or perhaps, even were it a fact,
could be detected; but that such a serial graduation has been observed
as might be commodiously explained by that supposition,--and also by
fifty others.]

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