esentation in poetry and art, have
given place to one Supreme Being. So also light, heat, and other natural
agencies, palpable and ready to hand for the explanation of everything,
in the myth-making period of science which living men can still
remember, have by this time paled. They have become simply various
manifestations of one underlying spiritual energy, which is indeed
beyond our perception.[6] When Comte said that the universe could not
rest upon will, because then it would be arbitrary, incalculable,
subject to caprice, one feels the humour and pathos of it. Comte's
experience with will, his own and that of others, had evidently been too
largely of that sad sort. Real freedom consists in conformity to what
ought to be. In God, whom we conceive as perfect, this conformity is
complete. With us it remains an ideal. Were we the creatures of a blind
mechanical necessity there could be no talk of ideal standards and no
meaning in reason at all.

[Footnote 6: Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii. p. 248.]

EVOLUTION

In the progress of the thought of the generation, say, from 1870 to the
present day, the conception of evolution has been much changed. The
doctrine of evolution has itself been largely evolved within that
period. The application of it has become familiar in fields of which
there was at first no thought. The bearing of the acceptance of it upon
religion has been seen to be quite different from that which was at
first supposed. The advocacy of the doctrine was at first associated
with the claims of naturalism or positivism. Wider applications of the
doctrine and deeper insight into its meaning have done away with this
misunderstanding. Evolution, as originally understood, was as far as
possible from suggesting anything mechanical. By the term was meant
primarily the gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonic
beginning to its mature and final stage. This adult form was regarded
not merely as the goal actually reached through successive stages of
growth. It was conceived as the end aimed at, and achieved through the
force of some vital or ideal principle shaping the plastic material and
directing the process of growth. In short, evolution implied ideal ends
controlling physical means. Yet we find with Spencer, as prevailingly
also with others in the study of the natural sciences, the ideas of end
and of cause looked at askance. They are regarded an outside the pale of
the natural scie