in the old sense of the word, according to which the more
developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own
way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent
stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor
reducible to them.

It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are
already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its
essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the
subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It
is illusory to suppose that it is a "natural" assumption to "derive" the
living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic
are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the
inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction
in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first
occurrence--undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity--of
crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same
marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any
ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same
marvel.

Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or
suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of
history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into
a region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or
reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism
to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of "evolution," not
in our sense but in its own, that is "to explain" everything new and
individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be
done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved
that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are
applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must
admit that even in nature--apart from mind--we have to do with new
beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.

All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations
upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an
increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of
individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as
supernatural or miraculous