of the end, and not
_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of
fact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And nature
explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the
voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last
stage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it
really was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into
light, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a
growing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first,
but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet
actual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency,
except in the light of its own actualization.

From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency into
actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even of
the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principles
which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and not
level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, but
we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, except
as an element in a spiritual world."[A]

[Footnote A: Professor Caird, _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, p. 35.]

That the idea of evolution, even when applied in this consistent way,
has difficulties of its own, it is scarcely necessary to say. But there
is nothing in it which imperils the ethical and religious interests of
humanity, or tends to reduce man into a natural phenomenon. Instead of
degrading man, it lifts nature into a manifestation of spirit. If it
were established, if every link of the endless chain were discovered and
the continuity of existence were irrefragably proved, science would not
overthrow idealism, but it would rather vindicate it. It would justify
_in detail_ the attempt of poetry and religion and philosophy, to
interpret all being as the "transparent vesture" of reason, or love, or
whatever other power in the world is regarded as highest.

I have now arrived at the conclusion that was sought. I have tried to
show, not only that the attempt to interpret nature in terms of man is
not a superstitious anthropomorphism, but that such an interpretation is
implied in all rational thought.