第150章

The Interpretation of Evolution §146. Is this law ultimate or derivative? Must we rest satisfiedwith the conclusion that throughout all classes of concrete phenomena suchis the course of transformation? Or is it possible for us to ascertain whysuch is the course of transformation? May we seek for some all-pervadingprinciple which underlies this all-pervading process? Can the inductionsset forth in the preceding four chapters be reduced to deductions?

Manifestly this community of result implies community of cause. It maybe that of the cause no account can be given, further than that the Unknowableis manifested to us after this mode. Or, it may be that this mode of manifestationis implied by a simpler mode, from which these many complex effects follow.

Analogy suggests the latter inference. Just as it was possible to interpretthe empirical generalizations called Kepler's laws, as necessary consequencesof the law of gravitation; so it may be possible to interpret the foregoingempirical generalizations as necessary consequences of some deeper law.

Unless we succeed in finding a rationale of this universal metamorphosis,we obviously fall short of that completely unified knowledge constitutingPhilosophy. As they at present stand, the several conclusions we have latelyreached appear to be independent. There is no demonstrated connexion betweenincreasing definiteness and increasing heterogeneity, or between both andincreasing integration. Still less proof is there that these laws of there-distribution of matter and motion, are necessarily correlated with thoselaws of the direction of motion and the rhythm of motion, previously setforth. But until we see these now separate truths to be implications of onetruth, our knowledge remains imperfectly coherent. §147. The task before us, then, is that of exhibiting the phenomenaof Evolution in synthetic order. Setting out from an established ultimateprinciple, it has to be shown that the course of transformation among allkinds of existences, cannot but be that which we have seen it to be. It hasto be shown that the re-distribution of matter and motion, must everywheretake place in those ways, and produce those traits, which celestial bodies,organisms, societies, alike display. And it has to be shown that in thisuniversality of process, is traceable the same necessity which we find ineach simplest movement around us, down to the accelerated fall of a stoneor the recurrent beat of a harp-string.