IV - THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION

Summary

§ 58. Is this law ultimate or derivative? Must we rest satisfied with the conclusion that throughout all classes of concrete phenomena such is the mode of evolution? Or is it possible for us to ascertain why such is the mode of evolution? May we seek for some all-pervading principle which underlies this all-pervading process? Can we by a further step reduce our empirical generalization to a rational generalization?

Manifestly this community of result implies community of causation. It may be that of such causation no account can be given, further than that the Unknowable is manifested to us after this manner. Or, it may be, that the mode of manifestation is reducible to simpler ones, from which these many complex consequences follow. Analogy suggests the latter inference. At present, the conclusion that every kind of Evolution is from a state of indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a state of definite coherent heterogeneity, stands in the same position as did the once ultimate conclusion that every kind of organized body undergoes, when dead, a more or less rapid decay. And as, for the various kinds of decomposition through which animal and vegetal products pass, we have now discovered a rationale in the chemical affinities of their constituent elements; so, possibly, this universal transformation of the simple into the complex may be affiliated upon certain simple primordial principles.