organisms. It is the ultimate particle of matter invested with mind. In all the shifts of evolution it crosses each line a deathless substance.

These theories are efforts toward a physical explanation. No experimental proofs appear of gemules, or germ cells, or micellæ. Ideoplasm is a better term for the inner content, because it is a symbol of intelligence. Nageli uses it probably for the reason he uses the term "enlagen." He means the constitutional feature of germ-plasm. He endows it with originating capacities. He makes it a determinant of direction. He means the line along which an organism will develop. He means a plan, preconceived and executed. He means an organ, plus a formative power. His pages are rich in phrases like the following: "The molecular forces arrange themselves;" "Dynamic influence;" "The action of the internal forces;" "Oriented micellæ;" "Capability of the primordial plasm;" "Integrity of the organism;" "Ideoplastic determinants;" "Automatic perfecting principle." The real has broken in on him, and he is here struggling to give it detachment of thought. His ultimate material unit is not able to walk alone. When it is idealized, it expresses what he feels to be present in any life form. It is not pos

sible to see the true nature of life without the hypothesis of an organizing capacity. Biologists are obliged to do all their work under that assumption.

The research which traces the action of living matter back to the cell and its nucleus settles no question in philosophy. The smallness of the material unit only increases the wonder and the mystery. When a thread of matter too small for the microscope is yet large enough to carry over the mighty forces which we know do get over; when a sightless unit is yet comprehensive of a far-extended race history; when a particle of matter so small that it can not be known, except in the way it combines with other particles of matter, yet holds in its grip mystically inwoven powers, which have in them the decisive elements of the human character, we are about to the point of "being crowded to our knees" in its presence.

"Life is not force; it is combining power. It is the product and presence of mind." (Bascom.) "Mind may be predicted of all animal life in one sense or another, and we may also form the view of Agassiz and others, that a spiritual element is the originating cause in every embryo cell, determining its development." (Barker.)

Cosmic Spontaneities.

But further; there are some facts observable in procreation for which these theories do not account, and for which no interpretation of heredity can possibly account. It involves a spontaneous and an originating action of the cosmic superforce. For instance, among a given number of children of the same parents, which implies similar genetic influences, and substantially the same outside conditions, no two of them will be alike; and, as is often the case, one of them will show a personal equation of such personal force as to make him unique among his kin. If we are to be limited to the straight action of the primary inheritances, there is no accounting for a Shakespeare. He rises above his family lines, above his race. He is not a summary of what evolution has done. With him some personal factors have been differentiated on the spot. Shakespeare is a procreative originality. Some monad there arose instantly to mightiness. Spontaneity of mind in the realm of life makes the genius possible. Genius is prophetic-it is a flash of the potential race mind.

CHAPTER VI.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF NATURAL

A Rich Discovery.

RESEARCH.

THERE can be no valid objection to the hypothesis that the human mind is an evolution from the psychic states of matter. And there need be no feeling against the claim that the mental capacity and power has been acquired by gradation. The validity of either of these opinions includes the other. They both imply a psychic potency in the realms of life adequate to that which has come about. Specialists may or may not have been equal to the task of revealing all the stages by which the full-orbed human faculty has ascended. From a certain angle of vision the road traveled over has yet the appearance of being a highway with several bridges gone. Nevertheless the general course of it has been pretty well staked out, and it may be put down in the annals of research as a find so rich that its contribution to knowledge is even now very much underestimated.

The history of nature's processes was so well worked out by Darwin, and Wallace, and others in the beginning days of that kind of study; and it so had the fascination of a romance in science, and so quickly set the world of scholarship into a new way of thinking, that it became overstimulated in the start, and had put on it the onus of an explanation of all things natural— as if there was nothing more to say.

No attempt here will be made to enter into a discussion of the doctrine of evolution, further than to state in brief some reconstructions of the earlier ideas and to set forth the religious significance of the new knowledge.

The Ulterior Reality.

We do not get much understanding of that which evolves by an analysis of that which is evolved. For purposes of explanation, and for tracing processes, we may take any number of forms and make out a case of likenesses, persistences, variations, descents. That work may be very interesting and very profitable, but it does not go back to the genesis of things. The ulterior reality must be a cause of the evolving aspects. We may say that mind made its ap