osition readers Science impossible, for its one aim is to
find the _same_ in the _different_. If there be no _same_, there can be
no science: if there be no _different_, there can be no science. Thought
proceeds by adding the _different_ to the _same_ in an endless series,
and this addition of the _different_ to the _same_ expressed in concrete
forms is what is called evolution. If no evolution were apparent in
Nature, there could be no Science; for those steps which to the
naturalist indicate evolution, being only the physical expression--the
formulation--of the logical process, afford the means by which the
student reaches the highest generalization. If these steps be wanting,
he cannot proceed.

Admitting then to its fullest extent the fact that, judged from a purely
physical point of view, all organic forms seem to have been derived each
from its immediate predecessor, by a mere functional impulse; and
admitting that science is possible upon no other condition; we claim
that these material forms are brought into such relation by intellectual
evolution, and not by physical genesis; they represent an evolution of
Thought and not an evolution of Matter. We know from consciousness that
this process of evolution is the method of our thinking. We know also
that the divine thought can be rendered intelligible to us upon no other
hypothesis than that which supposes it to be governed by the laws which
control human thought. Translating the physical symbols which we see
about us, and which present this appearance of evolution, we infer that
this is the method according to which the divine mind proceeded. Science
will not materially err in its physical results, if it adopt the
hypothesis of physical evolution, but it must confine its attention to
physics; it is only as we attempt higher generalizations that the
insufficiency of the hypothesis becomes manifest in its failure to
satisfy the conditions of the problem as presented to philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This, of course, does not absolutely determine the order of organic
creation; as in the case of the syllogism the conclusion or either
premise may be the proposition first enunciated, the order of expression
being determined by circumstances.

[2] Compare the demonstrations of Geometry.

[3] As in the case of man after the death of the body.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Philosophy of Evolution, by
Stephen H. Carpenter

*** END OF THIS PROJECT