Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/109

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ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY


Evolution itself, then, and not evolutional philosophy merely, in finding in this rational nature of every mind its proximate source and footing, finds there its Final Limit.


VI

We have here reached the proof that what is most distinctively meant by Man is not, and cannot be, the result of evolution. Man the spirit, man the real mind, is not the offspring of Nature, but rather Nature is in a great sense the offspring of this true Human Nature. As we have seen, the only thing that can overspan all the breaks which evolution must pass if it is to be a cosmic principle, is idealising thought — the humane nature, in its highest, largest sense. It is this that adds in to the chaotic insignificance of the mere mass of things the lofty theme of ever-ascending Progress. Apart from this ideality, there would be no cosmic order at all, no Manward Procession. Yet, that the whole of Nature cannot be referred to men alone, or to other conscious beings directly on the scene of Nature; that the existence of an absolutely universal form of their nature is required for her cosmic being, — this will not be denied when our psychology is as exact and all-recognising as it should be. Such a psychology will discover within the complex of experience, human or other, in addition to the system of a priori elements