Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/97

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ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

of science are to be credited with the value of truth, is the proximate seat of that nature for which we are seeking as explanatory of what the Continuous Copula really is. At next hand to Nature, our mind itself — the mind of each of us — is that Copula. This truth will become clearer as we proceed with the analysis of evolution.

(4) Logical Unity. — It is of course obvious that evolution, like every other scheme of conception, must have its parts conformed to the laws of logical coherence, and that in this sense Logical Unity is a factor in the very notion of evolution. But we can now see that it is present there in a sense far profounder and more vital. In fact, according to the result of the preceding step in our analysis, Logical Unity is simply the direct and manifest version of causation in terms of mind, which we just now came upon as the authentic meaning of the causal Copula. As the logic of induction sends us directly to the organic or a priori activity of thought for a warrant of science, and thus indicates mind to be the real nature of the Omnipresent Energy, it now becomes evident that the vague thread of kinship running through all phenomena is the thread of logic, and that the suggested common parentage of all is just the parentage of thought. The unity of logic, the unity of congruous conceptions, is the only unity that joins by one unbroken tie the diverse forms of