, that the self-generation of natural
law is a necessary corollary from the persistence of matter and force. And
that this must be so is now, I hope, sufficiently evident. Just as in the
first dawn of things, when the proto-binary compounds of matter gave rise
to new relations together with their appropriate laws, so throughout the
whole process of evolution, as often as matter acquired a hitherto novel
state, or in one of its old states entered into hitherto novel relations,
so often would non-existent or even impossible laws become at once possible
and necessary. And in this way I cannot see that there is any reason to
stop until we arrive at all the marvellous complexity of things as they
are. For aught that speculative reason can ever from henceforth show to the
contrary, the evolution of all the diverse phenomena of inorganic nature,
of life, and of mind, appears to be as necessary and as self-determined as
is the being of that mysterious Something which is Everything,--the Entity
we must all believe in, which without condition and beyond relation holds
its existence in itself.
Sec. 33. Does it still seem incredible that, notwithstanding it requires
mental processes to interpret external nature, external nature may
nevertheless be destitute of mind? Then let us look at the subject on its
obverse aspect.
According to the theory of evolution--which, be it always remembered, is no
mere gratuitous supposition, but a genuine scientific theory--human
intelligence, like everything else, has been evolved.
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