It has been argued that a Supreme Intelligence in manifesting his thought will, according to the necessary laws of rational activity, pass from the universal and general to the particular and individual, or from concepts involving few attributes to those involving these and others; and that these steps in the rational process must be represented in a corresponding physical series; and that the communication of thought is conditioned upon this physical representation. If the logical series comprises one thousand terms, each related to the preceding according to logical law the physical series must comprise one thousand terms, each physically related in such a manner as to reveal this law. As the highest generalization comprises the fewest attributes, the concrete expression of this idea will present the simplest possible physical form and the least complexity of organization, and thus will present the lowest types of life; and as the individual comprises the greatest number of attributes, its concrete expression will present the greatest complexity, and consequently the highest type of life. We have seen that the logical process begins with the general and ends with the individual; its material expression must therefore begin with the lowest orders and end with the highest. But the individual cannot be immediately derived from the general without the intervention of intermediate generalizations. No more in the concrete expression of this deduction can we pass from the lowest types to the highest without the intervention of an intermediate series. These intermediate terms are not capable of independent interpretation; they find their full explanation only in the extremes of the series—God and Man.
If, then, in the intellectual process from the abstract and universal towards the concrete and individual, we find a constant evolution of idea, each advance being an addition to the previous conception, each new term in the series embracing all the attributes of the preceding, and differing only by addition; and if thought is possible only on this condition; it necessarily follows that the material representation of this thought must present physical forms similarly related, so that, leaving out of view the intellectual genesis of this relation, the observer might conclude that these forms compose a series evolved from a primordial cell in accordance with an organic law. But such we find to be the universal law of intellectual procedure: this apparent development or evolution must, therefore, be the condition of the communication of such intellectual process, and the physical terms are brought into this relation by the fact that they symbolize the logical process. If the material symbols of thought were unrelated physically, the thoughts thus expressed would also be unrelated and independent. But such a supposition 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.