ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the hypothesis that the process of evolution is nothing but a perpetual redistribution of matter and motion. It argues that the optimistic interpretation of evolution, professing to exhibit the Ideal of morality as one of the ultimate consequences of the redistribution of matter and motion, ends by denying any difference between what is and what ought to be, and reduces the moral ideal to a mere illusion. The fact that mind and matter obey the ultimate laws is a different thing, and rather indicates that even the redistribution of matter and motion requires ultimately some other explanation than merely mechanical laws afford. Evolution, then, as a scientific theory, is also purely descriptive: it describes the way in which things have come to be what the author sees them to be, the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it is. But science is universal; evolution extends to the whole cosmic process.
