ABSTRACT

The principle of evolution or development is perhaps best illustrated to the philosophical reader by a reference to Aristotle's distinction of power or possibility (Juva~-tt~) from act or realization ( €v£new ). In the life of each ordinary human being manhood may be taken as the realization of what is present in childhood as a power or possibility. The steps from the latter to the former are stages in a development or evolution. In all life, human or not, this distinction is present. There is a germ which grows into the mature plant or the mature animal. There is first a promise or potency, and afterwards a fulfilment or realization. Development is not simply change. It implies that there is something gained, but gained in greater or less measure from within, not simply imposed from without on the subject of the development. The changes that have taken place leave the identity of the subject of the changes unimpaired. In becoming what he is, the man remains in a sense what he was as a child. If he were not the same, the case would not be one of growth arid development, but simply of the addition of another unit to the total number of men or the substitution of a new unit for an .:>ld. But the past is preserved while the form is altered. In pronouncing a change to be a development we are mentally conjoining and comparing the past and the present, and pronouncing them conjoir.ed in fact.