Page:Philosophical Review Volume 21.djvu/162

144 have causes. To impute causation, therefore, to anything irrespective of its effect, is to impute an entirely meaningless conception. We may say, that is, that whatever conception of causation we entertain, it should be historically construed to be made intelligible. To make evolution the cause of anything is, therefore, meaningless, for evolution as a cause can not be historically construed. It has no effects over against which it can be indicated as a cause. To say that it causes the history of things is unintelligible, for that is to say that it causes itself. So, I repeat, causes are never causes absolutely and in isolation. They are causes only in an historical series. Their nature and efficacy are never given except in their eventualities, and when these occur, the causes as causes have ceased to be. A spark may cause an explosion, and there may be no explosion without a spark; but where there are no explosions, sparks, even if they exist, are not their causes.

And the world has no history. I appeal to the philosopher of Königsberg. The world is a collective idea which we can frame because we can group things and because things are grouped in nature. To extend the act of grouping, however, until we have the idea of a group from which no fact remains uncollected, and then to suppose that there corresponds to this idea an object of which we may ask, Has it a beginning in time, an extent in space, a history or an evolution? is to enter the realm of illusion. No; the world as a useful concept must be used distributively. It must mean, Take any item you like, but not, Take all items together. It must be regulative and not constitutive. Evolution as history is always the history of items. Yet no limit can be set to the extent of any such history. A flower in a crannied wall may carry other than a poet far, leading to the construction of every discoverable event as significant in the light of its career. But no one of such histories, however comprehensive, may claim cosmic preëminence over any other. The world is no more matter's world than it is the spirit's, and no less; no more man's world than the microbe's, and no less. Individuals may compete for their lives, but cosmic histories are free from rivalry. No one of them exists as a history to the