Page:Philosophical Review Volume 21.djvu/164

146 history and something other than an evolution. It converts the world into a product or into an effect of causes, and must at last confess its inability to find the producer of that product or the causes of that effect. Its failure does not indicate a lack of intellectual power, but a misdirection of intellectual effort. It proves that evolution is pluralistic, not that monism is necessary. Yet the attempt to write many histories with a clear consciousness that histories are the theme, may disclose the fact that all histories have common categories. That is the discovery of metaphysics. In other words, the attempt to tell what history is, or what evolution is, may not be inept or futile. That is, since we discover the world to be an evolution, it ought not to be impossible for us to analyze that discovery and state what it is to be an evolution. Whatever success we may attain in such an enterprise, it is not necessarily vitiated by any human limitation. It is universal. Only, I repeat, it is not universal history. It is not the portrayal of an evolution. It is the science of evolution. So while there can be no history of evolution, a science of it may be attempted and projected. In no other sense may we venture to claim that evolution is monistic. As a history it is many; as a science it is one.

It should be apparent that the science of evolution, just because it is not a history, will not deal in origins. It will disclose no genesis of the world and discover no causes of its existence. It will disclose, however, or we should expect it to disclose, principles, laws, types, groupings, connections, characteristic efficiencies. Briefly, we should expect it to disclose the factors and method of evolution, but nothing more. We should expect, too, that such a science would not only be universal, but might also be restricted to as narrow a field as we might choose. That is, we may have not only a science of evolution, but also a science of any particular evolution. If it is legitimate to inquire into the nature of history, it is also legitimate to inquire into the nature of matter, or of life, or of consciousness, or of anything that can be denoted as subject-matter for analysis and study. Only we should remember that its science discloses its nature and not its history; and that its evolution discloses its history, the record of its existence, and not its nature.