Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/561

547. The transcendental and the experiential hypotheses are reconcilable on the ground of evolution. In 1852, seven years prior to the publication of the Origin of Species, Spencer had conceived the "hypothesis of development," according to which "the vegetable and animal species would be produced by continual modifications resulting from change of environment." It remained for Darwin to formulate the law of natural selection. The Spencerian evolution includes the totality of the cosmic process, from the condensation of nebulæ to the products of the social life of civilized peoples. It is a mechanical evolution, in that chance is the determining factor. Spencer's doctrine may well be termed a 'transfigured realism.' Energy is the true reality; the physico-chemical events which are the expression of energy are phenomenal. We are forced to think the existence of an objective reality, but are condemned to ignorance as to its nature. The problem thus becomes that which since Kant has been the essential problem of metaphysics—the determination of the limits of human intelligence. The First Principles examines the fundamental notions of religion, of science, and of knowledge, with a view to their reconciliation. The outcome is that the notion of an absolute and infinite first cause, a notion fundamental to all religions, is inconceivable and contradictory. The fundamental notions of science—space, time, matter, motion, force—are equally contradictory and unthinkable. The notions fundamental to psychology meet the same fate. To be thinkable, an object must be relative and limited. Such is the law of the relativity of human thought. Religion and science are reconcilable, for if science and philosophy maintain that we have no knowledge of the Absolute, they insist upon belief in something mysterious and unfathomable, which is the object of religion. There is no real conflict between science and philosophy, since science concerns itself with phenomena, with the knowable in terms of mass, energy, and motion. Conflict arises only when metaphysics seeks to pronounce upon the nature of the Absolute.