Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/101

40 last and essentially in the conception of Progress: but this conception has no meaning at all except in the light of a goal; there can be no goal unless there is a Beyond for everything actual; and there is no such Beyond except through a spontaneous ideal. The presupposition of Nature, as a system undergoing evolution, is therefore the causal activity of our Pure Ideals. These are our three organic and organising conceptions called the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. They are the fountains, severally, of our metaphysical and scientific, our aesthetic, and our moral consciousness. They are the indispensable presuppositions without which our judgment that there is progress would be impossible: this judgment once vacated, the reality and even the conception of evolution alike disappear. Yet there is no existence for them, and therefore no authority, except the spontaneous putting of them by and in our thought. Here we reach the demonstration that evolution not only is a fact, and a fact of cosmic extent, but is a necessary law a priori over Nature. But we learn at the same time, and upon the same evidence, that it cannot in any wise affect the a priori self-con-